Quite a start

With ESPN droning on the background tonight, I heard the name Jeremy Hermida come up. I popped my head into the living room to see his at-bat, knowing he was the guy we were holding out for when the Marlins were interested in Mark Redman. Anyways, he came up to the plate in his first major league at bat with the bases loaded. He swung and missed at one pitch, took another, then WHAAAAAMY! Yep, for the first time in 107 years someone debuted with a salami in their first at-bat. The revelance? This kid is definitely worth waaay more than Mark Redman. What were we thinking?

Jumpin' Jack

Charlie's got a looong post about Jack Wilson and his offensive failings. It's true, stats don't lie. I'm still hesitant to give up on Jack just yet for next year. As Charlie points out, he's been above his career OPS since the end of April (.678 compared to .667). Of course that still isn't too impressive compared to his .794 from last year. The reason I say don't give up quite yet is that he was generally a good hitter in the minors. We probably won't see a year like last year again, but I still think he's capable of putting up offensive numbers that are justifiable when you take his glove into account. I'll admit, this may just be blind faith, but I sure hope not.

Some radical thoughts

Recent events have caused two thoughts to crop up in my head. They're recurring thoughts, I've posted a little bit about them in the past, more or less in a passing manner. They get their own post now. These are probably things that you'll think I'm crazy for thinking, let alone posting for public consumption, but here goes anyways.

Crazy thought #1
I know I've mentioned this in the comments before but I'm not sure this has gone into an actual post. Ryan Vogelsong should be our closer. Why, you ask as you choke on whatever it is you're eating or drinking right now. Let's start with Mesa. He can't close any more. It just cannot be allowed to happen. Every time he takes the mound, we take a step back as a team. So who else is left? Grabow certainly isn't overpowering, and we know what happens with underpowering closers (coughmikewilliamscough). Gonzalez? The only lefty closer that's succeeded long term recently is Billy Wagner. I don't think Gonzo is ready for the role yet, and he's best as a lights out left set-up man. Meadows? See Grabow. Rick White? That would be unacceptable. That leaves Vogelsong. We know he throws hard, and for one inning I bet he could crank things up to 96 or 97. He was bad as a starter, but we know he's got good stuff, judging by his lights out spring of 2004. I won't even talk about this year or last year since he's been demoted to the pen. He's been so neglected in his relegation to mop-up duty, I don't think Roger Clemens would have an ERA under 4.00 in the situations Vogelsong's been in. Besides, what do we have to lose the rest of this year? He can't be worse than Mesa and at least we'll find out if he's worth bringing back next spring.

Crazy Thought #2
This one isn't quite as radical, but it's been bubbling in my head since a Stats Geek column of a few weeks ago, followed by Castillo's injury. I even suggested this as a solution if Castillo's motion was going to be limited by his knee injury. Now I'm suggesting it no matter what. Flip Freddy Sanchez and Jose Castillo. My friend from Boston (who was familiar with Freddy from his PawSox days) said to me when he came back to school and turned some Pirates games on, "I don't understand why you guys have Freddy at third. He was our second baseman of the future in Boston, he's got a great glove for there. Castillo's got a rocket for an arm, he'd be awesome at third base." I'll be the first to admit I love watching Wilson and Castillo turn DPs, they're a thing of beauty. Turning double plays, however, isn't all there is to second base. All you had to do was watch Freddy Sanchez last night and you could see things Castillo simply can't do. Sanchez has much more range than Castillo. At third, Castillo wouldn't need as much range (having a line on one side and a certain Jack Wilson on the other) and he certainly has the arm to play there. As for turning double plays, Jack and Freddy played together in high school, I'm sure they could whip up a quick rapport up the middle again (it looks like they already have). That brings us to the bat. Castillo is arguably a better hitter than any of our in-organization solutions to the power gap at third. He could be a 20+ homer a year guy if he's healthy all year. That's much better than what Sanchez would do at third. Freddy's numbers, however, are suited just fine to a second baseman.

I'll close this up by saying that I do realize that neither situation will ever happen with the Pirates. And I'm not saying either of these moves is foolproof (especially the Vogelsong one). All I'm saying is that the Pirates inability to look outside the box has cost them in the past, is costing them currently, and will continue to cost them down the road.

Brewers 6 Pirates 5- While you were apathetic

Here's a funny story, the Pirates already played today!

I honestly had no clue today was a day game, and judging by the results I'm glad I didn't. Yet again, we fell behind, battled back to take a lead, then let the bullpen blow it. This time it happened via a Prince Fielder 2 run pinch hit jack off of Jose Mesa (2-8) in the bottom of the 9th. Yep, he walked Overbay on four pitches, then grooved an 0-1 pitch to Fielder which was then presumably crushed towards South America. Redman started and gave up four runs in the first two innings (and would have given up more if not for Mackowiak gunning Rickie Weekes at the plate). For us, let's see, Doumit RBI single, Bay solo homer, and Wigginton with an unfortunate 3-run shot (unfortunate because every time he produces at the plate it guarantees him more playing time, and thus more butchering of the third base position that would make Brooks Robinson spin in his grave... if he were dead).

Notebook

Paul Meyer's notebook today reminds the fans that as much as St. Louis is a measuring stick for the NL Central, the Brewers are the current measuring stick for the Pirates. As painful as it is to think of things that way, it's true at the moment. Of course, in reality the Pirates need to follow the Brewers model for putting a young, good, low-budget team together. In the fantasy world of this article and in Lloyd McClendon's mind the two teams are practically even, with only injuries separating the two teams. I guess the Brewers didn't miss Ben Sheets when he was hurt in May and they won't miss him for the rest of the year.

Also in the notebook:

Dave Williams, who originally was scheduled to start last night, was skipped after the rainout of the game Monday.

"He's made every start [this season] and he's showing little signs of fatigue," McClendon said.

"We thought it would be a good idea to freshen him up for the homestretch."

I wonder who thinks these things up. I can just imagine the conversation, "Hey, Dave, thanks for stopping by. I know your arm feels great, and the truth is you've been our ace this year and you've exceeded every expectation we had for you prior to the year. In reward we're going to skip you in the rotation and give your start to Mark Redman, you know, that guy that pitches with a similar style to you, only about 100 times worse."

Q&A

Wednesday means it's Q&A time, as the readers ask some tough questions like "why are almost all the teams with young players doing well except us" and "why do people hate poor Josh Fogg." Another reader declares us superior to Beltway fans (which is nice to hear, I always think Pirate fans get a bad rap). Other readers are very excited about the team. Wilber Miller (of Pirate Player Profile fame) writes to agree with Dejan's conclusion from last week, that only management can screw this team up. He then cites a list of his own complaints with the way the team is run, which Dejan agrees with. He closes by reminding us:

The Pirates are the National League's youngest team, but that should not make them immune to criticism, contrary to what a few readers seemed to indicate in notes sent here this week.

For one thing, these players are in the majors. Whether they would be in the majors in the Yankees or Cardinals organizations is immaterial. They are in the majors now, and their performance should be weighed same as that of any player at that level. If Brad Eldred is hitting home runs and winning games, that is what will get written. If he is striking out just about every time there is a man on third base, that will be written, too, just as it would for Craig Wilson or Daryle Ward.

I'm all for playing the young guys, but I'll be the first to tell anyone that we need to cut down on stupid baseball.

21

The PG reports today that the President of Hispanics Across America, Francisco Mateo, plans to start a crusade to have Roberto Clemente's #21 retired across the league by the All-Star Game next year. I initially wasn't sure if this was a good idea or not because I had the impression that most of the guys that wore 21 in the majors were Latino and were doing it to honor Roberto, a tribute as fitting as having his number retired league-wise in my eyes. A quick survey of the rosters proved me quite wrong, however. I could find only Esteban Loaizia and Sammy Sosa among Latino players wearing 21 (and I'd speculate Upper Saint Clare native Sean Casey wears 21 for the same reason). According to Wikipedia, only two other teams have 21 retired, the Indians and the Braves (Bob Lemon and Warren Spahn). One would assume that Roger Clemens' 21 will be retired at least in New York and maybe Boston, though he may have made enough enemies along the way to prevent that from ever happening anywhere but in Houston. Obviously, from the point of view as a Pirate fan who grew up with stories of the great Roberto and his heroic death, I think this is a great idea. Still, I'm curious what other people think about this from outside of a Pittsburgh perspective. Roberto Clemente wasn't the first Latino player in the league, though you could argue he was the most influential. I'm not sure if this will fly, though, because if you were to retire Clemente's number leaguewide you would open the door for a lot of other people to argue their number should be retired league-wise. Thoughts?

Pirates 6 Brewers 0

I always say that when I make negative comments about the team, all I want is to be proven wrong. Paul Maholm made me eat my words about being the 3rd most deserving guy we could've called up to pitch tonight. It came a day later than planned (and a day after his family weathered Katrina in Biloxi, talk about circumstances that can make your first big league start seem pretty damn unimportant) but it was worth the wait. After Brady Clark rapping a leadoff double off of the left field wall, Maholm allowed only three hits the rest of the way, going 8 shutout innings in a very Zach Duke-like manner, as advertised. As for the offense, the amazing plate discipline we showed in the first inning disappeared. Davis walked no one after the four he walked in the first and struck out 8 on the night, many of them with us flailing as usual. The defense, on the other hand, was superb tonight, especially up the middle. Freddy Sanchez made back to back great plays on balls hit past or off of Maholm and Jack and Freddy turned another diving up the middle glove flip double play. Jack also made a great diving play up the middle in the 9th. All in all, it was nice to actually win again. I don't know when we'll see Maholm again as before the game the guys announced that tonight might start off a 9 pitchers in 9 days streak, what with Ollie and Duke coming back, Bullington and Snell coming up, and Fogg, Williams, Redman, and Wells still existing. Should be interesting to watch at least.

