Nationals 7 Pirates 5 and the rant it inspired

I don't know if I can do it anymore. I've had enough of this crap that we're pretending to call "baseball". Look at the rosters. The Nationals should never take 5 of 6 from us, I don't care what their record is. After three months I'm more frustrated with this Pirates team than any team I've watched in my life. I don't want to watch Matt Lawton any more. How is he helping us get better? I'm sick of watching Mackowiak screw up at third and seeing Sanchez on the bench every third day just to get Tike Redman some at-bats. It's a joke. I've had enough of Kip Wells' crap. We could get rid of him right now and pick up Ty Wigginton and I wouldn't care. That's how tired I am of his constant underachiement and lack of care. No more Jose Mesa, for the life of me I can't figure out how a 39 year old closer is paving the way for the future. I can't physically watch Lloyd McClendon talk about the "new him" after he didn't stick up for his team after three of the most awful calls I've ever seen umpires make, only to watch him get tossed out again FOR ARGUING BALLS AND STRIKES. I'm upset with Oliver Perez, but I want to know the real story (because you know there's more to it). I want to know why on Inside Pirates Baseball all the players talk like they're petrified of McClendon, that they won't even talk to him (Lawton is so afraid of him he's talked to hime once since he's come to town). I can't give any trust to a GM that's watched McClendon for 4 years now and can't see what's wrong with him managing a Major League team. I can't believe a word out of his mouth when he talks about building for the future but watches Matt Lawton's crap on a daily basis, and watches Tike Redman turn into Lawton's less-talented protege while playing over more deserving people 2-3 days a week. I can't believe a word from a GM that lets a man run a team where David Ross over Humberto Cota or Ryan Doumit is a logical choice to make. Sometimes when I watch Littlefield run the team, I'd like to think he has a plan for us. Sometimes I think he'd like to think that too. I'm sick of the local media talking about the lack of our players talent when the talent is obvious, yet they rush to McClendon's defense at the drop of a hat. I don't want to hear about how we don't have a three hitter when Jason Bay is one of the best in the league. The team is flat out underachieving. I don't think they need to be the Washington Nationals, but there's no excuse for them to be 9 games under .500 at the end of June. In every other city in America, when the team underachieves, two people get the blame. It's been 4+ years now. The time has come for Lloyd McClendon and Dave Littlefield to be held responsible.

UPDATE (11:22 PM): OK, I wrote the part about Lloyd getting tossed tonight after only reading that he was tossed for arguing "a third strike" and seeing a clip of him screaming at an umpire. As per his extremely irrational behavior lately, I assumed he was arguing balls and strikes, which is just about always enough to get you tossed. I was wrong, he was arguing two check swing ball 4s. They seemed to be borderline check swings and borderline strike/ball on location, but SportsCenter didn't show the neat little baseline view to let you know if he had a point or not. So, as per my complaints about the Ortiz check swing incident in Boston tonight, I'm not really that upset about him getting tossed tonight (though the reason I was upset about the Ortiz check swing is because it was very clearly about 90% of a swing and it was the third time in 5 games we'd been absolutely hosed on a call and all Lloyd could do was come out of the dugout and laugh about it, this situation is a bit different). Anyways, I apologize for the error about today's game, I was wrong, I don't hold anything from today's game against Lloyd. That doesn't really change anything else that's written above, though.

It's official

I think we can finalize it, Kip Wells has no real trade value to any contenders. He's not gotten rocked by the Yankees, Red Sox, and Nationals in his last four starts (and thew and average start in against the Cards for false-hopes sake). Also, Zack Duke should get his bags packed for Pittsburgh, Ian Snell pitched out of the pen again today and I doubt they'd start him on Saturday after a couple of 2 inning relief outings during the week, but then again, this is the Pirates. We have cut the lead to 6-4 though, making it entirely possible that the Nationals will win three one run games in a series where they never seemed like they were actually in danger of losing any of them.

UPDATE: I didn't see this earlier, it's official, Duke is the man on Saturday (via Leeeny).

Nationals 3 Pirates 2- The difference

People have been wondering over the last week or so what the difference between the Nationals and the Pirates is. How can two teams that should be so even, as judged by talent, drive, as well as things like runs scored and runs allowed, be so different? The answer is obvious, one run games. So, it's been pondered, are the Nats simply luckier than us? Are they just more clutch? Does Chad Cordero give you that much of an improvement of Jose Mesa? Nope, tonight made the difference pretty clear, they're better coached. Tonight's game turned on two plays. Play #1, top of the 8th, one out, runners on first and second, Freddy Sanchez at the plate. Sanchez hits a hard grounder through the infield, which Marlon Byrd reaches BEFORE ROB MACKOWIAK GETS TO THIRD BASE. Despite this, John Russell windmills away. Mackowiak was out by a mile at the plate. I don't care if it's Jason Bay in left field and Ichiro running the bases, if the left fielder gets to a ball that shallow with the runner not even at third base it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that the runner is going to be out at the plate. So, play number 2 comes in the bottom of the eighth. Again, first and second, one out, this time Guillen at the plate. He rips a very fieldable ball down third that Mackowiak can't get to, only deflecting it up in the air allowing the run to score. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times. ROB MACKOWIAK IS NOT A THIRD BASEMEN. As an infielder, his reaction time isn't there. As an outfielder he's fast, he gets decent breaks on the balls, and he has a cannon for an arm. As a third basemen he's a step slow. So why was he playing third tonight? Why to sneak the useless Tike Redman into the lineup, of course. Tike, as we know, appears to have A.D.D. in center field. Sometimes he's great. Most of the time he's not. He's not a better hitter than Freddy Sanchez, and playing Tike in the field weakens two positions. Mackowiak showed tonight that as cold as he's been, his bat is an asset for us in the lineup. Tike hasn't proved anything at all, all year. Maybe my argument is pointless since Jose Castillo came out of the game in the 7th, but from what I've seen this year, Bobby Hill has a better chance at making that play that Mackowiak. This is (if my memory serves me right) the third time this year Mackowiak playing third base may have cost us a game. It should be an easy solution, DON'T PLAY HIM THERE, but for the Pirates, things are never that easy.

So there you go, Bob Walk and Greg Brown said post game they just can't figure out how the Nats keep doing it. They said the bats didn't come out tonight, but any game where you take a 2+ hour break is hard on everyone. Mackowiak's first pitch homer after that enormous layoff is one of the more impressive things I've seen this year. The Nats didn't have to do anything tonight, we did it for them.

Arghh, rain!

Rain delays are no fun. They screw up just about everything, pitchers, hitters, game flow, etc. Looks like we should've saved Snell for tonight to get some work, but then again maybe I'll get my wish and we'll see some "Vogelsong in a meaningful game" action. And the big question, can Mackowiak come through with a big hit with Lawton on third and two outs? The suspense is killing me.

The answer

For anyone that was curious, the answer to the Zack Duke question yesterday (how is he not on the 40 man roster since this is his 4th year with the organization) was found at Baseball America by a friend of mine from Boston (if you can call Red Sox fans friends):

Players who were 18 or younger on June 5 preceding the signing of their first contract must be protected after four minor league seasons. Players 19 and older must be protected after three seasons.

Duke was drafted out of high school, and thus must've been 18 at the time. Thanks Jon.

McLouth and Moonlight

If McLouth's stay with the Pirates this time around is as shortlived as expected, he'd do well to remember that today is the 100th anniversary of the first and only appearence of the now-legenday Moonlight Graham.

And ESPN's Jim Caple imagines how much we'd actually know about Moonlight if he played today in a pretty entertaining Page 2 piece.

Q&A

Typical Q&A fare today, need to pick a direction, will the real Kip Wells please stand up, who are the real fans, etc etc. Dejan also goes heavy on the hockey references, something that drives me batty. No problems with the Pens, or hockey in general, but when I read a column about the Pirates, I don't expect analogies like this:

If you ask me, I would send my fourth-line goon over the boards to deliver a firm slash to the back of the knee.

Too much hockey for me. He ends the column with a question for the readers:

I wonder how those of you who have read this book (Moneyball) feel the Pirates measure up by the "Moneyball" standard, and I would like to hear from you on the subject.

Charlie at the Bucs Dugout immediately goes on the offensive:

Look, comparing Dave Littlefield's program to Billy Beane's is like comparing Sean Connery's "Suck it Trebek" character to Ken Jennings.

OK, so Beane and Littlefield don't have approaches that resemble each other, true. We do pretend to care, with the Gerald Perry hiring revolving around plate discipline and such, but our team is certainly not a disciplined one at the plate. Littlefield is trying to take at least one approach similar to Beane however. He's trying to stockpile pitching. Between Burnett, Van Benschoten, Duke, Snell, Malholm, Bradley, and Bullington will we get our Mulder, Hudson, and Zito? Maybe, maybe not, but then again Haren, Meyer, and Calero might not be Hudson, Mulder, and Zito either. Other than stockpiling pitching though, I agree with Charlie, there's not much similarities (read his whole post).

Nats 2 Bucs 1- Talk about disappointing

Well, that one kind of blew. Any time Ryan Drese holds you to one run, you should be embarassed. Well, I'm just basing that one the way we lit him up last week. He was an Opening Day starter this year, after all (OK, it was for the Rangers). I'd like to feel bad for Fogg, but it's hard when the deciding run in the game came off an error by him. Still, two runs in six is a good outing, especially with the way Fogg has been pitching (all pregame predictions calling for a severe case of the runs tonight were way off base). There was one positive from tonight, Ian Snell looked great. He went two strong innings, only giving up one hit to Junior Spivey that should not have been a hit under any circumstances (of course, Matt Lawton circumvents all circumstances). Hopefully it's some side work to get him ready for a start on Saturday.

As a side question, does anyone know how Zack Duke isn't on the 40-man roster? My friend and I were killing ourselves over this one. If he was drafted in 2001, his three years in the organization not on the 40-man would've been '02, '03, and '04. He is definitely not on the 40-man this year (and was a non-roster invitee to camp), so how is that possible without him being in the Rule V this year (when he certainly would've been a pick). Did he miss a year with injury? If he did, would that matter?

