The Laundry List of Complaints

OK, today's win was nice. Long-homestand-opening-extra-inning-last-at-bat-over-a-good-team thrillers are always nice to win. I'm still seeing a disturbing trend right now, which can be summed up thusly: Michael Restovich batted cleanup. Even if he wasn't batting cleanup it could be summed up as "Michael Restovich played". I wasn't happy when we acquired him two weeks ago, but I was hopeful that I was wrong. I'm going to say it now, I can't believe this guy is taking at-bats away from people on our team. When we got him I was worried for one reason, we're his fourth team this year. Two of them were the Rockies and D-Rays. I don't care who you are, if you're cut by those two bastions of baseball talent, there's only two possible explanations. 1.) You really really really suck, or 2.) You have such an irredeemable personality, you make Darth Vader seem like a pretty OK guy. When we traded for him I was pretty sure #2 would be the case, but now even #1 was looking like a possibility. I know Mackowiak has an awful average against lefties, but we never give him a chance to play. If you only face one lefty a week, your numbers won't be good. He's hitting well enough that he deserves to play every day. Let's see what he can do when he regularly starts. Some people feed off that. Same goes for Sanchez. I gave up on lobbying for playing time for him a month ago because I figured there was no hope. Now all of a sudden he makes four straight starts, and he produces. He should continue to start every day at third, and Mackowiak should play every day in center. I would actually argue that Sanchez should play second and Hill third every day, but Jose Castillo is still playing out of his mind, rendering that argument kind of null. There's really no excuse anymore for seeing Tike Redman, Ty Wigginton, and Michael Restovich in the starting lineup. Wigginton and Redman both cost us games in the field in the last week and neither of their bats are good enough to make up for their deficiencies in the field, while Restovich has done nothing in black and gold. To paraphrase my cousin Jeff (who said he heard this on the radio, not sure where though), McClendon is managing by the book, but the book he's managing from doesn't really seem to apply to the Pittsburgh Pirates.