The recipe for this Arizona Diamondbacks win followed a well established early season pattern. Aaron Hill went deep in the first inning to put point on the board in the first frame for the eighth time in 10 games. Chris Young added another home run, his fifth on the season, to blow the game open in the 6th.
Mix in a strong start from Joe Saunders and painless door closing from the pen and the Pittsburgh Pirates went quietly to their graves at the bottom of Chase Field Deep.
Hill's one-out home run is his third of the season with all three coming while hitting in the lucky two-hole in Kirk Gibson's batting order.
"It was a good performance from Joe (Saunders) tonight. Excellent. He's been great both times out. We hit the long ball and we tend to win when we do that," Gibson said.
Saunder's only run allowed came in the first inning after he gave up three-straight singles and a walk after opening the game with two quick outs. From that point forward, Joe only allowed three more hits. His final line was a very clean seven innings with six hits, one run earned, two walks and five punch outs.
Joe was relieved in bottom of the seventh by Gerardo Parra who splashed down his first career pinch-hit home run into the pool in right field. It was the 42nd ball to take a bath and the 22nd off a D-back bat.
Young's two-run blast in the sixth inning puts him in second place in the majors behind Matt Kemp. CY went 3-4 at the plate today which will also raise his batting average which was .364 coming into this game.
Young admitted that he changed some mechanics in his swing but he was reluctant to talk about the details for fear that he would start to over think the details at the plate.
As hot as he is, Chris has also learned to remain humble, "I'm pretty confident but at the same time, you stay humble in this game. By no means is it easy for me right now. You're not going to go three for four every night. You understand that baseball, it will catch you if you get too big-headed," Young explained.
Pirates starter Erik Badard was solid, going five innings, three hits, two runs, four walks, three strikeouts and one homerun allowed. The D-backs big damage came against the Pittsburgh pen.
Game 2 of the series on Tuesday features Ian Kennedy on the mound facing Jeff Karstens.
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