The end of another rope

Yep, Matt Lawton joined Lloyd as people that I'm past the end of the rope with. Junior Spivey just hit a sky high popup which Daryle Ward and Jose Castillo both ran over 100 feet for, while Lawton couldn't even make it 50 only to see it drop in front of him. Just plain ridiculous. If this run comes back to haunt us (we're walking Guillen right now, two outs, still a one run game, Castilla at the plate) I'm going to be very, very upset.

Faith in the young'ns

Good start by Fogg, too bad we couldn't capitalize last inning and get him off the hook. I'm not sure who sent Mackowiak on that grounder right to Guzman, if it was Russell or Mackowiak running on his own (I'd assume Russell because usually the third base coach is shouting something on plays like that, but who knows) because that play was poor baseball. Quite a show of faith in Snell tonight to bring him out in the 7th inning of a one run game against a first place team, but he got three quick outs with six pitches, good work. I'm sure we'll hear this comparison a lot, but his size and motion do remind me a lot of Pedro Martinez. Let's get him some runs with the top of the order up this inning.

Bucs in DC

For the first time in 80 years, the Bucs are in DC, a fact that kind of got lost in my posting today among star pitchers breaking their toes on laundry carts and a long rant against Lloyd. The Nats are unbelievably good at home (26-10) but I don't think two out of three here is out of the question. Ryan Drese and Josh Fogg tonight. Runs are expected.

Laundry-cart blogging

After a short absence, Leeeny is back and she's hitting the nail on the head of the ugly side of the Oliver Perez situation.

I think the rope snapped

Yep, I think it happened. I think I finally reached the end of my Lloyd McClendon rope. Just when he seemed like he actually learning, he's been sprinting backwards so fast the last couple weeks, I think I would go and dance across campus if he got canned. Remember to start here, with my long standing list of complaints and praises for Lloyd. Those haven't changed, but the last two weeks or so have been awful. The laundry list:

• While we were in the process of blowing our 5-2 lead to the Yankees, he didn't come out of the dugout to argue the call with Sheffield at first base. Simply unacceptable. If you are a manager known for your fire, you have to stand up for your players in that situation. Instead, the players were flat after the play and the game took on a heavy pall that ended with Giambi's homer
  
• After said game, Lloyd stated that we simply (link is here, in my massive liveblogging of the Ollie/Randy Johnson fiasco, look for the top of the second) "were not good enough to beat the Yankees twice." I don't care if it's true (and it isn't), Lloyd is around to inspire confidence in our young players (because he's not around for his game management skills, that's for sure) and comments like that are beyond unacceptable. If I'm Littlefield, Lloyd is canned on the spot.
• But instead, we decided to focus back on the past. Lloyd was still whining about the call at first after losing again to the Yankees, then to the Red Sox (where another bad, game changing call was made that he didn't come out of the dugout to defend). OK, it was a bad call, we got it, but Lloyd refused to move on.
• Saturday against the Sox saw maybe the worst umpiring call in recent history. David Ortiz took 7/8ths of a full swing at a 3-2 Dave Williams offering, but when it was appealed it was ruled he checked his swing. There was simply no way it happened. Lloyd came out of the dugout, spoke briefly to Williams, then trotted back to the dugout, LAUGHING with home plate ump Jerry Crawford. After the game he explained he had turned over a new leaf and that arguing calls never changes them, so why bother to go out and get tossed (read: I'm a pushover now).
• Lloyd instead decides that he's not a pushover, and on Tuesday comes out screaming and yelling and kicking about a play where THE UMPIRES GOT THE CALL RIGHT by calling Bobby Hill out at the plate.
  
• This of course brings us to Sunday's game. The game opened with a little tiff between Yady Molina and the D-Train. Lloyd overreacted (as recounted in Cardnilly's weekend recap, he may be a Cardinals fan, but I agree with him on this one):

  And I’m officially tired of Lloyd McClendon. I thought when he stole first base it was pure comedic genius, and he seemed to have the right attitude (upbeat and aggressive). But he has flown off the handle in the past with the Cards, particularly when he marched across the field in the middle of a game to challenge Tony to a fight (who, to my everlasting delight, immediately popped out of the dugout and started marching right back at Lloyd). But yesterday after everything had calmed down and the players were heading back to their respective dugouts and pens, McClendon was still going after one of the umps, wildly waving his arms and being held back by a coach. Some perspective might be nice there, Skip — no punches were thrown, no one was hit or even knocked down by a pitch, and no one was tossed. Now, maybe that’s just the way he communicates — I’ve known a couple hand-talkers in my day — but I’m not thinking so. If Lloyd gets the mid-season axe, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Bucs go on a little tear like the Royals or Reds (if you can call a three game win streak followed by two losses a “tear”…).

  There was simply no excuse for this man who had "turned over a new leaf" to be ranting and raving out on the field for what appeared to be a minor misunderstanding. Since no perspective was offered by Lloyd post-game, I'm going to assume there isn't anything we don't know.
  
• As recounted by Rory, there was the 9th inning sequence where Lloyd tried his hardest to cost us the game by bunting Mackowiak and setting up a hit and run with Cota. Mackowiak's bat was just coming alive and Cota has been Clutch with a capital "C" this year, taking the bat out of their hands was a bad, bad idea.
  
• And now this. Lloyd has already ranted on the schedule once, around the time of our NY/Boston series'. As the same column notes, the schedule is bad for everyone, St. Louis certainly gets no breaks Don't forget Posada's point when he heard about everyone complaining about the Pirates have to play in Yankee Stadium, due to the Yankees popularity on the road they almost never play afternoon games on get-away days, that's a huge disadvantage all year, compared to one tough month. He won't argue game changing calls because that won't help, but he seems to think whining about umpiring and schedule making will. Let's get a couple things straight. First off, when this schedule was made anyone that would've thought O's and the Nats would be a combined 21 games over .500 on June 28th was probably on drugs. If you look at the schedule with Baltimore as a .500 team and Washington as a (very) sub .500 team (as was thought prior to the year) it lightens up considerably. Not to mention that as a manager you should be happy for how this stretch has turned out. WE'RE 13-13 LLOYD!!! We've learned a hell of a lot more about this team in June than we did during May or April because of how they responded to this schedule. We started out well, and despite all of the shit piled on us in New York, Boston, back home against Washington, and the first three games in St. Louis, we pulled out our second best win of the year on Sunday. The players didn't moan about what a tough schedule it was, they didn't cry because the Yankees, Red Sox, Nationals, and Cardinals had beat up on them. They didn't quit just because they've had a tough stretch of games and Isringhausen was on the mound to close them out, they rallied and they won. That says a hell of a lot about the 2005 edition of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And Lloyd, when all you can do after that game is complain about the schedule, well, that says a hell of a lot about you.

All in all, this has just been a couple weeks of very erratic and unacceptable behavior. Trust me, I'm all for the "new" Lloyd in the right situations, him screaming like a maniac on Tuesday when the umps made the right call and on Sunday over the non-incident were flat out embarassing. There is a time and a place for a manager to miss his cool. Lloyd missed all three of them against the Yanks and Sox, then over compensated later. Add that in with quotes that show he doesn't have much faith in his players and his usual, uneven and way below average game managing skills (let's not forget him overusing an obviously injured Mike Gonzalez, then throwing Bobby Hill a one game start with Sanchez injured where Hill was excellent, then immediately re-burying him on the bench) and, well, like I said, the end of my rope.

You've got to be kidding me

Honestly, I think some time on the DL would be beneficial for Oliver Perez, but not because HE BROKE HIS TOE KICKING A LAUNDRY CART. I have to go back to work, and I'm very angry, but I will have more commentary on this one a bit later.

UPDATE (2:44 PM): I've been thinking about this some more. Aside from the abject humiliation of having our best pitcher break his toe on a laundry cart (and hey, as Pirate fans we've endured Operation Shutdown, the Raul Mondesi incident, Kevin Young and Pat Meares' contracts, if we can take anything, it's abject humiliation), this is a good thing. And here's why:

1. It's Ian Snell time, and this is a very good thing.
2. Oliver Perez is not healthy, no matter what anyone tells you. This off time may give his arm a chance to recover a bit (though if I was the secretary of Dr. James Andrews, I'd still be keeping a date open around Decemberish to bring Mr. Perez down to Birmingham).
3. The call up of McLouth is an interesting one (see below), but it's more or less a statement by the front office that Perez has been our worst pitcher (or at the very least, our least efficent pitcher) to date. In fact, without him in the rotation, we need one less reliever.
4. One less reliever means Vogelsong might get some meaningful innings. Some people may think this is a bad thing, but I don't think Vogelsong has gotten a fair shake this year. He's got really good stuff and I think if he's given the chance he can be a very good reliever.
5. Littlefield gets more time to mull over offers for Kip Wells and Mark Redman rather than rushing one of them out of town so he can get Snell in the rotation.
   

So of course, this begs the question, what does the McLouth call up mean? Well, it's bad news for someone, and that someone is probably Nate McLouth. See, McLouth is a lefty, and if there's one thing we have a ton of, it's left handed outfielders. This means he's not taking at bats away from Restovich (dammit). So either McLouth takes at bats away from Tike Redman (which would be too good to be true) or, well, I'll just get the formalities out of the way.

Nate McLouth, Bobby Hill. Bobby Hill, Nate McLouth. Get used to each other, you'll be seeing a lot of one another for the time being buried on the end of the bench.

Some good stuff from the Stats Geek

The Stats Geek has a pretty insightful column today about the source of the Pirates' offensive woes, and it's not where'd you'd think it. He opens up with a statement that I agree with wholeheartedly:

This team is often misrepresented by the casual fan as having a lack of major-league players. In fact, nearly every Pirate would make nearly every team, though not necessarily the starting lineup.

