Nats hurdle Hillcats

By Andy Bitter

Published: April 14, 2008

The Pirates’ new upper brass has a rule, one from which they won’t waver: If a pitcher throws more than 30 pitches in an inning, he’s won’t come out for another. End of discussion.
The reasons are two-fold. First, it minimizes the risk of an injury, an understandable priority for an organization that has seen six of the last eight pitchers it has drafted in the first round go under the knife. Second, it lets the organization’s starters know they have to be efficient with their pitches.
The drawback is that occasionally you run into nights like Monday, when the Hillcats were forced to send backup middle infielder Greg Picart to the mound to finish off a 10-4 loss to Potomac.
“There are pros and cons to it,” said Hillcats manager Jeff Branson, forced to smile at the game’s bizarre conclusion. “The guidelines are set and we run the guidelines.”
Lynchburg (4-6) was forced into the situation after starter Brian Holliday labored through a 15-minute, 33-pitch first inning. He went to a full count twice, walked two batters and allowed one sharply hit ball (an RBI single by Devin Ivany), but he still got out of a bases-loaded jam trailing only 1-0.
It wasn’t a great start, but not terrible by any stretch of the imagination.
It didn’t matter. His night was over.
“It’s kind of frustrating because you feel like you can battle back,” said Holliday, who didn’t know about the rule until he got back to the dugout after the first inning. “It was kind of new to me. But they had to do what they had to do. It wasn’t on them.”
Pitching coach Bob Milacki paid Holliday a visit during the first inning. A few minutes later, reliever Derek Antelo got up in the bullpen.
“I was kind of surprised,” Antelo said. “I didn’t think he was having that bad of an inning. I was worried about Holliday. I thought he had actually gotten hurt.”
He wasn’t, but he wasn’t coming out for another inning either, putting the Hillcats’ bullpen in a bind. Lynchburg relievers had been outstanding prior to Monday, posting a 0.57 ERA in the season’s first nine games. But eight innings was too much to ask.
Potomac (8-2) ended the bullpen’s streak of 14 consecutive scoreless innings when Seth Bynum doubled home two runs off Antelo to cut Lynchburg’s lead to 4-3 in the fourth.
The Nationals tied it in the fifth and broke things open in the sixth, hitting four doubles and taking advantage of a throwing error by reliever Charles Benoit (0-2) to score five times and take a 9-4 lead.
Lynchburg managed one hit from the fourth inning on, as Potomac relievers Jack Spradlin (1-0) and Adam Carr combined to throw five shut-out innings.
It wouldn’t have mattered if the Hillcats could have forced extra innings anyway. They were out of arms.
By the time the ninth rolled around, the bullpen had thrown 21 innings in five days, prompting Branson to send out Picart, who had never ever pitched in the minors. He had one instruction: throw all fastballs.
Picart did and Dee Brown launched one well beyond the left field fence for his first homer this season. Two other Nationals flew out to the warning track.
“They were just sitting dead red,” Antelo said.
The abbreviated day left Holliday frustrated. He had thrown well in his first two outings, allowing one earned run in 9 1/3 innings and striking out nine to just two walks.
“Now you’ve got to wait another five days to get out there again,” he said. “It kind of feels like, I don’t want to say a wasted start, but I wish I could get out there again.”
NOTES: Hillcats 3B Jim Negrych went 2-for-4 to raise his league-leading batting average to .484. … Six Potomac batters had two hits. … 1B Chris Marrero, the Nationals’ 19-year-old No. 1 prospect, was 2-for-5 with a triple and two runs.