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.