Finally, a member of the Pittsburgh media saying "it's not the players." He goes on to expound upon the problems. He says that it's a lack of top tier bats (Bay is our only one) but I'm not sure I'd even go that far. I think this later statement covers just about everything:

Well, the Pirates have outhit their opponents in the leadoff, No. 3 and cleanup spots this season and have nearly held their own at Nos. 5 and 6. But they have been badly outclassed elsewhere, with the No. 2 and No. 7 positions the worst in the league.

So the heart of the lineup (surprisingly) isn't the problem. I've kind of had a gut feeling all year that all the talk about "adding a bat" is premature. We're getting Craig Wilson back in a very short period of time. Craig Wilson, aka the team's leader in homers and RBIs last year. Ward and Mackowiak have performed admirably to fill the four and five slots most of the year, though both are mired in pretty bad slumps right now, I think both of them are going to bounce back pretty shortly. The problem on offense has been our solution on defense, Sanchez, JWilson, and Castillo. All of them (except maybe Castillo) are performing below what we'd expect from them at the plate this year. This is good news for Pirates fans. I don't think it's much of a stretch to expect that Jack Wilson will have a much better second half at the plate than he did at the first half. Castillo is very young and he's learning very quickly. He just had a pretty rough slump, but followed it up with some big homers against St. Louis. Sanchez has been battling groin trouble since he's been moved into the starting lineup (I retract my statement about it being a mystery injury, if Lloyd played Bobby Hill last Tuesday, Sanchez must've really been hurt). You don't need to hit 200 home runs as a team to finish .500 or make the playoffs as long as you make the ones you do hit count (like Bay's three run dinger on Sunday) and you keep the table set for the middle of your order. Since I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Wilson, Sanchez, and Castillo to all have better second halves than first, I think that we could see a marked second half improvement in the Pirates offense. O'Neill's closing statement today is what I've been saying for a while:

Sprinkle more hits and walks through the lineup and you might be surprised at the team already here.

All Stars

Well, it's an off day, and without much to write about, let's breakdown the chances of some different Buccos to end up in Detroit for this year's All-Star Game.

Jack Wilson- We'll open with last year's All-Star. He's probably the best defensive shorstop in the NL, despite what people say about Cesar Izturis. If April never happened, he'd probably be a lock for the game what with his defense and a .260 average (especially with SS being such a weak position in the NL this year with Nomar being injured), but hitting .230ish and being a Pirate means it's gonna be Izturis and Eckstein, especially with LaRussa managing.

Daryle Ward- Good numbers, wrong position. He's on pace for 24 homers and 99 RBIs, but has gone a bit cold in the power department lately (only one dinger in June) and is backed up behind Pujols, Lee, Delgado, etc. It's not gonna happen.

Jose Castillo- A longshot, but a maybe. 2B isn't a real strong position in the NL and Castillo has shown flashes of a great glove and a fairly solid bat. I'm guessing it'll go to Loretta, Kent, and maybe even Utley all over Jose.

Mark Redman- Not gonna happen. He's 4-6 and that ERA is ballooning. Hared to believe a starter with a losing record on a cold streak is going to be an All-Star, no matter how good he started.

Matt Lawton- A bit too streaky and on a cold streak. He's only hitting .265, and it's pretty clear hitting is the only thing he focuses on. Thus his resume is not that impressive.

Jose Mesa- Hopefully not, though I wouldn't put it past LaRussa to name Mesa and only Mesa as our All-Star simply to embarass us (he's all about getting edges people don't see). Yep, 19 saves is nice for the halfway point, but 0-5 with a 4.08 ERA is not All-Star worthy. Hopefully LaRussa agrees.

Rob Mackowiak- He doesn't have a position in the eyes of the voter (though he should be an outfielder). Last year Chone Figgins wasn't selected for the game, though he did have the numbers for it. He is the feel-good story though, 53rd round draft pick, that awesome highlight reel for Garret's birthday, an all-around good guy, etc., etc. His recent cold streak and long name (I haven't heard one member of the national media pronounce it any way other than Mah-KOH-wee-ak instead of the proper Mah-KOH-vee-ak) may cost him in the long run.

Jason Bay- He's looking more and more like the choice. After being accused of stealing signs on Sunday, he single-handedly kept us in the game with his two homers, and he did it against Tony LaRussa. ESPN projects him for 33 homers and 88 RBIs, but you get the feeling that he hasn't really gotten hot yet. Despite all the strikeouts he's hitting .305 and has an OPS of .951. The RBIs will come up with better production in front of him. I'll be surprised if he finishes below 100 ribbies when this whole season is done with. He's a solid outfielder (with a below average arm, but not quite an embarassing arm) and he is reigning NL ROTY. My guess is Bay, especially with Bonds out and some other NL outfielders having sub-par years.

More Smizik crap

Smizik says don't get your hopes up just yet. Why? Because no one on our team can hit home runs, and don't get excited until we have three guys that can hit 30 homers. Yep, because home runs are the most important part of baseball, right Bob? That 2003 Marlins team must've hit like 300 homers to win a World Series that year. Yeah, or 157, just about the same number we're on pace for. I won't argue that our offense is perfect, or even good, but I will argue that you don't need three 30 home run hitters to be a winning baseball team.

Peter Gammons says nice things about us but is still old and confused

Peter Gammons writes a bit about mid/small market teams that aren't planning on selling this year. We're included. Dave Littlefield gives us this nice quote:

"In years past," says Littlefield, "we had to move contracts and get our payroll down. We got it down $20 million. Now we're right where we have to be. We don't have to move payroll, our attendance is up 20 percent and we now want to start winning. There is no one we have to move..."

Gammons does have trouble getting his facts straight though:

To those in New York and Boston whose theme songs are "Death or Glory," .500 doesn't seem like much. But if you're Dave Dombrowski and your Tigers haven't been .500 since 1993, Dave Littlefield and your Pirates have had one winning season since Barry Bonds left in 1992 or Doug Melvin and your Brewers have had losing seasons since '92, it means plenty.

One winning season since '92? Exactly when was that Pete? That blackhole year of 1997.5?

Lost in the shuffle

Of course, lost in the weekend shuffle, I forgot to post about this. That's right, Ian Snell is up in Pittsburgh (and he probably has Mike Johnston's outing on Friday to thank for it). They say he'll be working out of the pen for now, but I'm guessing the time is drawing near for Mr. Redman (and not Tike, unfortunately) or Mr. Wells to pack their bags.

UPDATE (12:19 AM)- Just for fun, my prediction is one of them will be gone by the break or shortly after.

Pirates 5 Cardinals 4

Well, I said before the series if we took two we'd be headed off in the right direction, and we did it, but barely. I've been waiting for years for our inability to grasp the fundamental skills of baseball (like running the bases) to win a game for us, and sure enough today our own Abraham Nunez (now wearing Cardinal Red) made possibly the worst baserunning play in the history of baseball. Worse than anything Matt Lawton has done, worse than those goofy plays where Giles would end up on third base with someone else and we'd find a way to get both people tagged out (which happened twice in two years I believe), this is possibly the worst baserunning play since Merkle's Boner (for those not in the know, it's not dirty, click the link for an explanation). For anyone that missed this let me recap. The play started with a runner on second (I don't remember or care who, maybe Grudzielanek) and good ol' Abe on first. Yadier Molina, Pirate Killer, was at the plate. He crushed a ball into the right center gap off Ollie. Grudzielanek (or whoever) easily scored from second, but somehow Nunez's brain exploded. Halfway between first and second, he froze. For some reason he thought that Matt Lawton had made the catch (which would have required maybe more effort than Lawton has put forth all year). Molina, who was cruising into second for an easy double stopped when he saw Nunez in front of him. Nunez stared at Molina, THEN RAN PAST HIM BACK TOWARDS FIRST BASE!!! This means that MOLINA was out for passing the lead runner. That's right, Nunez ran backwards, passing the runner behind him and turning him into an out. And he wasn't done. After he passed Molina, he stopped again. Molina ran back to first (though he was already out) and Jose Castillo tagged Nunez (who was standing between first and second like a deer in the headlights) out. Talk about a double play, and just how we drew it up. Instead of being up 4-3 with runners on second and third with only one out and Jason Marquis (their .368 hitting pitcher) at the plate, the Cardinals found themselves out of the inning (though still up 4-3, they did have that going for them, which was nice).

I'm going to say they got what they deserved after Molina tried to start up some trouble in the first, yelling at both Jason Bay and Daryle Ward, accusing them of stealing signs. Jason Bay seemed to have taken this personally (either that or he knew what pitch was coming) because he more or less singlehandedly kept us in this game today, with a three run dinger in the third (when we were down 3-0) and a game tying solo shot in the ninth to tie things at 4. Jose Castillo finished things off with a solo homer to lead off the 10th, and then Mesa held the lead (of course by putting two people on base with one out, then getting a DP, that's a save Jose Mesa style).

So we got lucky twice in St. Louis, and so what? We won as many games in these four in St. Louis as we did in our previous ten. We're going to Washington, where the Nats are just dying to lose some games, before returning to a more normal schedule. I said before, if we could go 4-3 over the seven in St. Louis and DC, we'd be back on the right track. We're halfway there.

Cardinals 8 Pirates 0

I flipped the game on, saw it was 5-0, and immediately decided I would rather go see Batman Begins than waste my time with the Pirates last night (Batman Begins was very good by the way, blows the other four out of the water, highly recommended, but this is a sports blog, not a movie blog, so I'll stop there). Looking at the boxscore and such, it was pretty much everything I was afraid it would be. Carpenter dominated, but I'm guessing we had something to do with that. How do you strike out 11, give up 4 hits, and only throw 103 pitches in a complete game (with not one walk)? If the other team is helping you out, that's how. From the K's they showed on SportsCenter last night, we did some fishing and chasing. Looks like all that work Gerald Perry did has been forgotten. And I'm not sure what's happening to Mr. Redman, but his handle on the strike zone is disappearing, and that's what's hurting him (last night only 49 strikes in 88 pitches, that's Ollie like). Today is a big one, Perez vs. Marquis. It's a winnable game if Oliver can keep the ball from leaving the park too much, but seeing as how we've give up three homers to Edmonds, two to Molina, two to TAGUCHI, and one to Pujols in the last two days, I'm thinking keeping the ball in the park will be a HUGE problem for Perez today.

