April in review

There's a lot that's happened since the last day of March when I wrote my outlook for 2006. The basic jist of it was that if the pitching staff, lead by Oliver Perez, came around and if things broke in the correct manner to get Burnitz and Randa out of the lineup, that we might be better than people thought. To this point, the only thing that has broken in any manner for this team is Sean Casey's back. Things started out ugly, as in losing our first six and going 1-6 in the first week ugly. The bats came alive towards the end of the first week and that continued into week 2 when we managed a 3-4 week against the Dodgers and Cubbies. Things have been downhilll from there as we've been 3-11 in the last two weeks of this month (1-5 and 2-4). The pitching has begun to right itself, but the bats have completely disappeared. So what have we learned this April? Is there any reason to be hopeful for May and beyond? Some observations/thoughts:

• Until I see something that tells me otherwise, I'm not waiting for the old Oliver Perez to come back. He isn't bad in the Kip Wells mold, as in "I can see the talent there and he's not throwing poorly, he's just missing his spots and trying to strike everyone out," he's bad in the "He can't fool anyone, he's got nothing at all in the tank." Honestly, I hope for his sake that he's hurt, because if it's something other than an injury, I don't know if he can be fixed.
• As for the rest of the staff, Duke is slowly coming around, Snell has shown flashes of brilliance, and Maholm capped off the month with a start reminiscent of the way he ended last year. Not that we'd bail on Duke, but I see no reason not to stick with any of these three for the forseeable future. Victor Santos has been, well, Victor Santos. If we can't do something about Perez though, he may hold his rotation spot longer than any of us would've liked to see. Still, I think he was the correct choice over Duckworth.
  
• Jack Wilson is looking more and more every day like he was worth the money. Nothing make me happier than to be proven like this, so I hope Jack keeps it up.
• Speaking of Wilson #1, the only reasons to come to PNC Park besides hoping that a young pitcher will show signs of promise are Jack Wilson, Craig Wilson, and Jason Bay. The rest of the regular 8 is painful to watch, though Duffy and McLouth will get a bye for being young (this month only, one of the two better pick things up).
• In honor of my little brother taking his SATs recently... Lloyd McClendon:Craig Wilson::Jim Tracy:Freddy Sanchez
• This is something we knew before April, but it's been confirmed, Burnitz and Randa were bad signings. Very bad signings.
  
• Ryan Doumit is a very poor defensive catcher. Ronny Paulino seems to be a rather good defensive catcher. Both hit better than Humberto Cota. It's time to find Ryan Doumit a new position, and first base/right field is a good place to do it, especially if it means getting Burnitz out of the lineup.
• I may have overreacted to the Matt Capps situation at first. The kid brings the heat (96 today) and is getting lots of people out now that he's settled in. Glad to see it.
• Kind of like a postman, Ryan Vogelsong will alway be there for us and so long as our expectations are low enough, he'll never disappoint.
• The rest of our division is much better than we are. Some of them may come back to earth, but 3-16 in the division in a month is just unacceptable.
  
• If the first two years are any indication, Jason Bay will heat up in May. Especially if Tracy wises up and moves Thor to cleanup in a fulltime manner. By the end of May, I have a feeling the Ian Snell, Zach Duke, and Paul Maholm we see will not resemble the guys from the early part of this month. I'm afraid that the Oliver Perez we see will. Still, May has to be better, doesn't it?
  

Phillies 5 Pirates 1

Baseball looks a lot different from Section 8 Row F (that's six rows back from where the pierogies finish their race for anyone counting at home). Prominent among the observations from there are that Ryan Howard is simply too big to be allowed and that Jack Wilson did in fact pump himself up a lot more than I thought he did this offseason (in terms of muscle mass, he's probably the biggest guy on the team, Craig Wilson and Jason Bay included). Also, it's very obvious that Oliver Perez is struggling with just about every pitch he throws. From the first base side up that close you can get a nice view of his mechanics, and they're flat out bad. When he pitches from the windup he does some strange double or triple hitch with the glove. He's clearly frustrated with his inability to just rear back and bring the heat like he used to and he constantly fidgets on the mound. It's just an all around bad situation, and I don't see it getting better any time soon. Also today, the Pirates were truly awful at the plate. The Phillies had a right handed counterpart for Perez on the mound, Gavin Floyd who was throwing about 91-92 and maxing out at 94. He couldn't find the strike zone all game to save his life (at one point in the fourth or fifth he had thrown more balls than strikes) and somehow we managed only a solo homer off him in his 6 and 2/3 that featured 6 hits and 5 walks. Prominently involved in that failure was Jeromy Burnitz, who twice made meek outs with runners on and 2 outs with a chance to get back into the game. Why he bats behind Bay (who took 3 walks today without any protection) is beyond me. The series win is nice, but we still only managed 7 runs in three games. That's not a sign of a team that's getting any better.