A tutorial

Doug Davis has given Paul Maholm a nice little instructional on what not to do in top of the first. In case you didn't have the game on, with two outs Davis proceeded to surrender 4 walks and 2 hits for a total of five runs (ironically in the same day that the Stats Geek called him out as being the only NL pitcher with more walks than Kip Wells), thus ensuring that Maholm's first at-bat came before his first pitch. Now that you don't see every day (kind of like the Pirates having enough plate discipline to walk four times in an inning).

Tonight's game

Looks like we'll get our first look at Paul Maholm tonight, albeit a day late. As much as I'd rather see someone else get this shot (Bullington or Snell, preferrably) it's still something to be excited about, especially since just last May Maholm got blasted in the face with a liner, putting his future in doubt. A lot has been made of his similarities to Duke. If he's half as good as Duke has been, we'll be in great shape. Meanwhile the Brewers look to make up some ground on .500, trying to halve the number of teams in the NL Central with decade-plus long losing streaks. Judging by our play of late, the right team may be in town for them to do just that.

Today's notebook

Today's PG notebook is full of fun facts like how many games and at-bats it's been since Daryle Ward homered (64 and 200) and how many extra base hits he has in the last twenty-seven games (2). He blames pitchers for keeping the ball out of the Daryle Ward home run zone and for an undisclosed leg injury. Apparently we've faced a bunch of aces since the Orioles were in town to have control like that. But he really wants to hit one, so count on Lloyd playing him enough to get the chance.

Also in the notebook, McClendon says that Maholm will start today and Redman will start tomorrow while Dave Williams will be skipped and not pitch until Saturday because he's pitched poorly his last two starts and pitches better on "extra rest." I would've preferred us to go the route of skipping Mark Redman, just because he's really sucked the last three months as opposed to the last two starts.

The PG also took it upon themselves to mention Jason Bay's stolen base streak (16 for 16 this far this year) so you just know he's getting gunned down soon.

Stats Geek on Kip

The Stats Geek confirms what everyone knew already today, Kip Wells was once one of the most consistent pitchers in the National League, but has been wildly inconsistent this year. He uses a Bill James stat known as game score to illustrate this fact. I won't go to far into, but pitchers start every game with a score of 50, which is average. Below 30 is really bad and above 70 is really good. Kip has been above 70 six times, as many as Pettitte and Smoltz. He's been below 30 seven times. According to O'Neill BP ranks Kip as the league's most inconsistent pitcher this year (not bad, just inconsistent, some guys are consistently bad), only two years after being the NL's most consistent. The culprit? Walks, of course.

Why the Pirates are so frustrating right now

Right now my frustration with the Pirates is about as high as it's been all year. I know I said a couple weeks back that if we brought the rookies up and they played regularly and we lost, I wouldn't be upset because we're giving the young guys a chance to learn. It's not the losses that are driving me nuts, it's the fact that I wasn't kidding when I said that a team full of 12-year-olds from Hawaii had a better grasp of fundamental baseball than the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yesterday's game and the run-up to it was a great microcosm for everything that's wrong right now (get your reading glasses out, this is a long one).

• Pregame, Duffy goes on the DL to make room for Craig Wilson. I won't debate the validity of Duffy's injury. It definitely looks like it was more serious than I initially thought (for my initial reaction, go here, towards the bottom of the post) since the MRI showed a partial tear in his hamstring. The problem is that the actions of the team caused me to have that reaction. Earlier in the year we state that Freddy Sanchez is out starting third baseman. Wigginton is sent down just to prove how serious we are about Freddy. You can debate all you want about how good Freddy is at third, that's not what this is about. Once every other week or so after Freddy became the starting third baseman he'd come up with a "tweak" or a "pull" or something similar that shelved him for three days, putting Mackowiak at third and putting Tike in center. When Duffy came up, the same thing happened. He tweaked a hammy and got a little dehydrated. We benched him for a week. Then Zach Duke came up. He was lights out, but suddenly we talked about limiting his innings to within a certain number of last year's innings, but we honestly didn't know how many innings he threw in the instructional league last winter so we didn't have anything to base a number off of anyways. Duke said he felt fine, we ignored him and started drawing up a plan to bring him down slowly till the end of the year. Then he twisted his ankle. It looked pretty bad, but within two days he said he felt fine and was putting normal pressure on it and was ready to throw again. We put him on the DL. The management tells the public that these guys are the future, but they don't trust them at all. We already saw the team screw with Craig Wilson from 2001-2003 and we saw how that affected him. We're still doing it.
• Then there's Wigginton's "defensive" play at third base. The man is simply more inept at third base than a seal. Even the routine plays were an adventure. When Aramis Ramirez was here he was crucified for his play at third base, but the truth was you knew if he concentrated he'd be fine there (like Castillo at second now). There's no potential for Wigginton at third base. A choice between him hitting .280 with 25 homers and 80 RBIs but playing with his defense or Freddy Sanchez hitting .285 with 5 homers and 55 RBIs but playing great D at third (which he does, for some reason there's a smear tactic sent out by the team to defame Freddy's abilities at third, in reality he's got a great glove and arm from the hot corner and it doesn't take long to see it) there's just no choice. You can argue we need more pop at third, and that's fine by me. But if it comes from Wigginton, the price of him in the field is too great to pay. It's entirely possible the same thing applies to Restovich in right field. He was so slow getting to the ball hit by Aurellia on Friday night that the tying run scored easily from first base on a play where it should've at least been close at the plate.
  
• Now we can go to the Freddy Sanchez play. The PG described it as some ridiculous situation where Freddy misread a sign going from Lloyd to Russell as the green light. Lloyd said it was his own fault, Freddy more or less agreed, figuring they knew something about the pitch that was coming and was trying to get a jump (see, sign stealing happens a lot more often than Tony LaRussa and Yadier Molina would like you to think it does). So let's consider situations.
  
• The Bucs are expected to look to Lloyd to the bench, to give signals that override the third base coach. Well, that's just stupid and needlessly complicated.
  
• The Pirates take sign (or a similar one) looks just like the greenlight. We ran into that problem once in Little League when our bunt and steal signal were similar. Our coaches (a couple of insurance agents and a guy that I'm pretty sure didn't even have a job) figured things out within a half inning and changed them.
• They actually gave Freddy the greenlight, then when realizing how stupid it was backtracked and made up a ridiculous story about similar signs and such.
  So where am I going here? Signs are a fundamental part of baseball. From the firsttime you play a game with a pitcher on the mound you have signs. This is a fundamental part of baseball. This situation wasn't a missed take sign in the 3rd inning, this was a play that very well could have cost us a baseball game. This was a ridiculous and inexcusible situation from any perspective. Why would a sign like the greenlight for a runner and a sign for (what I'm assuming was ) the batter to take a pitch so similar? Why would Freddy be compelled to look to Lloyd for signs? It's all so stupid it makes my head spin. There's no excuse for anything like that to happen this late in the year.

• Let's talk about basic baserunning, not just yesterday's game. Part of the reason I love to see the rookies called up is to learn. I don't think anyone is teaching Ryan Doumit to run the bases. He constantly makes gaffes that would embarass a 10-year-old. Rob Mackowiak does the same thing. The media of course bemoans the fact that Lloyd isn't given players that know the fundamentals of the game, but what exactly does the manager do then? If someone on the team is a poor baserunner, you try to make them a better baserunner. I don't expect everyone to be Jason Kendall or even Jason Bay, but on one team we have Daryle Ward, Ty Wigginton, Mackowiak, and now Doumit. Somehow, I'm not blaming fate that we somehow ended up with 20 of the most fundamentally deficient players out of the 750 major leaguers in America. Some things can be fixed. This is one of them, but it seems to me there's rarely any progress made. I still remember the time we ended up with two runners on third base and got them both tagged out twice within the same year. This isn't a one time problem, it's an epidemic. We might be extremely unlucky, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the coaches should be able to teach people how to run the bases.
• It certainly looks to me like Nate McLouth has been in the majors for over a week now and no one has spent time going over how to play right field with the big wall in PNC Park. Watching trial by error with that goofy chain-link fence in right is no fun. I'm pretty sure McLouth is a better right-fielder than Matt Lawton, but he's not showing it. If he's not taught and he's not playing every day, he'll never learn.
  
• I say this over and over again, but JOSE MESA. There's no excuse for him to be on our mound now, much less to even be considering putting him on it next year. I can't trust the baseball common sense of anyone that even entertains thoughts like this. Same goes for Rick White.
  
• I haven't run the numbers, but I bet you'd be hard pressed to find a worse pitcher than Mark Redman since early June. With Bullington, Maholm, Snell, etc. I'm not sure why we're entertaining the illusion of him as a starter right now. Probably because he was part of the return from the Kendall trade, and we'll be damned if we're going to look bad on that one (though our return was an awful starter who gave us two good months and a reliever that we turned into a mentally handicapped rightfielder that we turned into a gimp). It's time to cut our losses and get Mark Redman the hell away from a pitcher's mound. I'd rather see Ryan Vogelsong back in a starter's role than him.
  
• Daryle Ward still gets semi-regular starts. I've said this again and again, from April till June Ward was impressive. He's clearly dropped off since then. He's clearly not the answer at first base. Brad Eldred hits righties better than lefties. We shouldn't see Ward starting at first base, EVER.
  

The basic problem right now is the same as it was in April. We're lifeless. Yeah, Duffy, Doumit, Duke, and Eldred are exciting, but right now we have a team that can't do little things right and I'm not sure we have coaches that fix that. We have a GM that tells us that the guys that are up are the future and that the future is now, but the manager doesn't trust the young players enough to play them every day, probably because he doesn't trust them to win enough to keep his job. That should be grounds for firing on the spot, but I won't be surprised at all to see Lloyd back in the dugout next year. There's no sign that anyone is making sure the rookies are fundamentally sound. And of course, said GM still believes bringing Jose Mesa back next year is a good idea. Excuse me if I'm not bubbling with hope right now.