If you build it...

Well, how bout that. Moonlight Graham is real. I never gave it much thought, I just always kind of figured he was a creature of Hollywood. Sometimes the best fiction is reality.

Carpenter and Redman

Well, we have two more shots to split this series with the Cards, something that I think would be immeasurably great for this team's confidence. Tonight we're going ace vs. ace as Redman and Carpenter have been both team's best pitchers this year. As good as Redman has been, we need him to bounce back from his last two starts, both which have been bad starts by the standard he set early in the year (the start against the Yankees seemed good, but he gave up 9 hits in 6 and 2/3 and he struggled with the strike zone quite a bit in that game). With a strong outing and a win tonight against NL Manager LaRussa, he might be able to lock up an All-Star berth, without a win tonight I don't think it's happening because I don't see a starter under .500 getting the nod for the All-Star Game. Mark needs to study the Dave Williams tape from Thursday and see if he can mimic what Dave has done against the Cards this year, because he's been effective.

Of course Redman's effectiveness might not matter tonight with Carpenter on the mound. He's been better than both Mulder and Morris this year, and he's finally feeling 100% after battling arm injuries for the last few years. If Suppan dominated us last night, let's just say I'm a bit worried about Carpenter, especially since David Ross will be in the lineup tonight (at least I'm assuming so since Marky Mark will be on the mound). We need a win in one of these next two, but tonight doesn't look good.

Fixing interleague play

It's not very often that I give wide sweeping views of the game of baseball, but this interleague crap is so broken someone needs to fix it. Just look at this weekend in the NL East for example. It's another "Rivalry" weekend, so the Mets and Yankees are playing. The Braves, for no real reason, are playing the Orioles, the Phillies are playing the Red Sox, and the Nationals are playing the Blue Jays. All the games are in NL parks. The Marlins, meanwhile, have to go to Tampa Bay. So while four of the five teams in the division are forced to play teams with records above .500, the Marlins play the Devil Rays, on the road but still in-state. It's like baseball is saying "Here, Florida, make up three games in the division race." Let's not even talk about how teams like our Pirates get neglected during interleague play (a series with the Rockies instead of a big crowd drawing series with the Indians? On the road to Boston AND New York? ). An unbalanced schedule like this simply isn't fair. That's the last thing a sport that already has issues with fairness needs.

Interleague play really only exists anymore for one reason, the Yankees and the Mets. Hell, let's not lie to ourselves, that's the only reason it EVER existed. It's just that the novelty wore off for the rest of the league. Sure, the Pirates can turn the Orioles into 37,000 on a Wednesday night, but you're kidding yourself if you think baseball cares about that, and you're kidding yourself if you think it was anything but the dual bobblehead and the good baseball we were playing that brought in 37,000 that night (we barely broke 20,000 on Tuesday and we didn't break it on Monday with the O's in town, because no one cared the Orioles were here). Sure, baseball puts some other "natural rivalries" together, but Chicago doesn't care about Sox/Cubs, Ohio doesn't care about Indians/Reds, no one cares about Royals/Cardinals or Marlins/D-Rays, etc., etc.

The easiest solution is to fix two of baseball's biggest fairness problems with one fell swoop. First off, get rid of interleague play, now teams in each divion play the same schedules. That leaves maybe the most ridiculous situation in all of sports, the fact that the American League has 14 teams while the NL has 16. Honestly, this has to be a joke. There are three divisions in each league, yet somehow the NL Central has six teams while the East and West have five and the AL West has four teams while the Central and East have five. How can this be an even playing field for all the teams if the divisions and leagues aren't of equal size? This is, of course, because Bud Selig thought that National League baseball belonged in Milwaukee, then didn't bother to rebalance the leagues. So, without interleague play, the solution is simple. The Mets go to the AL East. If the only real motivation for interleague play is Yankees/Mets, put them in the same division. Have them play 20 times a year and battle for a division. Plus, the four huge spenders can be in the same division (Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Orioles) and we can all laugh hysterically when the Blue Jays win that division. So, that leaves the simple question of divisional balance. Move Tampa Bay to Las Vegas and put them in the AL West. Now the AL is fives across the board, and its weakest franchise (maybe baseball's weakest franchise) has been sold and moved. Now we just need to balance the NL. This is easy, really. We're in the Central Division, while teams that we would naturally be rivals with (the Phillies, the Braves, the ex-Expos, current Nationals) are in the East. Most of our division is in the Central Timezone, we're in the Eastern Timezone. We're further east than the Reds. We go to the NL East. Now every division has five teams. Now the leagues each have 15 teams. Now the Mets and Yankees can play 20 times a year. Does it fix everything? No, but it would be a step in the right direction.

UPDATE (8:11 PM): Reader JP brings up my shortsightedness in the comments (odd number of teams in each league) so the comments on this one are now required reading as well.

Cardinals 8 Pirates 1- Round Tripper Kipper

Well, that's more along the lines of what I expected of this series (somehow, this internet going down bug is following me around, I drove home from Pittsburgh this afternoon and the internet was down here, it's like God is following me around, shutting down internet connections, making sure I don't post four times a day or something, I must be on to something). Kip was solid through four, but any time you give up a homer to So Taguchi, chances are you don't have your best stuff. Kind of like our offense, who got two hit by Jeff Suppan through eight innings tonight. Nothing against Jeff Suppan, he's your average middle of the rotation guy, nothing great, nothing awful. The fact he's been on the Cards the last two years has greatly helped his record. He shouldn't two hit anyone through eight innings. The lack of offense kind of leads me to wonder where Doumit is. We were promised we'd see more of him once we got back to the NL. He caught once against Washington and now is in pinch hit mode. A start in right over Lawton or behind the plate over anyone (especially Ross) would be nice, but it looks like Doumit should get ready for some Craig Wilson treatment.

Nothing else really special tonight, once Lanny and Wehner started hinting at the no-hitter Kip had going in the fourth inning I thought to myself, "Well, that seals the loss, the question is, how ugly." Well, it was pretty ugly. Kip started strong, but then he started hanging curveballs and put on the Scarlett Letter, "E" for elevating his pitches. We also chalked up zero extra base hits for the first time all year (I still don't understand how we made it this far, someone needs to recount April, I'm not sure we even had as many extra base hits as we had games in April). Not that it was really that note-worthy that the streak was snapped, the wire write-up doesn't even mention it (at least not at ESPN). Mike Johnston was rudely welcomed back to the Majors tonight, giving up second servings of long ball to both Jim Edmonds (understandable, well, on second thought, maybe not, he does have broken ribs) and So Taguchi. That's right, So Taguchi had two homers coming into tonight and hit two tonight (I will avoid the obvious pun, that our pitching tonight wasn't just bad, it was sooooo taguchi).

Anyways, now that we're mired in our second interleagueless weekend of the year (the more I think about it, the more this whole interleague thing just plain sucks, and not just because we got screwed... I think that's a whole post for tomorrow) and the Cardinals have been reminded that they're the Cardinals things are looking bleak, mostly because we're staring down the barrell at Chris Carpenter, the best pitcher on their staff, tomorrow. A win tonight would have put us in position to somehow steal out a series win, but the L tonight puts us in pretty sad shape.

Back online

Sorry I've been AWOL from posting the last day or so. By now everyone is probably wondering where I am and what's wrong with me. Was I kidnapped by a fundamentalist sect of the Lloyd McClendon Fan Club? Did I get a cease and desist order from Andy Van Slyke himself? Nope, the simple answer is that the Duquesne internet went down yesterday afternoon and just recently got up and running again. So what did we miss?

Well, first off, I was honestly going to post before yesterday's game that I had a good feeling about last night's game for no particular reason. Morris was certainly due for a loss, and we were due for a win against the Cards. The game last night was encouraging. The Cardinals provided us with opportunites and we took them. Sure, we might not have won without the errors they made, but for those with good memories, this is exactly how our hot streak began. We were feeling down about the team, the Marlins were in town, and we were thinking a truly ugly stretch was about to begin. The Marlins handed us a game, and we turned that into two more from them, two from the Braves, two from the O's, two from the D'Rays, and .500. So the Cards gave us a game last night, but we certainly came through. It seemed like every person that came up with runners in scoring position got a hit (except maybe Mackowiak). For once, I looked at a pitcher in the first inning, thought to myself "Man, Morris doesn't have much today, we should pile some runs on," only to see us actually pile runs on. Dave Williams more or less shut down the Cards again, save some late struggles and Pujols' first inning bomb. All good things start with a win, and we certainly won last night (it wasn't as close as 11-7 indicated, and bravo to Lloyd for resisting the urge to bring Mesa in in the 9th, instead bringing out White to shut the door on the budding Cards rally). The Cards are struggling right now, so maybe Kip (who's been good against the Cards recently) and company can throw another win up on the head of Jeff Suppan.

One last thought, who diagnoses pitcher injuries in the Pirates organization? I said over a week ago that Mike Gonzalez didn't seem to have his best stuff and we should be thinking about a DL trip for him. Magically, a week later (after another loss and a couple iffy outings) he goes on the DL with his knee problem. Of course, favoring the knee is what has caused his "dead arm" to this point in the year. My question is, if people sitting at home know when pitchers are injured based on performance, how can the team not know? Same goes for Bobby Bradley. The kid is known to be a control pitcher, suddenly loses his control. We try to talk him out of Steve Blass disease. Now he's on the DL with an arm problem, which may be the source of his control woes. Throw in Burnett, Van Benschoten, maybe Perez (he looked to me on Tuesday as someone that is only capable of rearing back maybe one inning a night instead of 6 or 7 like last year, I'm still not convinced he's 100%) and we have an epidemic on our hands with this team. I know for sure that Burnett's problem was something that "had been bugging him for four years or so." Honestly, how can things like that happen? If the future of this team is pitching, how can we not know the health of our pitchers at all times? How can we let the aggravate injuries instead of nipping them in the bud? Stuff like this drives me nuts.

