Monday's musings

Today's an off day in August that just so happens to be the day of the first Steelers preseason game. To be honest, I'm not really quite ready for football yet. I love the Steelers, but football doesn't quite ignite the same fire in me that baseball does, and this year has been quite the disappointment from a Pirates fan's perspective. Anyways, since it's the Hines-less Steelers vs. the TO-less Eagles tonight, there's very little focus on our Buccos anywhere today.

The PG notebook mentions the terrible fate Dave Williams saved us from yesterday by picking up his 10th win. Without a 10 game winner, we'd be only the 3rd team in the 119 year history of the Bucs without a double digit winner. No one else is really close either, Kip, Fogg, and Ollie all have 6 wins, but I wouldn't count on any of them getting 4 more. Duke and Redman have five, it'll take a minor miracle for Duke to get to 10 and it looks like it'll take even more of a miracle for Redman to get to six. The truth is, as much as everyone bitches about the offense, as goes the pitching, so go the Pirates. When we were hot in May/June the pitching was great. Redman and Williams were ground-ball machine clones, Kip looking great, Ollie was turning things around, and Josh Fogg was Josh Fogg. Just look at the scores of that June run that got us to .500. Then Kip and Redman fell apart, Fogg started serving up more taters than usual, Ollie reverted back to April form and kicked a cart, etc. etc. Then we had the All-Star break and maybe the worst stretch of Pirate baseball in recent memory. All of a sudden, the Bucs are only worth watching every five days when Zach Duke takes the mound. Why? True, we're not an offensive powerhouse and Mackowiak and Ward disappeared months ago, but our team hot streaks and cold streaks have ridden with the pitching this year. We just need some more consistency. When Dave Williams is your most consistent starter, that's not a good thing (no offense to Dave, but he's a solid 3-4 guy at best, he definitely doesn't have the stuff to be an ace). What will this team need to be good next year? Well, some hitting for sure, but everything we've seen this year from Castillo, Bay, Eldred, and Doumit leads me to believe the middle of the lineup certainly won't be awful next year, especially if Jack Wilson bounces back and we can get some kind of production from Craig Wilson or any right fielder at all. The key will be the pitching. How will Burnett bounce back? We saw some good things from him around July last year before he got hurt. Is Duke for real? Can Ollie keep his head straight and his arm healthy and be the ace we need? How about Kip? Maybe he'll be better off if other guys pick up the slack and it doesn't all fall to him. Can Dave Williams keep improving? What happens with a good team behind Josh Fogg? What about Maholm, Gorzelanny, Bullington, Van Benschoten, etc.? The pitching is supposed to be the strength of this organization and it's about time they started pulling their weight. A 4.52 ERA and a 1.55 to 1 K/BB ratio from the starters just doesn't cut it.

Also in the notebook there were two more disturbing items. apparently Daryle Ward missed three starts at first base due to fluid in his knee. That's funny, it's hard to miss starts when you aren't the starting first baseman. I thought Eldred was the starter, but apparently the team thinks differently.

Also, we might move Duke back in the rotation a couple days. Both the notebook and Joe Rutter at the Trib (via HW) mention that they might give Duke's start against the Mets to Kip and let Zach go against the Phils. It's probably nothing, but I get overly paranoid about Pirates pitching, and things like this are how "it" begins.