The Rain

Looks like Paul Maholm will wait another day to make his big-league debut. I think they probably could've played today if they needed to, but its been a pretty constant rain all day and if the forecasts are right, things are only going to get worse as the week wears on. Not that anyone around here has any right to complain about anything... the hurrican wasn't a direct hit on New Orleans but it still looks like things were pretty bad. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Sad, but true

I just watched the end of the Little League World Series. Hawaii came back from a 3 run deficit in the bottom of the 6th (the last inning in LL games) to tie the game at 6, then win with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 7th. The amazing part was how much more fundamentally sound they were than our very own Pittsburgh Pirates. How did they come back? Taking pitches, working the opposing pitcher, making plays in the field, running the bases properly. Maybe the Pirates Tivo'd it, they could learn something.

Reds 7 Pirates 2

Well, that was a thoroughly depressing loss. First there was the lead that we had that Ty Wigginton blew, ruining a good outing by Kip Wells. That was followed by Gonzo walking in a run (the second time we've done that in two days). We still tried to come back, with a Cota homer and putting runners on first and second with one out and Bay at the plate, after a beautiful bunt single by Mackowiak. At this point Lloyd McClendon decides not to leave well enough alone, and with one of the best hitters in the National League at the plate sends the runners on maybe the stupidest double steal in the history of baseball. Jason Bay doesn't have 37 doubles or anything, Lloyd was right, there was probably no way Bay was going to hit a ball far enough to score a runner from second. I don't think I can even put my frustration into words at this point. Anways Sanchez was out a third, Bay made a quick out and the inning was over. All life was clearly sapped from the team by this point (because who plays well when their manager sabotages them like that?) and Meadows and Grabow imploded, giving up 2 runs each in the 8th and 9th inning for the final 7-2 tally. We're now only a Paul Maholm start away from being swept by the Reds at home.

As I mentioned prior to the game, Craig Wilson was activated and played in right field. The roster move that was made was to put Duffy on the DL with his "hamstring" problem. I'm going to be blunt. I don't buy it, this was a bullshit move by Dave Littlefield to not have to take someone off the roster before September. Duffy has said publicly several times that whatever's wrong with his hamstring now isn't as bad as what happened in July (when I don't think it was as bad as things were made out to be). Instead of having the balls to jettison dead-weight Tike Redman (actually, since Redman has no options left we'd probably have to DFA him, no one would claim him from waivers because he's useless, and we could send him to Indy for a week, or preferrably let him go and rot on the scrap heap for the rest of his career, whichever). Hell, we could even send McLouth back to Indy for a week seeing as how he'll get zero playing time here now that CWills is back. Instead, we'll just stick with blissful indecision and more at-bats for Tike Redman, with another show of no confidence towards Chris Duffy. Just brilliant guys.

Oh, now I remember

Two errors, and a complete lack of hustle to a flare that cost us a run. That's Ty Wigginton's line today. Now I remember why I can't stand him, he would have to hit .500 with 250 RBIs a year to make up for his complete inability to play third base.

What?

Craig Wilson kept with the theme of his comebacks being complete surprises, appeared in the lineup today, and has already doubled in a run. Kip Wells is also already through TWO full innings, partially thanks to a Ty Wigginton error turned Jason Bay outfield assist (only one of those things isn't news). And they're on TV!

Sunday stuff

There's a first person account of Oliver Perez's start at Indy last night over at HW. It is a lot more negative than the account in the PG's notebook today. It sounds like more of the same from April and May to me. The writer does give Paulino and Bautista sparkling reviews though.

Meanwhile, said notebook focuses on the Duke/Maholm situation. It says the team's plan is to have Duke miss two starts, then pick up a regular spot in the rotation from the day he goes on the DL until the end of the year. Of course it fails to mention just how many people will be in that "rotation" in September. My guess is more than 5. They mention Bullington is on his way up and might be up already if not for his start on Friday. Add him to Snell coming back up in September, Perez coming back from his injury, and Duke coming back and we're going to have to drop more than Fogg from the rotation to make room (though maybe Maholm only gets one or two starts and goes to the pen). They also placed Castillo on the 60-day DL, thus clearing the needed space for Maholm on the 40-man.

Reds 4 Pirates 2- Fogg, Milton, and Mesa

So lemme see if I can get this straight (since again, no TV last night). We scored one run off of Eric Milton last night. That's all we got? One run off of Eric freaking Milton? Meanwhile a group of pitchers including the illustrious Josh Fogg, the recently hittable John Grabow, and the flat out terrible Rick White shut out the Reds for 8 innings, only to let Jose Mesa blow the save with 2 outs and 2 strikes in the ninth, then go on the in tenth to give up 3 runs, including a play where he continued to pitch after a balk, a bases loaded beaning, a sac fly, and a hit? Sheesh, I would say that we keep finding new ways to lose but this one can get lumped into the "we lost because we think Jose Mesa is still a major league player, and if you think this is bad, wait 'till we bring him back next year" category.

TV

It would appear that a high-school football is on TV instead of our professional baseball team. That makes three consecutive nights without baseball on TV. Thanks FSP, and thank you Pittsburgh for caring so much.

Duke disabled

Zach Duke goes on the DL which isn't much of a surprise. Paul Maholm gets the call-up presumably to take his spot in the rotation, which is more of a surprise. Not 11-2 at AAA Ian Snell. Not the on-fire Bryan Bullington. The only-pitched-35-and-2/3- innings-at-AAA-Maholm. ARGGHH!

The Natural?

Let's talk about Jeff Francoeur, the media, and team expectations for a bit. In the minors, Francoeur never hit more than .327 and he did that in rookie ball in 2002. Prior to this year, he was a .285 hitter with nearly three times as many strikeouts as walks, having played above single A for only 18 games. He did have good power numbers, and he was Baseball America's #1 prospect in the Braves organization coming into this season. The only minor league stat from this year that I can find is his batting average, .275 at Double-A, so we'll assume everything else was similar to his career minor league stats. Since his call-up on July 7th he's hitting .350 with 10 homers and 30 RBIs with an OPS of 1.037. He's been compared to Vlad Guerrero as a "free swinger" but his 29 strikeouts and 2 walks (at least one of which was intentional) are downright Randall Simon-esque. His splits aren't that impressive either. He's only hitting .286 against righties, while hitting a whopping .500 against lefties. He's on the cover of SportsIllustrated and the entire whole of the national media sounds like Paul Meyer when then salivate over him. I'm not trying to sound jealous, but judging by his minor league stats, the Braves better not be pinning their post-season hopes on him keeping up this pace of play.

So where's my point? It's a pretty simple one. If this guy was a Pirate, we'd be saying "Well, he's only a .280 hitter in the minors. He doesn't walk at all. Don't believe the hype on this guy, the other shoe is coming." Not only would we be saying that, all of the national media would be saying the same thing. The best Pirate comparison I can think to make is to Chris Duffy, simply because he's the only rookie hitter of ours off to a start that's viewed as way over his head (though he's four years younger than Duff-Man). Duffy actually hit for a higher career average in the minors (again, 4 years older) and his strikeout/walk ratio was closer to 2:1 than Francoeur's nearly 3:1. It's true he doesn't have a ton of power, but both guys are great fielding outfielders. The thing is, there's no one that expects Duffy to keep up his .341 pace but there are people comparing Francoeur to Willie McCovey. That's like expecting Zach Duke to pitch like Greg Maddux from now until he's 30 (and Duke has much better career minor league numbers than Francoeur did, at a much closer age than Duffy). Instead, everyone thinks we should shut him down before we have to send him to Birmingham to go see Dr. Andrews. Why? Mostly because he's a Pirate and Pirate pitching prospects get hurt. If Duke (or Duffy, or even Eldred who's been bashing the ball beyond our wildest dreams since his callup) were Braves, the scale of perception would be entirely different. Should it be? Francoeur might turn out to be McCovey, Duke might turn out to be the lefty Maddux, Duffy might be Juan Pierre or someone similar (see, there we go again, despite his start my best personal hope for Duffy is for him to turn out like a career .304 hitter). Then again, they all might not. I suppose the real question is what kind of influence the organization they play for will have on them. I guess we'll find out.

That was quick

The Cubs traded everyone's favorite mentally challenged right fielder (I'm talking about Matt Lawton, of course) to the Yankees for Justin Berg, a minor league pitcher who's 6-1 with a 3.07 ERA in the Short-Season New York Penn League at Staten Island this year. That means he was probably a draft pick this June. This means a couple things:

1. The Yankees season is over. Matt Lawton has never been on a playoff team for a reason. You can't have a guy like him on your team and go to the playoffs, plain and simple.
2. The Cubs were pretty desperate to ditch Lawton. Short-season ball as low as you go besides the GCL or some other rookie league. It's mostly where the draft picks from college go for their first season.
3. Keep an eye on Berg. I said after the Lawton trade that I'd rather have a prospect than Gerut. Berg is a low level prospect, but he also has none of the downside of a guy like Gerut. This also means for the Cubs that they've turned Jason Dubois into a guy in short-season ball. Not exactly a proud moment for Jim Hendry and co.
   

Reds 5 Pirates 1- The view from under the rotunda where it wasn't completely pouring

Redman was bad, he got pounded around the park last night. The rain made things pretty miserable, but all 28,000 people in the park hung around for fireworks afterwards (and they were quite awesome, as always). Like I said in my post yesterday, Griffey was mostly the only reason to hang around for the actual game part of things (OK, and Adam Dunn hit maybe the longest homer I've seen in person at PNC). Back in Little League one of the things me and my friends always did was spend most of batting practice mimicking major leaguers with the best swing. Griffey was always the favorite, even for righties. When he was with Seattle his swing was perfect, grooved just a little bit, easy, right through the zone. It's been about five years since he's been healthy, but last night the swing was still exactly the same as I remembered it. You have to find the little things when your team is 21 games under .500 on August 27th.