On the road again

Today in the PG, Lloyd gives some BS excuse as to why he stayed in the dugout in Boston and New York, yet exploded on Tuesday against the Nationals. He also says he won't be skipping Dave Williams, or anyone, to set up the rotation, which is good seeing as how Dave Williams was skipped against the Yankees and ended up being the only starting pitcher that turned in a worthwhile performance all week (OK, Redman did OK before the pen imploded on him).

Meanwhile, Cardnilly has a lengthy preview of this series from the other side of the field.

The more and more we lose, the more important series like this become. Until we lose so much nothing has any meaning at all. I personally am sick of seeing meaningless baseball games, so let's try and get back on the right track.

Picking up the pieces and getting ready for the Cards

So here we stand at the 70 game mark, and we stand pretty disappointed at 32-38. Last year after 70 games we stood at 27-43. We had just finished a terrible stretch of losing 21 out of 25 games cresting at 23-22, the day after the birth of Garrett Mackowiak. This year, we're still mired in a terrible stretch, having lost 8 of 10 since reaching .500 at 30-30. Last year, after dropping the first game to the Reds, we won two more, then faced something similar to what we're facing now, the St. Louis Cardinals (at PNC Park, where they more or less own us, maybe more than they do at Busch). The Cards were 46-29 rolling into that series, they're currently 45-26. They were 5-1 against us prior to that late June series last year, this year they're 5-0 against us. What I'm trying to say is, even with the wins in Cincy the Bucs had dropped 22 of 28 before playing the Cards at almost the same point in the year last year. We swept the Redbirds in that June series, and won 5 more in a row after that. It spurred us on to a roll that got us as close to .500 as 58-61 (meaning we were 31-18 since dropping to 27-43), before bottoming out again. So the question is, is there any hope at all of even splitting this four gamer with St. Louis this weekend? And if so, can this spark a righting of the ship?

Everyone will pitch against the Cards excpet Josh Fogg (at least I'm assuming Fogg since he went today and we don't have an off-day in between). That's curious, as according to retrosheet.org, Fogg only pitched once against the Cards last year (and lost) despite the numerous games we play against them. He's also 0-1 against the Cards this year, so we'll assume there is a reason we make sure Fogg avoids St. Louis (this year we'll say it's his penchant for giving up homers, but he didn't have that last year, only 17 all year, so we'll chalk it up to Jim Edmonds). This means the four best pitchers for us will be going against St. Louis. Trouble is, Kip Wells has been awful lately and awful this whole year against quality opponents, Redman hasn't pitched well on the road (this year or ever) or in his last two starts (he gave up a ton of hits against the Yankees, just not many runs), Perez is still struggling to find his form (showing flashes of it last night but only once or twice recapturing it for a whole game), and Dave Williams is, well, just his usual, solid, but unspectacular self (aka not someone that will single-handedly beat a team like the Cards). Meanwhile we'll see Matt Morris (who at 8-0 is just dying for a loss), Jeff Suppan (imagine Josh Fogg on a good team), Chris Carpenter (very good this year), and probably Marquis (one of those guys with a good record that you aren't sure how good he actually is because he pitches for the Cardinals). We'll miss Mulder, which is good.

We're on the road, but the Cardinals LOVE PNC Park, so that doesn't matter much.

The hitters, well there's no real comparison there. Rolen is back and being eased back into the lineup, so it's tough to tell if he's 100%. Edmonds is having a down year and is still battling a rib problem, which screws with swings a ton, I'd imagine. Other than that, Reggie is having a Reggie year, Albert Pujols is a once in a generation player, and Eckstein is his usual pain in the ass self. Our lineup doesn't really compare to theirs when theirs is clicking, but we were putting up some good numbers until we hit a wall on this last roadtrip (except for last night) and they aren't clicking this year quite like last year (plus, Jason Bay will undoubtedly be the best Canadian on the field, sorry Larry Walker, you're having an awful year).

We're probably a bit better defensively, but then again we're a bit better defensively than everyone, especially if Freddy Sanchez plays third (he's expected back tomorrow or Friday) and Mackowiak plays outfield (where he belongs). So the question is this, can we split? I don't have any delusions of grandeur, I'd like to see a split here and take two of three from the Nats next week to get this hellish month out of the way. And yes, I think we can split, but it all rests on the pitching, simply because for the most part, the Cards pitching isn't overwhelmingly good, well, maybe Carpenter and Morris this year (but they're both very human), and we'll get our runs against them. The Cards have won 13 in a row against us and Matt Morris is 8-0 this year. Both of those streaks will end eventually, and I'm saying the odds are in our favor tomorrow (plus Dave Williams was great against Boston, an equally formidable lineup with a DH no less). That leaves two other possible wins in the series, Kip Wells vs. Jeff Suppan and Oliver Perez vs. Jason Marquis. Both can be advantage us, if the right Kip and Ollie show up. The schedule lightens up a bit after that with the Brewers, Phillies, and Mets (I don't think any of the NL East teams are anything to be afraid of this year). The key is to stop this slide we're on right now from turning into the slide we had last year. That has to start now, because we've lost 8 of ten. If we lose 6 of these next 7 (four in St. Louis and two in Washington, aka what everyone expects of us) we've lost 14 of 17 and it'll be time to hit the panic button. If we can salvage 4 of 7 (two in St. Louis and two in Washington, best case scenario, yes, but also a possibility) I think we'll be back on the right track. Anything in between, well, I'm not sure what that means.

Nationals 5 Pirates 4

I didn't have a chance for any radio or computer access today until right now, so pretty much all I have to go on for this game is the score and the wire recap, that is not much. I'm disappointed by the loss, I really thought we were good enough to take two from the Nationals at home. I'm always disappointed to see Jose Guillen doing well against us because we were really blind when it comes to him (Guillen and Randa both fall into the "Whyyyyyy?" category, I mean Guillen was 20 years old, never played above A ball, and we thought he was immature... gee I wonder why, nice work Cam). Bobby Hill had two hits and got on base four times last night, so of course it makes perfect sense to put Tike back in the outfield today. From the boxscore I see he got on base once and scored on Bay's first inning homer. I can't comment on his play in the field because I really have nothing to go on. Fogg pitched his typical Fogg game, kept us close as usual, only to have the bullpen lose the game. In his last 8 starts he's 1-1, but the team is 1-7. This was not what we needed in this series, because these four games in St. Louie this weekend are looking uglier and uglier.

Pirates 11 Nationals 4- A lead Mesa can hold (from 332)

Well, that was nice to see. We jumped on Drese early and actually for once kept pouring the runs on for once. In a stunning development, Bobby Hill started at third base tonight, and got on base four times. I stopped lobbying for playing time for Hill months ago, simply because I never thought it would come. I winced in pain watching Tike play center and Mackowiak on third, wondering if Hill would ever see the light of day again. He finally did today, and he responded well. He started rallies in both the first and third innings. Matt Lawton also figured out a way to stop getting thrown out on the bases, just hit it out of the park. He had five ribbies tonight, for the second time this year. Perez didn't pitch well but flashes of the old Ollie came back, especially in fourth. He let the first two runners on, then went strike out, sac bunt, strike out, topping out at 96 on the final K of the inning. He was so pumped he forgot to jump over the line on the way off the field.

Other ballpark observations from tonight:
Jamey Carroll is a scary looking person. Don't leave your kids unattended around this guy.

One time, a guy named Johnny Dickshot played for the Pirates (and wore #17, or #2, I don't remember). His middle name is Oscar, and his nickname was (among all things) "Ugly".

The crowd was excited tonight. They stood up for Mesa with two outs in the 9th (for some reason Mesa saved his A game for a 7 run lead, I really don't like that guy). It was a really good crowd for a Tuesday.

Lloyd finally blew his top, getting tossed for arguing a call at the plate concerning Bobby Hill and a sac fly. They didn't show the replay on the Jumbotron, but reports from home said Hill was indeed out. But it's about time Lloyd lost it, I've been waiting for this for a week now. He even kicked dirt all over the plate, a la Lou Pinella, and on the night that his stealing first base was celebrated as the second great PNC Park moment ever! We really need to create some memories to back up Mackowiak's day from last year, the top three PNC moments (as voted by the fans) were Opening Day, the day Mac stole first, and the Mackowiak double-header.

All in all a good win, but a win tomorrow would be better to get some momentum before running into our whammy team, the Cards.

Pirates and Nats, round 2

Time for round two in this mini, yet immensely important, homestand. Tonight it's Ryan Drese and Oliver Perez, (should be) another favorable pitching matchup for us, though Drese was good in his first start for the Nationals while Perez got knocked around by the Yankees in his last outing. Perez wasn't as bad as the numbers indicated. Though he had no control, he still would've only given up 3 runs in that start if it wasn't for the atrocious outfield play of Michael Restovich. Hopefully some warm, dry weather here in the 'Burgh will be just what the doctor ordered for Ollie. I still think we can win this series, but Perez needs to beware of Jose Guillen. Yesterday he was identified as the biggest threat to lefthanded pitching, then he promptly went out and hit two homers off Mark Redman (who had only allowed five all year going into last night). Perez has shown a penchant for giving up the longball so if you have bleacher seats tonight, be ready. We lost the first game to both the Orioles and Braves, and still took both series. We need to do that now.

Brian O'Neill (aka the Stats Geek) thinks that maybe a simple twist of fate is all this team needs, and that we're simply unlucky to this point in the year. I think you make your own luck, though this team has certainly failed to get many breaks this year from fate.

I'm going tonight (like I need a reason to go, but tickets are free from work for even more incentive), and if I have time, I'll be there in my doctored Kendall/Van Slyke shirt, as per an earlier discussion.

