The Duke

For some reason, the Pirates are excited about the prospects of drawing 20,000 people to a Thursday night game with our former cross-state rival. I don't get it, we had 19,961 last night to watch struggling Mark Redman and Vincente Padilla, so Zach Duke's home debut is going to draw out an extra 39 people on a Thursday, a day when I'd think you would expect more people at a baseball game than Wednesday? Either someone's facts got mixed up or Dejan should have thought things through a little better before he wrote that article.

OK, putting that aside, yes, Zach Duke is one of the few Pirate-related things worth getting excited for at the moment. In his first start he made a great mid-game adjustment after giving up 3 runs the second time through the Brewers order and shut them down the third time through, ending his big league debut with his 7th, 8th, and 9th strikeouts of the game. The Phillies, however, will be the only NL team to have actually SEEN Duke in person that he'll have to face for some time (unless the schedule brings him to the Brewers again). He pitched well against them in his only big-league start this year in Spring Training. Should be interesting, or at the very least it's worth watching.