Investigations

Dejan:

Major League Baseball is investigating the batting practice tussle Wednesday between the Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals, but it was not known yesterday when a decision on whether to fine or suspend anyone could come down. Officials at MLB headquarters in New York did not return phone calls, and the Pirates said they had received no indication. The only certainty seemed to be that it will be a difficult matter to judge, given that there were so few witnesses and that the umpiring crew did not enter the ballpark until 15 minutes after the incident. The only chance at having any charge stick, it would seem, is by using video taken by FSN Pittsburgh, and even that shows the key moment -- Pirates hitting coach Gerald Perry striking Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan -- from only two angles and from a significant distance.

My verdict is in: EMBARASSING

Last night and today

Last night's game wasn't on TV and as a friend of mine said, "This team just isn't good enough to listen to on the radio." They put up a generic 6-3 loss to the Cards. Pujols hit a homer, blah blah blah.

Tonight the Reds come to town. We're pretty much beyond catching them at 5.5 behind them in the cellar. Of course we have like 10 games with them in the next 3 weeks, so if we get hot we might. We're also 20 games below .500 for the year, which is a pretty low point considering it's not even September yet. Aaron Harang and Mark Redman are on the mound. Two terrible teams, one awful pitcher, that means there's only one motivation to go to the game tonight... fireworks. Oh, and this guy too, he's been on fire lately. Kind of what the Reds have been expecting since, oh, I dunno, 2000 or so.

Down

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now. Time for some non-Pirates related baseball headlines.

Curt Schilling is outraged that Palmeiro "sat next to me and lied." What a pompous, self righteous ass. This was a guy that a year ago considered the painkiller marcaine a "miracle" to help him pitch. And he certainly didn't stop anyone from thinking that his iodine soaked sock was a rag filled with his own sweat and blood (check the accounts if you can find them, that spot was like 80% iodine, and I'm not questioning Schilling's performance in the playoffs because it certainly was memorable). I suppose if Raffy was between McGwire and Canseco at the hearing we shouldn't be as offended as we are by his lie in the presence of St. Curt.

Meanwhile in Baltimore Sidney Ponson picked up another DUI. Can Aruba un-knight someone?

And on the Pirates front, Ed Eagle identifies Rick White and Dave Duncan as the source of last night's spat. White felt that La Russa should have approached him about the pitch, not Duncan. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via Cardnilly) calls the whole thing "silly" and characterizes Gerald Perry as "landing a punch to Dave Duncan's jaw." It looked kind of like a push to me, but whatever. The whole thing really is "silly" at best, that I can agree with. Dejan's account, for those interested, is here. Keeping with non-fight related Pirates news, Duke will in fact miss a start, and will probably be kept on a leash from here on out. Tonight we have Dave Williams and Matt Morris on the mound. Morris is right at home in PNC where he's 6-0. Dave Williams, meanwhile, is 3-5 with a 6.15 ERA at home. What say we shift this game to Busch?

Who's fault?

I probably should have been a little clearer in my post from yesterday where I agree with Dejan's statement that if we have a losing season next year it's the management's fault. As Rory points out in the comments, there's a lot the players can do to screw things up too. Rowdy also disagrees, wondering just how much difference the management can make. Anyways, both of these arguments made me want to refine my point a little bit and try to make a little bit of a clearer point.

Yeah, it's true, these young players can do a lot to screw up next year. Eldred and Castillo could strike out, a lot. Doumit could be a defensive liability behind the plate. Duffy and McLouth might never get one base and be nothing but good gloves that are fast on the bases, if they ever get there. Perez might never get his head screwed on right, Burnett might not be 100% healthy, other teams might start to figure Duke out, Bullington might never find that extra 5 mph he lost from college and suffer from it, Van Benschoten might make the argument that he should stay in the outfield look like a good one, etc. etc. But if all those things happen, that's not any different than what's happened to us at any point in the last 13 years. Has it been the player's fault every single time? Chris Duffy sure looks more promising than Jermaine Allensworth ever did, so does the fault go squarely on their shoulders if they both go the way of Chad Hermanson? The truth is, the management of this team made a ton of mistakes this year, some that had an immediate effect, some that may hurt us down the road.

• Mid-December we traded Leo Nunez for Benito Santiago. Benito played in 6 games for us before being cut because he wasn't as good as Humberto Cota or David Ross. This was a trade that never needed to be made (a deal similar to the Ross one would've been very possible before spring training). Nunez is a young guy with a very live arm that's been up with the Royals already this year at the age of 21. This trade smacks of Chris Young for Matt Herges. We traded a young, potentially useful reliever for a guy we didn't need and didn't use.
  
• Oliver Perez came to Spring Training with a stiff arm after having not thrown all winter. Instead of trying to get him in shape we hurried him along to start the opener, risking further injury in the name of public relations. He struggled for most of the year before breaking his toe on a laundry cart out of frustration. This may have happened anyways, but in light of all the evidence it's possible the best thing for him would have been an extended spring training.
  
• We called Chris Duffy up in early April, only to let him sit on the bench for a week or so before being sent back down. We then spent part of May and June pissing it away on Tike Redman in center. If we'd given every start we've given to Tike this year to Duffy from the time he was called up, we'd know a hell of a lot more about Duffy and he'd be that much further along. Instead, we have no idea of Duffy is Tike 2003 re-incarnated or an actual answer in center.
• Mark Redman was 4-4 with a 2.80 ERA on June 10th. I realize that hindsight is 20-20, but as a GM Dave Littlefield has to realize that Redman's value was peaking at this point. It shouldn't matter what our record was at that point, having delirious dreams about .500 is the fan's job, not the General Manager's. A player like Mark Redman on a team like the Pirates should have been traded when his value was the highest. A season close to .500 this year, followed by more seasons way under it will not bring more fans to the park, a commitment to winning will. If we'd traded Redman in June and brought Duke up then, then called up Snell to replace Ollie in the rotation would we be worse off than we actually are? Snell would get a real chance to start in the Majors (which he hasn't been given) and Duke would have an extra month. As it stands, after this year we will have more or less traded Jason Kendall for a gimp and a little bit of cash (that probably will not be put into the on-field product that we see). That's not acceptable.
  
• Ryan Doumit was called up in June and more or less sat until the beginning of August. What a waste.
• Ian Snell was called up in late June and was used spottily in the pen, while making only two starts as Josh Fogg, Mark Redman, and Kip Wells struggled. In his second start (which I missed on vacation but talked to my uncle who was at the game about it) he threw very well and very hard, gave up some soft hits, got no defense, and was yanked after 6 runs in 2 innings. He was then sent back down to AAA shortly after that. We could've been using this year to find out if he is in fact suited to a starter's role in the majors, instead we're going to have maybe 5 starts total to go on (once he gets called up in September).
• Rick White and Jose Mesa have been more or less bad all year (Mesa opened with a brilliant streak and White pitched mostly well between May and July) but they're still the go to guys in our bullpen. They're both ancient and can only go down in talent from here, but every indication points to at least Mesa coming back as closer next year. We could've used this year to find out how Ryan Vogelsong responds to a key role in the pen. Remember how good he was in Spring Training of '04, this guy has good stuff and yet we continue to banish him as mop-up man rather than find out if he can actually produce in the pen. Lots of bad starters have made good relievers simply because it's easier to throw one or two good innings than it is to throw 6 or 7. Look at Gagne. For an example closer to home, look at Torres. When he returned from his exile he was awful as a starter, but besides this year he's been a very effective reliever. We could have also used their slots to see how Snell responds to a full-time slot in the pen (rather than mop-up as he was used) if that's how we really think he'll be best for us. Mesa and White have been a complete waste of space.
  
• Until very recently McClendon would refuse to use anyone out of his usual rotation unless they hit .400 and couldn't be put on the bench. Thus, Eldred came up and sat initially as did Doumit, and now McLouth. He finally came around on most of them, but keep Craig Wilson in mind as an example of what his methods can do to a prospect's confidence.
• The people that run the team have to take some responsibilty for the Kip Wells debacle. Sure, some of Kip's problem is in his head. It's the coaches job to fix that. He was great in May and early June this year and has shown flashes of brilliance since then (mostly against the Phillies). He's got good stuff, and I'm sick of the "He'll never succeed here" excuse. There's no reason why guys like him (of course following other "will never succeed here" guys like Schmidt, Aramis Ramirez, and Benson who have gone on to succeed elsewhere) CAN'T succeed here. When they excel elsewhere, it's an indictment of the people that run the team.
  

My point is only that when Brad Eldred regresses into Steve Balboni instead of turning into Jim Thome, when Chris Duffy turns into Hermanson, when Zach Duke regresses into Dave Williams, when Ryan Doumit can "no longer succeed as a Pirate", when Oliver Perez never regains his 2004 form, and when none of the pitching prospects develop the way we think they should that all of these things could be because we had unreal expectations of them, because they simply aren't that good, but to me all signs would point to it being because we're a poorly run baseball team.

Cardinals 8 Pirates 3

Well, things stopped in that game just as quickly as they started, to the point that the only reason to care about it by the end was Mackowiak's quest for the cycle (which ended a homer short, not surprisingly given his power outage of late). Not many runs, no great defense, not even any Big Country power bombs (or any bench-clearing action at all for that matter). Vogelsong pitched a solid 4 and 1/3 out of the pen, giving up only one run via John Rodriguez. Gonzalez pitched two scoreless, and White and Mesa each gave up a run in an inning of work. Despite this, Mesa and White will probably remain the go-to guys in the pen. And I was wrong, watching the rookies wasn't fun. McLouth bumbled around in the field and on the bases and Eldred struck out a lot. Still no real word on what caused the pre-game fight, though it certainly seemed to be instigated by Perry (who seemed to have thrown a punch at Duncan) and by the actions of the Pirates last night. Maybe it was just frustration boiling over, but today would seem to be a funny day for that to happen, what with us winning 10-0 last night and all. Whatever it is, it's pretty embarassing if we did incite it, there's no reason to be upset over the Luna/Castillo play. If it was anyone's fault it was Castillo's for not getting out of the way. I don't know if we'll ever know the full story. I do know that we're going to need to get some decent starts, our pen has worked 16 and 1/3 innings in the last two nights.