Nationals 7 Pirates 4

As Lanny said post-game, not as close as the score indicated. Mark Redman "elevated" the ball (according to Steve Blass) and we were never in this one. We hit Hernandez hard and often, but instead of following hits with more hits, we generally followed them with double plays. We also played more terrible outfield (Tike repeated his mistake from yesterday by chasing a ball to the wall and letting it bounce over his head, Matt Lawton misplayed ANOTHER ball into a triple while we were trying to hold the deficit at 6-4 and stay in the game). As I mentioned earlier, I find it very interesting that every time Freddy Sanchez gets a few starts in a row and just seems to be heating up, he comes down with some minor "injury" that magically gets Tike Redman a start. And when I say I find it interesting, I mean that it's ridiculous. Maybe I'm reading into things too much, but I don't know. We sat Doumit tonight. He's definitely going to get the Craig Wilson treatment for the next couple years. Ryan, I hope you like playing out of position and pinch hitting even though you're crushing the ball.

Watching the Nationals, they're the team we should be. They do the little things right and they get solid pitching from the people they expect to get solid pitching from. They aren't overly talented and they probably won't win their division, but they'll finish .500, which is a lot more than people expected of them to start the year. That doesn't mean I don't think we're good enough to take two of three from them, because we are. This team is falling back into the same funk we did last June, and if we don't get two wins here against the Nats, I'm pretty sure there aren't many coming this weekend in St. Louie.

The list grows

Add Mark Redman to the list with Kip Wells and Oliver Perez. This is now the fourth time in the last week we've needed a good start from one of our three best pitchers and been rewarded with pure dogcrap. Way to step up, guys.

Lanny and Steve

There's a baseball game going on, but you'd never know it by listening to the TV broadcast. Lanny and Steve are letting some old conductor guy who sounds like he was in Led Zeppelin (Robert Page or Jimmy Plant, I don't remember his name) drone on about God knows what, while the game continues in the background. Not even a "And Matt Lawton draws a walk" or a "Tike Redman hits into a life-sapping double play" or "Jason Bay flies out and the inning is over," nope, just an old guy droning on about something that isn't baseball related at all.

Rough Start

Mark Redman is off to a rough start tonight, giving up three runs through two, but some refreshingly smart play by the D has kept it from being more (especially after watching Tike make the same mistake on a flyball he did yesterday to go with letting Nick Johnson stretch a single into a double... isn't it funny how once a week Freddy Sanchez comes up with an "injury" that allows Tike to play?). That's right, we turned the old 2-4-3-4-2 strike em out, run em back, throw em out double play with runners on first. Now we need to get the runs back.

More on Washington

I've already said once today I think we should beat Washington. They're very similar to the 1997 Pirates, though they are on a hotter streak than that '97 team ever saw (that team never got anywhere near 11 games over). In effect, they're playing way over their heads and their division is playing down to them for the time being, thus, in late June they find themselves holding down first place in a division most of the free world thinks they have no real chance in. But for this week, at least, we get them on the road where they aren't playing very well. Tonight's matchup is the marquee matchup of the series, at least pitching-wise, with Livian Hernandez and Mark Redman going. Hernandez to this point has been the anti-Redman, that is he's pitching right along with how he's been pitching the last few years but getting enough run support to be 9-2 right now. Redman is having a career year, but no run support and is only 4-4. This matchup, however, is a favorable one for us because as Charlie at the Bucsdugout points out, Guillen is the only right handed threat in Washington's lineup right now. Meanwhile, as good as Hernandez has been, he's still right handed, which is always a favorable thing for us. Hopefully, as Dejan and the rest of the free world are pleading, Doumit will continue to get ABs, despite our return to the world of natural, DH-free baseball.

Quick Pirates/Nats Hits

Just some quick initial impressions on the Pirates/Nats series (with a little more detail when I get back from work this afternoon).

The Nats are 40-29, but playing waaay over their heads, more so than Brian Roberts and Rob Mackowiak combined.

The Nats have scored 281 runs and given up 286. That's two runs more on offense than our 279 and 6 less than our 292 given up on the flipside. The Nats are no better than a .500 team.

The Nats are 16-20 away from DC, we just won 9 of 13 on our last homestand.

Bottom line: I will be disappointed with less than 2 wins in this series.

It continues

We have finally stopped complaining about "The Call" on Wednesday night. Skip Bayless, however, is still whining. He makes some good points, but I really dislike Skip Bayless. He's like a national version of Ron Cook.

The Award goes to...

Well, in a week like this us Pirate fans have been let down a bit, but the person that let us down the most this week stands out head and shoulders above everyone else. Not Lloyd McClendon. Not slumping Rob Mackowiak, Matt Lawton, or Jack Wilson. Not Michael Restovich (though he tried). Not Oliver Perez (he was let down more by Restovich than anyone). Not even Tony Randatto. The spotlight is on one person, and that person is Kip Wells.

On Tuesday the hitters were starstruck. People rave about Mussina's outing on Tuesday, but we made him look great. We chased pitches all night, we were clearly intimidated by Yankees stadium. We needed an outing by Kip, the veteran member of our rotation (he's been here longer than anyone else but Fogg, and he's more capable of dominating a game than Fogg), to keep us in the game. We got 4 2/3 innings and 7 runs (6 earned). Sure, we got shut out, but it's harder to care when you're down 7-0 in the 5th inning and you're already starstruck by Yankee Stadium. We needed a strong start for the trip, we got crushed. Today we had a chance to salvage the wreckage of this trip by winning a series against the Sox. We shut them out last night and needed a strong start from Kip to keep things rolling. He didn't cover first and we ended up giving up 5 runs in an inning we should've given up one as a direct result. Final line for Kip: 3 innings, 7 runs, 6 earned. In a week where we needed two big starts from Kip he gave us a grand whopping total of 7 2/3 innings and an astronomical ERA of 14.09. That's not a typo. It's hard to say how much better this week turns out with two good starts from Kip, but I'm guessing we win more than once. A lot of people let down us Pirates fans this week, but no one more so than Kip Wells.

Red Sox 8 Pirates 0- Disgusting

Well, it's appropriate to end this nightmarish road trip with a bookend shutout to go with the 9-0 plastering we got on Tuesday. I didn't see a lot of today's game, but I did turn in for the abomination of the third inning. I saw David Ortiz hit a triple, then score on a sac fly. I saw Kip Wells fail to cover first on a grounder to Ward, but the real disgrace was Tike giving Ortiz the triple. Jason Bay took extra fly balls off the Monster on Friday and seemed to do a fairly good job in the series of playing balls off the wall, so where were Tike and Matt Lawton during that session? They definitely failed to learn the quirks of Fenway that they needed to know for this series. Today Tike chased a ball ripped by Ortiz to the fence, forgetting that the fence was some 15 feet high in center at Fenway, watching the ball ricochet off the wall over his head and fly behind him, turning a ball hit by possibly the slowest man alive into a triple. The fact that somehow Jason Bay couldn't throw Ortiz out at the plate on a flyball at the next batter didn't help things. Just a very disheartening end to a disheartening week.

Pirates 2 Sox 0

Well, that was a pleasant surprise. I really didn't think any Pirate pitchers would shut out the Red Sox in this series, especially not Dave Williams, Rick White, and Jose Mesa. Dave Williams joins the Mark Redman "I pitched like that and I can't even get a win" club. Then again for most of his six innings he used a combination of smoke, mirrors, magic, and who knows what else to keep the Sox off the board. In his six innings he gave up 5 hits and 4 walks, but the Red Sox stranded everyone. That everyone includes David Ortiz who, in a culmination of all of the bad calls that have gone against us, reached base last night on the single worst call I have ever seen an umpire make. He tried to check his swing on a 3-2 pitch, and in doing so spun all the way around in the batters box so that he was just about facing the home plate umpire. Cota fired the ball around the horn. Williams slapped his glove. Unfortunately home plate ump Jerry Crawford decided to ask third base ump Ed Rapuano for an appeal, and Rapuano said no swing. An amazingly awful call. I was sure Lloyd was going to come out, stand up for the way his players have been treated this week, and throw the tantrum to end all tantrums, getting himself tossed and maybe suspended. And instead, he came out, chatted with Dave Williams, and had a nice laugh with Jerry Crawford on the way back to the dugout. Everyone talked about the wonderful new Lloyd McClendon and maybe Lloyd knows something I don't know, but there are certain times and places where a manager needs to go out, throw a fit, and get tossed to prove to his players he's standing up for them. Yesterday was one of them, and instead Lloyd was cracking jokes with the homeplate ump after one of the worst calls I've ever seen going against us, and the third bad call in four games against us. Apparently the players didn't mind because they still won, but if it happens again today and Lloyd doesn't get tossed, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

Well, we could've (should've?) beat the Sox in one game in this series, and we did beat them last night. Maybe Kip Wells and co. have something akin to the Mother's Day surprise in stock for the Sox on Dad's Day today. Taking two out of three might be enough to keep our heads afloat for the Nats at home, the Cards (with Rolen back) and Nats on the road. And once we get through June, things should start looking up, at least schedule wise. Today is a big game and hopefully Kip brings his A-game and not whatever level game it was he brought to Yankee Stadium on Tuesday.

Today's PG roundup

More good stuff from Collier today, he has more insight about the team than anyone at the PG than maybe the Stats Geek, but I think he routinely gets ignored because he's viewed as more of a humor sports writer than an actual sportswriter.

I meant to post this yesterday when I saw it, but might as well do it now. Lelands.com has taken the items from Roberto's plane out of their auction. We can sleep easy.

Dave Williams tonight, hopefully he grew the chops back because we need some magic. Any win at all in this series would be great. Maybe they'll win it for the Bays, who are in town to watch their son play some baseball. And he'll be playing well since we're on the road and he plays well on the road. Look for one over the monster for daddy this Father's Day weekend from Jason.

Won't be much posting today, my brother's graduation party is this afternoon, but I'll be back later with more about the game.

