There was no champagne—there wasn’t even Gatorade—but the bottled water dousing that Derek Shelton got today from his players will always be a very sweet memory of his first victory as the Pirates’ manager.
Two home runs, key defense and some lights-out pitching by a pair of rookies and the resident Comeback Kid propelled the Bucs to a 5-1 win over the Cardinals on the road at St. Louis’s Busch Stadium.
Mitch Keller (1-0, 1 ER, 2 K, 3 BB) got the second win of his young big league career with a five-inning start, although at the beginning of the game he looked very erratic—it seemed like his pitches were going everywhere except over the plate and his velocity was a bit off.