Wow, things really escalated quickly

It's not really a secret that Lloyd McClendon isn't well-liked by many people in the Gateway City, and there was apparently some bad blood when Vogelsong beaned Taguchi in the 9th last night (for what reason, I don't know), but a pre-game "scuffle" between the players, Dave Duncan, and Gerald Perry? Sheesh. I don't even know what to make of this as I don't see any situation in which Vogelsong, who can barely keep his spot on the roster, was throwing at Taguchi (not Pujols) in the 9th inning of a 10-0 game to avenge the injuring of Jose Castillo on a clean play. Then again, Lloyd's quote "I'm sure there were some sensitive feelings as to whether or not some of their players were thrown at intentionally. I think we got all that straightened out now," doesn't exactly sound innocent, and the film looks like Lloyd and the Bucs were instigating today. This is stupid and if I find out we're the ones instigating it I'm going to be pissed.

Anyways, speaking of things escalating quickly, I was wrong about Kip tonight. He got shelled and gave up 5 runs in 2/3rds of an inning. Nothing was really hit too hard, but nothing was hit softly either. That means it's Vogelsong time. Of course, being down 5-1 (because we picked one up in the bottom of the first before McLouth ran us out of the inning) against Carpenter isn't a good place to be in. I think that all that's left to be seen in this one is if a brawl starts maybe Big Country will powerbomb Abe Nunez. Now that's something I'd pay to see.

Carp and Kip

Interesting matchup tonight, Carpenter and Wells. Carpenter is probably the front-runner for the NL Cy Young this year, and in my opinion he should be. 17-4, 2.29 ERA, and a 0.98 WHIP is downright impressive. Clemens has been good but not that good and as good as Dontrelle Willis has been, the Marlins recent resurgence is due to AJ Burnett's pitching, not his. Still, don't count us out of this game tonight yet. As Cardnilly reports, Kip owns the Cards just as much as Carpenter owns us. The Cards lineup tonight is a bit more imposing than the one they trotted out last night though, as it's Walker's night to play (he's nursing and injury and only playing alternate nights, I believe). Still, Kip's had two good starts since recovering from his cracked fingernail and he's made two good starts against the Cards this year. Plus we're at home where, as it's been widely documented, Kip has been much better this year. Lloyd is also showing faith in the kids tonight, with Duffy, McLouth, Eldred, and Doumit going against the probably Cy Present. If nothing, it should be fun to see how they respond.

The Q&A

Dejan's Q&A opens up this week with talk of third base. For the first time, Dejan talks reason to the masses that want us to sign a big name third baseman by asking just who it is that we should sign? Bill Mueller? Would he be better than Freddy Sanchez? Joe Randa? Would he be better than Mackowiak? The answer is, of course, no. I'm not sure the situation at third is as dire as everyone makes it out to be, either. If we get more production from Eldred, Doumit, Duffy, and Craig Wilson next year than we did out of Ward, Cota, our center fielders, and our right fielders this year, then having Eric Chavez at third won't be necessary. In fact, having a guy like Freddy Sanchez to anchor the top of the lineup might not be a bad thing. Anyways, Dejan did acknowledge today that the only way we're getting a third baseman with power is if Wigginton, Sanchez, or Mackwiak takes some Abraham Nunez juice and has a year way over their heads next year, Bautista is ready earlier than we expect, or we trade for one.

The middle is the usual hodge-podge of questions, from whether Van Benschoten should go back to the outfield to a percieved slight of Zach Duke by other teams. What intrigues me today is the closing statement. He basically comes right out and says that the only way we don't have a winning season next year is if the management screws things up. That would be a bold statement for someone like me to make, let alone Dejan. That being said, I'm happy he made it. In the last month or so, we've seen nothing but encouraging things from our players. Eldred is mashing the ball in a way we only dreamed he would when we called him up. Doumit is hitting the ball well and, with a few exceptions, playing better than we hoped behind the plate. Zach Duke has been speaking for himself. Duffy continues to give us hope that he's more than a quicker Tike with a better glove. Jack Wilson's bat has made a recent resurgence. In AAA Bullington is pitching well, Perez is on rehab, and we've been waiting all year to see Snell get a real chance. Castillo doesn't need surgery and should be ready by spring training. And you can call it a load of crap if you want, but there's a different spirit in Pittsburgh with all these young guys up. They may not be winning a whole lot more, but in the past 10 days they've layed 5+ run thrashings on the Astros, Phillies, Mets, and Cardinals. The first three are Wild Card contenders, the last team is the prohibitive favorite in the NL this year. They're 10-11 in August. Things are certainly looking up for now.

Abraham Nunez

I meant to post this earlier, but my memory fizzled as Duke's ankle popped. We're all wondering about Abraham Nunez this year and what exactly happened to him between here and St. Louis. The reason is obvious. Nunez was a fairly wiry and skinny guy when he played for us, in his current (larger) state he caused my dad to remark, "I was wondering when Pujols started playing third base, then I realized it was Nunez! I think they've got him on the all steroid diet over there in St. Louie!" You know what that means, it's time for me to make a completely baseless accusation to assuage the entire Pirate nation of Abraham Nunez grief, ABRAHAM NUNEZ IS ON THE JUICE!!!

Pirates 10 Cardinals 0- The worst win over a good team ever

All day I was excited to see Zach Duke pitch. It was all I could think about in class, at dinner, all afternoon. We got to the park and So Taguchi was hitting cleanup for the Cards, things would be good. Six up and six down through two for Duke, it was looking like things could be special with that 4-0 lead. Hell, he even got a hit in the bottom of the second. Who cared the Wigginton was back and playing? It didn't matter that the D-Train was at first instead of Eldred. Zach Duke was on the mound and dealing. Then it happened. Grounder to short, weird looking double play. Duke kind of limped off the field, but no one asked twice. Then Salomon Torres took the mound in the bottom of the third. Everyone in 144 buzzed. Some people booed, thinking this was how we were going to reign him in. Even Jason the usher was baffled. A quick phone call was placed home to someone who had the game on TV to find out what happened, but the answering machine picked up. We quickly pieced things together, the double play. My phone rang with my dad on the other end, "They talked to Lloyd on the TV, he said Duke felt something pop in his ankle. They asked him if they removed him as a precaution as Lloyd thought that was a hopeful way of looking at things. This looks bad." The rest of the game was great, Torres took Duke's no no into the 5th. He, White, Grabow, and Vogelsong tossed 7 scoreless innings of relief. We hit the ball, hard and often. Nate McLouth hit his first big league homer (the 5th guy to do so for us this year, I wonder what the record is), "Steel" Wigginton had a decent game at the plate (somehow hitting a triple in the four run first), Duffy and Bay had two hits each, Jack Wilson had three and got his average up to .240. It would've been a fantastic game, but the injury. "Something popped in his ankle." That just sounds scary to me. It was his left ankle, the push-off ankle too. Hopefully things aren't as bad as they sound, but it's kind of hard to be positive with the history we've had on this team.

UPDATE (11:12PM)- The ESPN report is now reading that Duke is only going to miss one start, so maybe things aren't quite as bad as they intially sounded. Missing one start sounds like best-case scenario to me, I guess we'll find out more soon.

The Royal Battle

Tonight, the Duke vs. the Marquis. This is without a doubt Duke's toughest test to this point in the year (or at least even with facing off against the Braves and Tim Hudson in Atlanta). It's also the return of the "Turd on Thurd" (or maybe Ty Pigginton) to Pittsburgh. As no one's really sure how many starts Duke will have left, I am definitely going to make my way to the game tonight as I've missed out on the Duke-a-mania to this point in the year. I saw Sean Burnett shut down the Cardinals last year and I'm hoping for more of the same (and of course, no Wigginton) tonight. I'll be back with some impressions after the game.

The Stats Geek

Today the Stats Geek tells us something that we already know, "BAY CARRIES TOO MUCH OF THE LOAD FOR THE PIRATES."

This slugging/on-base machine has scored more than one of every six runs the Pirates have put on the scoreboard this year.

Bay has 90, third in the National League and sixth in baseball, and is 41 ahead of the closest active Pirate, Jose Castillo, with 49. Matt Lawton had 53 before his trade to the Cubs three weeks ago.

Looking around for a player who has plated a greater share of his team's runs, I found only Derrek Lee, the Cubs' Triple Crown threat. Going into last night's games, Lee had scored 17.4 percent of the Cubs' runs and Bay had scored 17.2 percent of the Pirates'.

Those are some pretty staggering numbers. Of course, they're even more staggering when you take into account (as O'Neill does) that Bay is sixth in the league in runs scored while playing on a team that's 27th (and damn close to 29th, only 12 runs in fact). The rest of the article is mostly pointing out some more stats that kind of get ignored but fully illustrate just how good of a season Jason Bay is having (hint: it earns him comparisons to Giles and Kiner).

Some Bad News

Castillo is likely out for the year, the PG reports. The injury did look pretty ugly, but we won't know just how severe it is until the MRI results come back sometime today probably. Castillo is already on the 15-day DL Unfortunately, that means the return of everybody's favorite deadline acquisition, Ty Wigginton (and not Bobby Hill, man do we hate that guy). This is, as the article mentioned, a huge blow as Castillo was making a ton of progress this year and is one of the few players the team has committed to to be a starter for next year. It also brings up a potentially interesting debate down the road. If this is a serious knee injury like a torn MCL, it's possibilty Castillo will lose some mobility in the field. As the Stats Geek has previously mentioned, range has proven to be a bit of trouble for Castillo to this point in his career. It could be affected more by this injury. As much as we love watching Castillo and Jack Wilson turn double plays, Castillo certainly has an arm that could handle third base, a position where less range is required. With what we've seen from his first two years, he could certainly develop into a 20-25 homer a year player. The answer to our third base problem might be right in front of us.