Red Sox 6 Pirates 5

Well, that one was pretty tough to watch. Tonight we got hosed by a terrible umpire, CB Bucknor (remember the guy that threw Pujols out for no reason a couple weeks ago? Yep, same guy), on a call at second base that cost us a run. I'm more upset about this one because I don't really feel like there was much else the team could've done tonight to win this game. Oh wait, there is one thing. Matt Lawton has played in the American League for his entire career prior to tonight, yet repeatedly chased balls into the corner that he had no chance on in right field tonight, playing two of them into triples. He also failed to appear on Millar's pop-up in the 9th which harmlessly dropped foul, setting the stage for his double, Varitek's bunt, and the subsequently the end of the game. I also kind of question bringing in Gonzalez to pitch to Damon, after all he has a "dead" arm right now, and I tend to think people with "dead" arms should be on the DL, or at least resting, instead of on the mound in game deciding situations, but that's just me. Fogg gave up some runs tonight, but kept us in the game which is no small feat against the Sox. He came back strong after a weak start, so I don't have any complaints about Fogg. A win would be nice anytime soon. I'm starting to forget what those feel like.

Meltdown

I feel like our season is the Springfield Power Plant with an overheating core and the only person that can stop a meltdown is Homer Simpson. Or in our case Josh Fogg. We need one of those vintage Fogg moments, like when he beat Randy Johnson last year, where he gets about 18 groundouts to go with a handful of Ks and strike outs. We need the offense to whup on Miller and get to the Sox pen. We need to not be afraid of Fenway Park. We need a lot of things, and right now it seems like it's gonna take a miracle to get them, so cross your fingers because right now chances look good that we could go from entering last Sunday at 30-30 to leaving this Sunday 30-37.

Excuses excuses

I'm sick of it. The umpire made the wrong call, it happens. What Tony Randazzo didn't do was give up 5 runs after the 8th inning with a 3 run lead. He didn't give up the game tying run even though he had two outs with only a runner on first. Mike Gonzalez, Rick White, and Mesa took care of those things. He didn't give up three extra base hits to Giambi who only had 7 on the whole season coming in, Kip, Mesa, and Ollie took care of that. He didn't walk .232 hitting Bernie Williams 5 times in three days. He didn't miss two routine fly balls in the outfield. The series is over. We played like crap, and it's not Tony Randazzo's fault, it's our fault. Would we have won on Wednesday with his call? Sure, but we still should've won without it. Look at this crap we're now churning out in our pregame media notes:

Pittsburgh's defensive unit has turned 17 double plays in the past eight games. ... It would have been 18 had the first-base umpire made the correct call last night.

That isn't going to help us win more baseball games, in fact it will probably go further in the opposite way, ensuring that we don't recieve anything that remotely looks like help from the umpires. I don't care if the umpires admitted it was the wrong call. Let it go. The Braves didn't moan like this when we got a call against them two weeks ago (and it looked to me on that play that Julio Franco was safe by a larger margin than Sheffield was out and with the way Mesa has been pitching, the Braves would have almost certainly won that game). The bottom line is that the Pirates made me sick this week with their "effort" against the Yankees, but this senseless whining is making things even worse.

Yankees 6 Pirates 1- The wrapup

This is coming a little late, but I had to recover from the torture that I subjected myself to earlier. If you aren't planning on reading that voluminous post (and I don't blame you, it's probably as painful to read as it was to write) let's summarize:

• I hate Michael Restovich. A lot. He's an awful excuse for a baseball player.
• Lloyd has lost faith in his players saying they're "just not good enough to take two from the Yankees". I have a lot of problems with this statement. First off, Lloyd is not manager because he knows how to handle players and strategize a game. He's simply not good at it. He tries to make up for this by being a good motivator and making sure his players never quit. Comments like "we're not good enough to take two from the Yankees" after a loss facing the prospect of Randy Johnson the next day is not a motivational statement, and it's not likely it caused anyone to play harder today. I don't care if it's the truth or not (which it most definitely is not the truth, they are NOT that much better than us), if that's how Lloyd really feels, then it's absolutely time to show him the door. Your manager cannot go around saying things like that. You can try and argue with me on this, but I've made my mind up (Rory thinks that maybe it was taken out of context, if it is, I want an explanation).
  
• Randy Johnson was dominating tonight, as as observed by Bob Walk, is actually pitching (changing speeds and locations) more than he ever has in the past, though his velocity is down a couple mph.
• Perez came into the game a little jumpy, was immediately penalized for it, and never settled down. He just had no clue where the ball was going when he let go of it. Throw in terrible defense behind him and you have the recipe for a bad loss.
• The plan to stack the rotation for this Yankees series has terribly backfired, like I secretly feared it might. I love Josh Fogg, but the prospect of him and Dave Williams followed by Kip going against the Sox has "sweep" all over it. Simply, Fogg and Williams are great if you're playing well behind them because they can keep you in games. If the team is in a funk, however, you're going to be in trouble with two on the mound.
• Despite getting destroyed with little hope of comeback against Johnson, Lloyd used three relievers tonight. The only reliever not used in the last two games is Meadows. Fogg followed by Meadows against the Red Sox has 13-0 written all over it.
• All that hope and excitement about the team I felt last week is gone. We're playing good teams for the rest of the month, and after Sunday, they're all in first place (one of whom we can't beat to save our lives, the Cardinals). Remember losing 21 of 25 last year? I'm bracing myself for that feeling again.
  

The matchup of the year (revised title, I hate Restovich)

Yep, I'm gonna do it. Despite having my heart ripped out last night, I'm gonna keep a running journal through the game because games like tonight simply don't come around often. I'll update this post every half inning with my thoughts for as long as the game holds my interest. If anyone wants to comment, I'll try and keep my eye on the comments too. Stay tuned...

Pregame (lineups and such)- I can live with the lineup tonight, except Restovich, that guy is a waste of life. Three lefties against Johnson would be a little risky though. Maybe Restovich will finally be worth something, but I doubt it.

Top 1- FSP has a new little score graphic at the top, it's a bit sleeker than the old one. I like it. Three pitches and Freddy's gone. Three more, Lawton's gone. That's right, six pitches, six strikes (four swinging). Bay ends the streak with an 0-1 single and is 11 for his last 20. The Yankees look like they got a call on Doumit's check swing strike three. Johnson's line after one inning: 12 pitches, all strikes, 3 Ks, 1 hit. I didn't see pitch speeds, but I'm not sure I'd trust em tonight anyways because the gun is gonna be hot for Ollie and Randy.

Bottom 1- Restovich sucks. He falls over on the warning track on Jeter's would be fly out, turning it into a book rule double. They show a close up, he is definitely an ex-roid abuser, he just doesn't look natural. I hate Restovich, see earlier "waste of life" comment. Matsui crushes pitch #3 on the night into the stands in right center. 2-0 Yankees after three pitches, I have a bad feeling about this. Sheffield pops up to Cota, an out! Hey, I remember those. Ollie K's A-Rod and Sierra for a nice recovery. Eighteen pitches through one, not a good start. 2-0 Yankees.

Top 2- They're showing the quote of the night, Lloyd thinks we aren't good enough to beat the Yankees twice. He should be fired for that comment. If Lloyd doesn't believe we can win every game I don't know what he's here for. Not his strategy, that's for sure. As proof of Lloyd's terrible strategy, Restovich opens the inning with a K (I typed that before he actually struck out, I hate Restovich). Daryle Ward assures that Randy Johnson won't get 27 Ks tonight by popping out to second. Castillo grounds out to Johnson, who through two innings has 4 Ks and has thrown only 24 pitches, 21 strikes.

Bottom 2- Ollie walks Bernie Williams. We're afraid of him like it's 1998 or something, we've been walking him all series. Ollie is missing his spots badly, and some of his fastballs are coming across at 89, that's not good. Giambi drives the ball into the Adidas gap in right center, Williams hobbles around the bases and scores from first. That probably shouldn't happen. Lloyd comes out of the dugout, presumably to tell Ollie he just isn't good enough to win tonight, oh well, not like Ollie understands him anyways. Somehow a little flare by Flaherty falls foul between Castillo, Ward, and Lawton. Inexcusable. He then hits a laser that Freddy snares with cat-like reflexes. Robinson Cano sneaks a single out into center, Giambi scores from second. Our outfield is pathetic that we can't keep Williams from scoring from first on a double or Giambi from scoring from second on a single. Jeter fouls off about 100 pitches before striking out. Ollie is clearly afraid of Matsui and walks him. Sheffield pops out. 4-0 Yankees, with the way Johnson looks tonight, that should be enough.

Top 3- Cota grounds out, Jack sneaks on with a bunt single. With the top of the order up, maybe it's time to get something going. Sanchez disagrees and flies out. Lawton is with Freddy on this one, and pops out to end the inning.

Bottom 3- A-Rod grounds out, Sierra grounds out, Bernie Williams flies out, no more damage done. Ollie seems to have settled down, so let's get him some runs.

Top 4- Bay, flyout. Doumit, groundout. Restovich, home run. Wait, is that a typo? Restovich takes the run off the board that he put there in the first inning by misplaying Jeter's hit. Guess what? I still hate Restovich. Ward strikes out on three pitches, flailing at strike three nowhere near the strike zone. Yankees 4 Pirates 1.

Bottom 4- Ollie beans Giambi to lead off the inning, but it wasn't even a good one (it barely nipped his jersey). Ollie, if you're gonna go after someone like Giambi make sure you get him between the numbers or right in the noggin. Ollie K's Flaherty, which is what you expect him to do. Robinson Cano singles over Jack's glove. Bob Walk is impressed by Cano's six hits in the series. I say that doesn't mean he doesn't have a funny name (Can-o, not Cane-o like you'd expect, then throw in the first name Robinson and you have yourself a funny name, but he's still killing us this series). Jeter walks and the bases are loaded. If we get out of this without giving up runs, it's a miracle. Bob Walk observes that Ollie has no idea where the ball is going when it leaves his hand. Matsui pops up, halfway to a miracle. Restovich then can't get to Sheffield's bloop down the line and has misplayed another ball into a book rule double. He's given them 3 runs tonight (and counting) while accounting for one for us. This is why I still hate Restovich after that homer. A-Rod is walked intentionally. Vogelsong is up in the pen, poor guy (he pitches like once every two weeks and it's always in mop-up duty, no wonder his ERA is so high, he hasn't pitched a meaningful game in weeks, hard to get excited). Sierra pops up to Cota, but the damage is done (by Restovich). Yankees 6 Pirates 1

Top 5- I'm upset there's so much more ink under the headings that say "Bottom" at the top (which is why this post went here, instead of under the Bottom of the 4th when I realized it). Castillo flies out to center. Bob Walk is happy we're at least making regular contact off Johnson after his first four outs were all K's. Here's to small victories (in the middle of big losses). Cota made an out. I wasn't really paying attention. I think it was on the ground. Jack strikes out on a nasty slider that breaks in on him. Johnson is really cruising (8 pitches that inning, 58 through 5).