As long as we're talking manager rumors

I posted about Ken Macha earlier today, so as long as we're on the topic of manager rumors, Jerry Crasnick has a long piece about Jim Leyland today on ESPN Insider. The main jist of it is that he's hankering to manage again. Where is a matter of conjecture at this point, but like Macha he may be willing to work close to his family for cheaper than market value. Of course than again, I'm talking about what is most likely a fantasy situation, one in which we're looking for a manager in the offseason. If we're not in that situation, we'll never find out if these guys will come here for an affordable price. I've never really been much of a Leyland fan and I'm not sure he'd be the best manager for this team (I'll go a little further into that if we're actually looking for a manager this offseason, I'm just stating this for the record) but I'd love to be in the position that we're looking to hire a manager this offseason.

Nevermind

Since that last post we managed exactly zero hits and lost 3-1 on only three hits. Fogg gave up 11 hits and 3 runs in 5 innings. We're now a sparkling 2-8 against the Cardinals this year. We also lost Castillo for an indeterminate amount of time after being spiked and injuring his knee. The play looked pretty ugly, and I guess we'll know for sure how bad it is after an MRI. The Cardinals have been cold lately so if we're following the script of this year they'll probably sweep us as we've helped a lot of teams bust out of slumps this year.

A somewhat pleasant surprise

I just got back from my night class and flipped on the game, and much to my surprise, we aren't getting crushed by the Cardinals. Admittedly, I was thinking the score would be closer to the hit column right now (12-3) instead of the actual score (3-1). Of course Greg Brown just informed me that Jose Castillo left the game with an "injury to his MCL." And it's true, three hits after 6 aren't impressive. I suppose we have to take victories where we can get them.

Ken Macha

Today's PG has a Q&A with Murrysville native and possible AL Manager of the Year candidate (OK, I have no idea who's considered the frontrunner at this point, but I don't know how he can't at least get a look) Kenny Macha. Most of this doesn't concern Bucco fans, but this part may:

You are in the final year of a three-year contract. How are negotiations going on a new deal?

Macha: Right now, there have been no talks. I'm not worrying about it.

Given Beane's track record with managers (from the impression Moneyball gave I'd say he views them kind of like he views closers) it won't be a shocker to see Macha looking for a job this offseason. I would imagine there would be some interest in him (there sure was in the past when he was A's bench coach, the A's often wouldn't even let him interview with other teams because they wanted him to succeed Howe) with the way the A's have turned around this year. He's expressed interest in the Bucs in the past (interviewed with the team after the 2000 when Lamont wasn't brought back, along with Terry Francona and of course Lloyd) and it wouldn't be out of the question for him to want to come back here after being so far from home for such a long time (7 years total in Oakland after this year). The question is, of course, whether there will be a job for him here or not.

Gammons

Gammons has another article up today on Insider. This one's on "Future Stars", made up of players that have made their debut this season. Not surprisingly, our very own Mr. Duke makes the list at #5, ahead of guys like Felix Hernandez, Ryan Howard, and Ervin Santana (who pitched a lights out game against the Red Sox on national TV yesterday). This probably means Duke is screwed. Gammons' word on Duke:

To start 6-0, 1.87 ... "If he stays healthy," says one scout, "he'll be a legitimate number one. He had great command, he's tough to pick up and he's poised like he's 30."

The only other Bucco on the list is Ryan Doumit, who clocks in at #20, the last position on the list.

Later on in the article he has more about our plight in Pittsburgh. For what seems like the 5th time in as many years, he tell us there's light at the end of the tunnel because of our pitching. He of course mentions Duke, our prospects of a healthy Perez, Gorzellany, Maholm, Bullington, Burnett, Van Benschoten, Dave Williams, and a "deep bullpen anchored by Mike Gonzalez and Jose Mesa" (his words, not mine). He does an awful lot of Dave Littlefield fluffing though, which I'm not sure if I completely agree with.

When Dave Littlefield took over as GM, he knew the fastest way to rebuild the franchise was with pitching. "But now we're beginning to see position players get here," he says.

Still, I have to admit, that list of pitchers certainly looks promising. As I've said before, our hitters have been bad this year, but with what we've seen from the rookies this year I think that it can be sufficient if our pitching pans out. That's a big if, as I can't really think of a pitching prospect that's made forward progress under McClendon in Pittsburgh (but that's a whole different post). Hope is one thing it's always nice to have though.

The Duke

Buster Olney has a piece on Duke today in his ESPN Blog (which is Insider only like much of ESPN.com these days). It's a bit late coming, as it mostly talks about the Duke/Maddux face-off from a month or so ago. It then talks about the circumstances under which we got him (scared teams off with his signability, appeared set to go to college, signed with us when the money became "real"). It's also got the usual glowing quotes from Spin Williams:

"I've been in the Pirate organization for 27 years, and I've never seen anybody like this kid. Even when the pressure's on, he stays within himself. He's got the makeup and poise of someone who's been doing this for 10 years."

Olney is more impressed by a specific game, the game that I also thought was Duke's best by far:

The best example of that came on the day he dueled Maddux. The Cubs had runners at first and third, nobody out, Duke nursing a 2-0 lead, with MVP candidate Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez due to bat. Duke pumped a fastball over the inside corner for strike two, surprising Lee, and then, with Lee cognizant of the inside corner, Duke spun his nasty breaking ball -- and Lee flailed badly for strike three. Then Ramirez grounded into an inning-ending doubleplay, and Duke went on to throw eight scoreless innings. Since then, he's given plenty of reason for other hitters to gawk at him.

It's also got some quotes from Brian Graham, our Director of Player Development. He's not usually someone you hear from in the PG articles, and I'd question his credentials (seeing as how he's OUR director of development, not a team with a better track record in that department) but, as usual, his review of Duke is glowing:

Graham saw Duke pitch a game late in a minor-league season, and saw that Duke was tired -- somewhat weary, at the end of a long summer. Rather than try to bull his way through the situation and continue firing mediocre fastballs, Duke went to the soft stuff. "I saw him use his changeup back to back pitches," said Graham. "He used the weapons he had to be successful. For a pitcher to have that good of a feel for himself at that age was remarkable."

The obsession with Duke in the national media died quickly with the arrival of King Felix in Seattle, but he certainly isn't being ignored. I have tickets for Tuesday so hopefully we'll keep the five man rotation intact at least until then as I haven't seen him pitch yet and seeing him is high on the priority list for the beginning of this semester.

Phillies 4 Pirates 3

Well, that was the type of loss we've kind of come to expect this year. It was pretty exciting to see Eldred hit another homer, the comeback we pieced together in the 6th to tie things up at three were nice, but Rick White sucked and blew our chances at victory, along with Mark Redman's inability to give us a quality start and Ryan Doumit's baserunning mistake. Not only that, but we lose the season series to the Phillies, 4-3. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by losses like this by August 21st, but it's still depressing. At least Brad Eldred is launching homers at an impressive rate. At least we've got that to look forward to.

The too much information department

Lanny just told Bob Walk than he and John Wehner were watching American Pie on FX last night to do research on Ryan Doumit's nickname, Stifler. Sometimes I wonder if these guys even know a baseball game is going on on the field.

Sunday roundup

It's a slow Sunday today, the day before classes start here at Duquesne, and things are just kind of drifting along. The Pirates are hoping to bounce back from a performance that looked like they cared as little about baseball on a night the Steelers had a preseason game as the rest of the city. They're going against some guy named Eude Brito as we speak. He's a lefty, Rowdy was wondering how Eldred would do against him, Brad answered with a homer in his first at-bat. Paul Meyer talks to Lloyd about the implications of having a rookie hit cleanup in the Notebook today and Charlie talks about the abusurdities of said article. Also of note, according to the Baseball America Prospect Report (free, and highly recommended) Brian Bullington won his 4th game in his last five starts, in which he has an ERA of 1.00. Maybe he's finally starting to turn the corner.

Also, for anyone from back home that's interested, Kennedy Catholic's own Nolan Reimold was recently promoted to the Orioles' upper level Class A affiliate in the Carolina League, the Frederick Keys. In his five games there, he's hitting .412 with 4 homers and 7 RBIs, giving all of us that played for the pathetic KCHS teams circa 2001-2002 hope that we can at least say we played high school baseball with a future major leaguer.

EX-PIRATES LEAD ROYALS TO VICTORY

The Kansas City Royals ended their 19 game losing streak today. How did they do it? With RBIs from Matt Stairs and Emil Brown, of course. That's right, Emil Brown and Matt Stairs are both in the league. The rest of the MLB sends their castoffs to us, and we send our castoffs to the Royals. And every once in a while, the Royals win. I guess things could be worse.

Phillies 6 Pirates 1

Not much noteable from this one. I didn't pay a whole ton of attention to it, being without a radio at school and all. Jason Bay left the game with what I'm being told were called "bruised ribs" which is just about as interesting as the game got, as after Bay left the game we got a whopping four hits, three of which ESPN's play-by-play calls "infield singles" (two by Brad Eldred, amazingly). The rest of Pittsburgh doesn't seem to have noticed there was a baseball game tonight, what with the Steelers and Dolphins playing the ugliest pre-season game ever.

Static

No TV tonight, though as it's been pointed out to me it may be worth it to tune into the radio just to hear what the guys say when they don't think anyone is listening (what with the Steelers on TV and all). Dave Williams goes to the mound with the intention of adding to his team-best 10 wins against Brett Myers, who's been getting lit up lately.

More Waivers

Jayson Stark has an article on who's cleared waivers and who hasn't today. According to Stark, Jose Mesa has not even been put on waivers by the Bucs yet, as Pittsburgh fans scream "WHYYYYYYYYY"?

UPDATE (6:24 PM)- As pointed out in the comments, Daryle Ward has been claimed and pulled back. He was probably claimed as a block and seeing as how we aren't paying him much, I can't see any harm in keeping him the rest of the year.

ANOTHER UPDATE (8:09 PM)- I really should read these articles closer. Mark Redman was claimed and pulled back also, so we're stuck with him for the rest of the year. More bad news.

Saturday

Rory says the more rookies we play, the more we win, so play them more. Along the same lines, we were told for a couple years we weren't bringing anyone up until we could bring all these guys up together. Now that they're up together, not keeping them together on the field would appear, at least to me, to defeat the purpose. The more Eldred, Doumit, and Duffy play, the more there seems to be to like. I'd say we might as well afford McLouth the same opportunity.

Today's notebook reports that Ollie will be headed to Indy to make some rehab starts. With the way Duke, Eldred, Doumit, and Duffy are playing, having Ollie make a couple good starts for us at the end of the year would be a great way to go into next year. The notebook also discusses limits for Duke and hints that when Perez goes back they may just stick to a six man rotation for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, Paul Meyer's fawning over our young talent continues with a piece on Neil Walker. Words like "one of a kind" and "best of his age group" and of course "special" or similar things pepper the whole article. I won't argue that Walker has put up some great numbers for a 19-year-old in full-season ball this year (.296 average, .776 OPS, 12 homers, 32 doubles, 67 RBIs in 116 games at Hickory according to Baseball America), but you'd swear that him and Duke were Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra with the way Meyer talks about them. I suppose if Walker does get sent to Arizona this fall we'll get an idea of just how good he is. The notebook also mentions that both Walker and McCutchen might see some (very) late season promotions, to Lynchburg and Williamsport, respectively. They made similar moves last year, so something like that wouldn't be shocking.

Pirates 11 Phillies 2

Kip Wells hadn't won on the road since May. The Phillies have never beaten Kip Wells. Something had to give. The Phillies gave. They gave a lot. It seemed like everytime we got on base tonight, someone got a hit to score the run. Almost everything we hit found a hole. Kip Wells hit a home run. Brad Eldred crushed a ball into the stratosphere. The umpire gave Kip a big strike zone and he used it, almost masterfully. For the second time in a week, we've beaten up on the Wild Card leaders (last week the Astros were the leaders when we played them). Nothing would make me happier than to put a crimp into the Phillies postseason plans, so hopefully we can keep this up.

"Kip Wells drives it deep. Forget it!"

Those words from Greg Brown can make anyone within 100 feet of a TV turn around and check things out. 4-0 Bucs in the second.

Tonight

Kippy vs. the Phillies version of Zach Duke, Robinson Tejada (Teh-hay-da, kind of like the bad Chris Berman pun "You say teh-hay-da, I say teh-ha-da" only you actually do say te-hay-da). Kip hasn't sucked on the road lately, but he still hasn't won away from PNC since early May. Then again there was the dominating CG, 12K shutout he threw at the Phils back in July. Tejada has been good this year, but a bit wild (63 Ks, 46 BB). We only drew one walk off of Victor Zambrano last night so I wouldn't count on much though.

Meanwhile, Jayson Stark compiled a list of the fastest runners in both leagues and Chris Duffy was nowhere to be seen. A terrible crime, I say!

Big Bad Brad and Doumit

Today's notebook (which is just about the only Pirate-related column this late in the week at this time of year) talks about Eldred and Doumit trying to find a comfort zone between power and contact, all while adjusting to big league pitching. This will, of course, be made easier if they get to play like regulars. In that vein, Lloyd says that the recent trend of Doumit starting a lot more (4 times in the last 5). I just wonder what took so long.

Roberto

This is something all Pirate fans should keep in mind today (what's left of it). I encourage everyone to head over to Charlie's site and post Roberto memories or thoughts about your other favorite Buccos if you have time.

Pirates 5 Mets 0

Tonight's lineup was probably a decent look into the future of this ballclub:

1. Duffy, CF
2. McLouth, RF
3. Bay, LF
4. Eldred, 1B
5. Mackowiak, 3B
6. Doumit, C
7. Castillo, 2B
8. Wilson, SS
9. Duke, P

Hopefully, the result can be indicative of the future as well. Brad Eldred slammed a 2 run homer, Doumit had three hits and a ribbie, Castillo had two doubles (which he tried and failed to stretch into triples) and 2 RBIs, Bay took two pitches like a champ, and responded with a hit, a couple runs scored and possibly a homer-saving catch in the 8th. Duke? Only seven scoreless, two hit innings for win number six on the year (all coming after losses). He even chipped in his first hit. When we win games like tonight, it makes watching nights with Daryle Ward and Tike Redman and Humberto Cota in the starting lineup even tougher. Hopefully those nights will be fewer and further between from here on out.

Tonight

Zach Duke vs. Victor "82 Ks, 63 walks" Zambrano. Of course last time we faced Zambrano we only drew 1 walk in 8 innings. Then this happened. Zach Duke looks to remain perfect and bounce back from his two worst starts of the year. Signs point to Duke taking a much less regular role in the rotation from this point out.

Injuries and the notebook

Oliver Perez is close to making some rehab starts and Craig Wilson is swinging a bat says today's notebook in the PG.

Injuries have made us suck, says Dave Littlefield.

Zach Duke's last start of the year might be tonight, implies Lloyd.

Perez and the rookies will play winterball if they accept, declares Lloyd.

My take on all this: If Duke isn't hurting, he can't possibly build stamina by being stopped at the same point in the season as if he were in AAA. If he only throws 160 innings every year, he'll never be ready to throw more. We should be careful with him, but not stupid. That being said, I hope there's nothing more to this than us being overly careful. If he's hurt, well, I don't even know what I'd do. And isn't it ironic that after everything that's been done this year, the end result will be Oliver Perez playing winter ball, just like he wanted to do all along. Oliver Perez 1, Pirates 0.

Mets 5 Pirates 1

I didn't see much of last night's game and didn't have time to write about it then due to a bunch of things I had to do last night. So what happened? Well, we scored on a Jason Bay homer in the first and things looked good. Then in the bottom of the first Carlos Beltran scored on a Cliff Floyd single. From first base. Our stellar RF/CF combination of Restovich and Redman (why the hell does this guy ever start, if he's in center at the next game I go to I might leave before a pitch is thrown) couldn't track down a ball in the gap, allowing the debacle. Josh Fogg gave up a couple more runs in the 4th, then got into a jam in the 6th. Salomon Torres game in and did what our bullpen does best, let inherited runners score. We tried to come back, even getting runners on base from time to time, but inevitably choked at every chance we got (especially 2nd and 3rd, no outs in the 8th with Eldred, Doumit, and Castillo due up). We got mostly shut down by Glavine (who's been awful this year) and Aaron Heilman (who isn't exactly a bullpen ace either).

One curious side note from the game. In the fourth inning with Beltran on second and no outs we intentionally walked Cliff Floyd to get to David Wright. Coming into last night's game, Wright was 5-for-6 on the year with 13 RBIs after an intentional walk. He immediately doubled both runners in. So we get to the sixth inning with Cairo on second and Floyd up with one out, and what do we do? We intentionally walk him to get to David Wright. Torres only walks Wright this time, no harm done (until the next batter doubles in two more runs). This strikes me as the kind of thing someone on our coaching staff should know. You know, something like "David Wright takes those intentional walks pretty seriously, he's come up huge after them this year. You might wanna think twice before walking Floyd tonight," instead, he kills us and we lose. Typical Pirate baseball.

Some Wednesday humor

Dan McCarthy at Barstool Sports has compiled a list comparing every Major League team to a Simpsons character (via Cardnilly).

Some are obvious:

New York Yankees - C. Montgomery Burns - Driven to success by an almost unimaginable wealth of resources, which they use to ruthlessly crush their enemies, although typically not by the most efficient means possible (blocking out the sun, Bernie Williams). Seemingly unaware of the (obvious) reasons why they are hated. They seem to have been a key actor in pretty much everything important that happened before 1970.

Some are a bit more obscure:

Texas Rangers - Col. Antoine "Tex" O'Hara (Fat Oil Magnate) - Distinctly Texan. Prone to making ill-advised business decisions that never turn out well (purchasing the World's Fattest Racehorse, trading Sammy Sosa for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique).

All are quite good, and mostly hilarious:

Cleveland Indians - Apu Nahasapeemapetilon - Identity entirely based on a ridiculous stereotype of Indians. Jovial ongoing relationship with a big fat guy who underperforms a lot (Homer, C.C. Sabathia). Soldiering on gamely despite a terrible workplace environment (the Kwik-E-Mart, Cleveland). Used to play a much bigger role in the grand scheme of things, but now they make only occasional appearances, and they're usually getting abused.

I would highly recommend reading the whole thing, especially if you're a Simpsons fan (and who isn't?). And if you're curious, the Pirates are the Sea Captain. Yargh!

Q&A Time

Today Dejan answers questions on Lloyd, hears some effusive praise of Bay by the readers, defends the Jody Gerut trade, all while the readers anger with Tike Redman boils over. Some good stuff today. Just Keep in mind that the first writer may have read my mind, and if we announce any time soon that we're picking up McClendon's option for next year my head might explode.

I'm not sure what to make of this

Yesterday in Fort Worth, Texas 87 year old Bobby Bragan managed the Fort Worth Cats for one game to become the oldest manager in history, besting Casey Stengel by 8 days. Why is this noteworthy? Because from 1956 to 1957 Bobby Bragan managed the Pirates. Since then the Pirates have been managed by (in order) Danny Murtaugh, Harry Walker, Danny Murtaugh, Larry Shephard, Alex Grammas, Danny Murtaugh, Bill Virdon, Danny Murtaugh, Chuck Tanner, Jim Leyland, Gene Lamont, and Lloyd McClendon (according to baseball-reference.com). Bragan is probably best remembered in Pittsburgh as the guy whose firing brought in Danny Murtaugh and the end of 9 straight losing seasons in 1958, then a World Series in 1960. In the recent documentary on FSP about the 1960 World Series team, Bragan was remembered as a manager that refused to trust his talented young players. According to Maz, Bragan once pinch hit for him with the bases loaded in the FIRST INNING. The first thing Murtaugh told Mazeroski was "You're my second baseman and I'm not pinch hitting for you." I assume most of you can see where I'm headed with the mismanagement of young, talented players comments. Let's just say that my highest hope for Lloyd McClendon at the moment is that he can be remembered as our Bobby Bragan of the early 21st Century.