Bottom 5- Bernie Williams flies out to Lawton, confirming that it is indeed 2005 and not 1998, thus making our fear of him (at least three walks I can think of off the top of my head in this series) even more baffling. Giambi walks. The chops don't work for Ollie like they do for Dave Williams, apparently. McClatchy is in the crowd tonight, looking ridiculous with a stupid visor on and smiling for some reason. Lanny makes a good point that will make me stop bitching about the interleague schedule, Major League Baseball did us a huge favor giving us the '06 All-Star Game only 12 years after our last game. Jeff Flaherty lines a single into the outfield. Any regular left fielder would've thrown Giambi out on his attempt to take third, but Restovich forgot how to throw a ball and dropped it. Giambi safe at third, Flaherty into second. I hate Restovich. Castillo throws Giambi out at the plate on Cano's grounder, Cota makes a great tag. Jeter strikes out to avoid us the horror of Restovich costing us more runs. I still hate him. Still 6-1.

Top 6- Jeter makes an error on Sanchez's grounder. That makes me smile because I really dislike Jeter and think he might be the most overrated player in the game. Lawton strikes out looking on some kind of hanging pitch. Bay flies out to Sheffield on the track in right, who looks like Tike Redman in his twisting attempt to catch a routine fly ball. Doumit strikes out looking. I like the way the kid swings the bat, but it strikes me that it is a ton to ask of someone that's been in the majors for only about two weeks to be batting him cleanup as regularly as we have, but especially tonight against Randy Johnson.

Bottom 6- Vogelsong's in and gets Matsui to ground out to Ward. He then gets Sheffield and A-Rod to both hit routine flyballs to left (which are surprisingly caught by Restovich). I like Vogelsong a lot and think he's gotten a raw deal thus far in Pittsburgh, but that's a whole other post.

Top 7- Bob Walk says Johnson was shocked and upset by Restovich's homer. I would've been too. Restovich strikes out. He sucks. I hate Restovich. Ward singles under Giambi's glove. This is a good indication that it would be an out 9 out of 10 times, but we'll take it. Castillo strikes out looking on a nice looking pitch, but that doesn't stop him from being surprised. Cota grounds out to A-Rod. Still 6-1, but hey, at least it's been the same score for a while.

Bottom 7- Grabow is in, get's Sierra to fly out to center. Bernie Williams hits a fly ball to left center and Restovich manages to run, chew gum, AND catch the ball all at once. This is like watching a toddler learn to walk. I feel so proud. Giambi flies out to Lawton, giving one putout each to our outfielders for the inning.

Top 8- Jack Wilson grounds out to second. Bob Walk notes that he's "only" throwing 93 or 94 instead of his usual 96ish, but is doing a much better job of actually pitching than he ever has in the past. Freddy lines out to A-Rod at third, Lawton grounds out to first, inning over.

Bottom 8- Torres is in. Lloyd is making sure that everyone in the bullpen will have pitched over the last two days so that no one is ready tomorrow with Josh Fogg on the mound. Well, except Meadows, so get ready for some Meadows action tomorrow night. Flaherty singles through the hole and now the guy with the funny name is up. He hits into a 4-6-3 DP. Jeter singles up the middle, his second hit. Matsui grounds out. I'm struggling to keep paying attention, but I've made it this far. Must finish...

Top 9- A-Rod robs Bay of a hit. Doumit flies out. I'm emotionally scarred from doing this tonight after that loss last night, but I'm going to make it, dammit! Restovich is probably going to stike out to end things here. Nope, picks up a looping single. My vision is blurred. My words are running together. Randy Johnson balks, he's pissed, people are booing. I honestly don't know why a balk is called with 2 outs and 2 strikes in a 5 run game in the top of the 9th. If we come back and win, I'll reevaluate that statement. Nope, Ward strikes out, game over. Final score Yankees 3 Pirates 0, oh wait, that's without Restovich. Real final (you know, the one that counts) Yankees 6 Pirates 1.

Ollie and Randy

It's pretty simple, really. We need to bounce back. We can't fall apart and get crushed like the Orioles did after we took a similar game from them last week. We can't go into Boston on a four game losing streak with Fogg, Williams, and Wells slated to start. We need Ollie. We've beat Randy Johnson before, in fact we beat him last year off Jack Wilson and Jason Bay's back to back 8th (I think, I was there but the game flew by so fast I don't really remember) inning homers in one of the fastest and best pitcher's duels of the year. That's what we need tonight, we need a dominating performance from Oliver Perez. He's certainly capable, last September he single handedly stopped the streaking Astros by striking out 14 in a 3-1 win. I don't think these Yankees are any match for those Astros that got hot late last year. This might be the most important game of the year and the bullpen can't be trusted, so it's all on Ollie's shoulders. Let's hope they aren't stiff.

Dreary

Pretty dreary day here in the 'Burgh. The weather is ugly, and well, let's just say I'm not in a good mood. Lots of people are anticipating the pitching matchup tonight, Dejan certainly is, and so is ESPN's Alan Schwarz. I'm not getting my hopes up, probably not ever again, but I'll say this. If Ollie is going to turn into the ace we all hope he can be, tonight would be a great place to start. Of course he better throw a complete game because I'm not sure our bullpen could hold a 10 run lead right now. I have my own theories on who should close, but it's so ridiculously outlandish I think I'll save it for later. I have to get back to work, I'll be back with more later.

Yankees 7 Pirates 5

If I ever see Jose Mesa on the mound again in black and gold, I will vomit.

UPDATE (10:44 PM): I am absolutely speechless. Giambi has absolutely no power left after going off the roids. He had four home runs coming into tonights game, less than TY WIGGINTON. You know, that guy we sent down to AAA and celebrated when it happened. Last night he hit a ball as well as he had all year, and it couldn't make it over the center field fence, yet tonight he hits a tape measure shot off Mesa. This charade needs to end, I don't care who closes and I don't even know who will, Gonzalez has been poor in key situations lately too, but it's time for someone else to get a shot. The man is 39 years old. We are gaining nothing from watching him blow every tough situation he's brought into. Right now I want to break something, or maybe just vomit all over my keyboard, or maybe just cry myself to sleep. I let them get my hopes up again and nothing is different.

ANOTHER UPDATE (12:21 AM): OK, saw the replay on Baseball Tonight of the play at first. Looked like Sheff was out, but that doesn't change my complaints (and if you are the Pittsburgh Pirates and you need to rely on getting calls in Yankee Stadium to win, you might as well just give up because the game is already over, we didn't get the call but the game still should've been won). As a premier closer (you know what, screw premier, as a CLOSER in general), you shouldn't be walking Bernie Williams. The guy is ancient (and three years younger than Mesa, think about that) and hitting .236. You shouldn't be giving up game tying doubles to Jorge Posada (hitting only .263 against righties this year), and you most certainly, most definitely, should not ever give up a monster Ruthian home run to the juiceless Giambi. THE GUY ONLY HAS 9 EXTRA BASE HITS AND WE'RE HALFWAY THROUGH JUNE.

Two observations

First observation: The last three games Mesa has entered against good teams with the top or middle of their order up, he's blown the save (he saved one run games against the Marlins and O's against the bottom of their orders). If your closer can't get the best hitters on the other team out, he's not closing and it's time to find someone else to do his job.

Second observation: A-Rod is a bitch. That's all there is to it. That play at the plate was just like the play at first base with Arroyo last year, he didn't slide, he didn't even try the Wigginton Smash, he just shoved Ross trying to knock the ball loose. It wasn't hustle, it wasn't effort, it was a cheap shot. I would use another word to describe him if I had one in an attempt to keep things more family friendly here, but I don't. He's a bitch.

UPDATE (10:25 PM): Mesa's back out for the tenth. I'm guaranteeing a loss here. You can put this one in the books

Back to the checklist

Well, that last point on the checklist below is sticking a little. Gonzalez and White had some trouble in the 8th, and now Pirate Nation is clinging to the edge of our seats with the prospect of Mesa coming into the game with a one run lead against the top of the Yankees lineup. I'm not feeling optimistic, so let's pile some runs on. Great, Rivera's in.

The Checklist

Knock Brown out early (OK, back spasms, we'll take it).... check
Scrap out some runs from all parts of the lineup.... check
Solid outing from Mark Redman.... check (so far)
Strong finish by the bullpen... TBA, but we'll see with 92 from Redman through six

So far so good, this is a lot more along the lines of what we need to do to beat the Yankees. Nice to see Sanchez's bat come alive with three hits so far, and getting hits and RBIs from all parts of the lineup is nice to see. Matsui just led off the seventh with a double though, so I think we're gonna see some bullpen action real soon here.

Concrete

I've kind of been posting in abstracts lately about this Pirates and Yankees series because, well, there's not much else to do after last night. I feel like we aren't as bad as we played last night and that we can play with the Yankees, it's just that with results like last night, there's not much to back me up. Hopefully Mark Redman and co. will give me some ground to stand on. Tonight's lineup (from ESPN.com):

1. Lawton, RF
2. Sanchez, 3B
3. Bay, LF
4. Mackowiak, CF
5. Doumit, DH
6. Ward, 1B
7. Castillo, 2B
8. Wilson, SS
9. Ross, C