Waiver info, for anyone that's interested

Peter Gammons has an (Insider only, sorry) article about the mass confusion caused by the waiver wire right up at ESPN right now. It's mostly about teams that the ESPN.com reading audience cares about and it only mentions three Pirates. I'm sure Littlefield attempted to put more than three players through waivers since most GMs put a large portion of their roster on the wire to keep as many doors open as possible, but here's the three Gammo mentions.

1. Rob Mackowiak was put on waivers and pulled back by the Bucs. This is kind of surprising because I thought we'd been trying to deal him more or less all year, though I suppose the claim to him may have just been a block to keep a contender from getting a decent left-handed bat for their bench.
2. Ryan Vogelsong cleared waivers. I can't imagine any contender will want him for their pen, and I'm not ready for us to give up on him yet. I'm fairly sure this is meaningless and can't imagine why Gammons thought this to be worthy of mentioning.
3. Josh Fogg cleared waivers. This is the most meaningful of the three Pirates mentioned because Fogg could be of some potential use to a contending team (or a psuedo-contender like the Yankees) with starting pitching woes. He's more than adequate at keeping his team in the game and he has a winning record with four awful teams in Pittsburgh. It's been hinted again and again that Littlefield doesn't think he's talented enough to be a Major League starter and we have a ton of pitching in the minors, some of which will be ready in a short amount of time. Fogg is the most oft mentioned name to be dropped from the rotation. All of this means that it's possible that Josh Fogg won't be a Pirate come September 1st. Of course this is all just speculation. After all, the biggest name at the July 31st deadline in all of baseball was Matt Lawton, and I'm not sure many people would have forecasted that on July 16th.

UPDATE (8/17, 4:48 pm)- The article also mentions Grabow was claimed and pulled back, which isn't at all unexpected or surprising. I didn't see it the first time through because the column is mostly just a mess of names.

Mets 6 Pirates 2

Tonight's game was really depressing for me for some reason. Maybe it was the aforementioned failings of Ward and Redman, or maybe just the absence of Doumit and Eldred. Maybe it was Kris Benson baffling us for 7 innings. It probably had a lot to do with the awful taste left in my mouth from watching Jose Castillo slide headfirst into first base in the 9th inning on what should've been and infield hit. I realize I'm probably preaching to the choir right now, but I can't think of a stupider play in baseball. There's absolutely no reward to it, as it slows you down, and there's a high risk factor of jamming or breaking a finger on the base. Shame on Castillo for trying it, and shame on the coaching staff for having a player that thinks sliding into first base is OK (over two years I'm sure he's tried it before in a game, spring training, practice, etc., and if he has, there's no way it should ever happen again). That play actually brought the first John Wehner quote that will ever grace the space of this blog:

Do they slide across the finish line in the 100 meter dash in the Olympics? If sliding like that made you faster, every race would end with people diving across the line to get an advantage.

I have to say, Wehner is actually growing on me a little bit. He's usually got decent insight (espeically involving hitting and our young players) and he's slowly becoming less and less boring. I think he may have moved ahead of Steve Blass (simply because if Blass is in the booth you're never sure if you're listening to/watching a baseball game or listening to two guys chat about life on the front porch).

Anyways, getting back on point, if a serious commitment isn't made to Eldred and Doumit and Duffy FAST interest is going to die hard in this team in a way that hasn't been seen in a long time. The Steelers have Hines back in camp and they looked good last night. The Pens have signed Palffy, Gonchar, LeClair, Thibault, and Recchi (before the lockout) as well as Fleury, Malone, that Crosby guy and Mario (though no student tickets for college kids is what I'm hearing, that's not a good thing). Pitt football has Wannastedt and Palko and anything can happen in the weakened Big East this year. Two straight BCS bowls aren't out of the question for the Panthers. If the Pirates don't give Pittsburgh something to be excited about (and Duffy, Duke, Eldred, Doumit, and co. certainly appear to be worthy of our excitement to this point, which is why they need to play everyday) they're going to lose ground fast.

Blah

The Mark Redman second inning explosion is depressing to watch. I'm really, really sick of watching this guy suck. Of course Snell did get optioned to AAA today (to make room for Gonzalez) so there's no relief in sight.

The first inning

A promising first inning is ended by a Daryle Ward double play. Golly-gee-whiz it sure is exciting to watch futureless players kill rallies while hopes for the future sit on the bench.

Tonight's game

Tonight, Mr. Anna Benson makes his first against against his old 'mates. He's 8-4 with a 3.54 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP, putting him on pace for his best year by far, but he's still way under the vast expectations people around here had for him. Of course he's been much better than Mark Redman, the guy who ended up in his slot in our rotation, and he's contributed more to the Mets than Wigginton has to us. Of course, we'd have never paid him nearly what the Mets did in the offseason (and he hasn't quite been worth it), so I guess something's better than nothing (but still, Wigginton, *shudder*). So why has Benson been better than ever this year? Two stats tell the story. When he was here, he was more often than not like Kip Wells, always gunning for a strikeout as opposed to just getting an out. With the Pirates over his career he struck out 553 batters while walking 299. That's a 1.81:1 K/BB ratio. With the Mets he's struck out 127 while only walking 48. That ratio comes out to 2.6:1. Sure, it's a smaller sample size, but while with the Mets, Benson is striking out almost a full batter more between walks than he was with the Pirates. He's not striking more people out either as his K/9 with the Mets is 6.02, as compared to his 6.36 with the Bucs (not much of a difference, but certainly not higher). It's possible that he's just healthier, but then again, it's also possible that someone is actually teaching him how to pitch.

Dejan on Bay

More on Bay from Dejan in today's PG. It's mostly about his work ethic, natural abilities, etc. etc. It's also noted that unlike the guys ahead of him in the VORP category (I know, a big media paper talking about a stat like VORP, the secret baseball police will probably drag Dejan out back for that one), Lee (surrounded by Aramis Ramirez and sometimes Nomar), Pujols (in that monster Cards lineup), A-Rod (with Sheffield, Jeter, the newly resurgent Giambi, etc. etc. batting around him), and Miguel Cabrera (backed by Delgado), Bay is mostly alone in the middle of the Pirates lineup. They also mention his improvement in the outfield, and that he's still recovering from that shoulder surgery and his arm strength is finally starting to come back. I think I can actually see Rusty Kuntz glowing when I read his quotes about Bay's outfield play. All in all, it's nice to see credit going where it's due.

The Stats Geek

Today the Stats Geek takes another look at the middle infielders. Everyone has a different opinion about what a team that's 16 games under .500 in August needs to do to win. I said yesterday I thought the pitching was lacking. The Stats Geek brings up another good point today, when Castillo and Wilson both hit well, we win. This kind of goes along with my line of thinking that we don't necessarily need more power if we get more production out of everyone in the lineup.

That means starting with Jack. Everyone expected a drop-off in the offensive categories after last year, but not quite like this. There is some promising stuff brought up by O'Neill though. Since April (when he was clearly bothered by his appendectomy, no matter what anyone says) he's been hitting .257. Since he's been dropped out of the 2 hole to the 8 slot, he's hitting .278. His defense, of course, has been superb and there's bunches of numbers to back that up. I think how Jack finishes at the plate this year will go a long ways towards telling us which Jack will show up next year. We don't need .300 with 200 hits, but if he hits .280 or so next year, he's more than worth it because of his glove.

Then we have Castillo. He's surprisingly below average in a lot of offensive categories among second basemen, but the NL second baseman crop is very strong this year. Still, as O'Neill says, he's only 24 and he's already surpassed most of his rookie numbers in less ABs this year, all while striking out less. He's getting better at the plate in front of our eyes and it might not be long until we see his name climbing up the lists towards the Marcus Giles's and Jose Vidro's of the world (Jeff Kent and Chase Utley are probably out of the question). And we know about his arm, and the double plays. What comes up next is something of a surprise, however. All last year, I thought it was a load of crap that we were being fed about Castillo's great defense (read some of my posts from April if you don't believe me). He was kind of the Kevin Young of second base in my eyes. He had poor range, so he made easy plays look hard and never even got to the hard plays, thus avoiding making himself look bad. I thought he was doing better this year, but the numbers don't bear that out. He's got the worst zone rating of any second baseman in baseball and the only second baseman with more errors are Soriano and Kent, perennial lead-gloves at second. The article doesn't even take into account the numerous mental errors he makes. One that immediately sticks out was in the Clemens game against Houston. With a runner on first and the Rocket at the plate, the infield was prepping for the bunt. As with most teams, the shortstop would be covering second. Clemens instead swang away, and hit what should have been (with his foot speed) an easy double play, except that Castillo had broken to cover second (with Jack already at the base). They didn't score any runs, but a team like us can't afford plays like that. There was also a play a couple weeks back that saw Jack snare a line drive and have an easy double play at second, only to find that Castillo hadn't covered the base. Castillo's still very young, and he's definitely improving (both in the field and at the plate) but he still has a long way to come.

Well this is nice, eh?

Wow, a Pittsburgh Pirate won an actual, honest to goodness award this year. Besides Zach Duke's snowball's chance of winning ROtY (he more or less needs to finish just like he's started to make up for his very late start, I'd reckon) I didn't think we'd see it this year. So congratulations to Jason Bay, whose 11-for-25, 2 homer, 8 ribbie, 8 RBI week won him this week's NL Player of the Week award (according to Yahoo's rankings he was also the top fantasy player of the last week and actually the last whole month). I heard him described as a guy that doesn't have any stats that jump off the page at you, but does everything extremely well. Actually one number does stick out, albeit not a conventional one. Bay is sixth in all of baseball with a VORP of 59.7. VORP is more or less a measurement of how many runs a player contributes to the team over an average bench player (Charlie posted the whole team's VORPs a week ago). Bay isn't just a decent middle of the order hitter for us, he's one of the best hitters in the league.