One more time

One last time I'm gonna head to the park to watch the Bucs and Phillies play. I've never actually seen a full series from start to finish and I haven't attended a non-opener day game in probably 10 years. And yet, free tickets two rows behind first base do not present themselves every day, so I'm giving the middle finger to finals for three hours to see if Oliver Perez can rejoin the rest of the staff in rediscovering his mojo (except Victor Santos, he has no discernible mojo). The key will be velocity, Tracy and Colborn be damned. As the Pujols/Perez feud last week taught us, Ollie still wants to be a power pitcher. He wants to throw heat and taunt batters, something that doesn't work with an 89 mph fastball. If his arm starts to come back, he'll be fine. He's certainly got the weather to do it, though he'll probably have a Jim Tracy Sunday lineup (read: Hernandez and/or Edwards) behind him.

What?

The Tracy insanity continues in today's Post Gazette where it's suggested that he might consider moving Saloman Torres back into the starting rotation. Wait, what? Without even considering how awful Torres has been as a starter over his time here in Pittsburgh this is an awful idea. In the current big league rotation Ian Snell has been the best pitcher in the last two turns of the rotation, Zach Duke is the de facto ace, I really doubt Oliver Perez is coming out of the rotation any time soon, and Paul Maholm pitched very well in his last outing. It would be certifiably insane to put Torres in the rotation over any of them. Victor Santos isn't very good, but we knew he wasn't very good and he's only supposed to be on the team to fill a rotation spot until Gorzellany (1-2, 3.81 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 26 Ks in 26 innings at Indy) or Burnett (2-1, 4.40 ERA, a high WHIP of 1.60 at Indy) are ready to pitch in Pittsburgh. Yeah, they're both lefties. No, it shouldn't matter. If Torres goes into the rotation over either one of these two, hell if he goes into the rotation at all, the whole front office and coaching staff should be fired on the spot. This probably won't happen, as intimated by Dejan in the article, but I can't believe it's even crossing anyone's minds at this point.

Evidence

Charlie at the Bucs Dugout and Billy at Romo have been compiling some damning evidence that Jim Tracy is just Lloyd McClendon in disguise. It's not pretty:

• Freddy Sanchez is only good because he doesn't play a lot. I agree with both Charlie and Billy, very terrifyingly reminiscent of the Craig Wilson situation circa 2003.
• Also from Romo, during tonight's pregame radio show with Tracy, he cited clutch hitting (like Hernandez solo game tying homer against the Cards) is what the team needs, as opposed to Craig Wilson's GIDP in the same game. Because, you know, Hernandez wasn't in position to tie that game up because of a homer by Craig earlier in the game or anything. EARTH TO JIM: ALL RUNS COUNT THE SAME.
  

This is not good. Hopefully the pitching can keep on carrying us, because I'm not going to be shocked to see human clutch machine Jose Hernandez start getting some more ABs, especially with Castillo struggling.

Pirates 3 Phillies 2

Talk about efficent, Paul Maholm cruised through 7 innings tonight on 96 pitches looking a lot like he did last year, scattering six hits and a walk and only yielding one run. Our offense wasn't much better at all. Actually, it was worse, managing only five base runners through the game with the only two extra base hits coming back to back in the fourth, a Bay double and a Burnitz homer. The pen also made things interesting, as after Damaso Marte sailed through two batters in the 8th Torres promptly came in and served up a homer to Rowand, then Gonzo and Hernandez combined to walk the bases loaded in the ninth before Hernandez induced an edge of the seat 5-3 double play to send the ginormous crowd (33,000) home sighing for relief and quoting Lou Brown "If we win tomorrow, that's three. That's a winning streak. It has happened before." Of course the most encouraging thing of these last two games has been the young pitching. Snell and Maholm have combined to show the large home crowds just how good this young staff can be (we already know what Duke and Perez can do, Duke is likely to do it, Perez... not so much). This team is going to win more games on the arms of this staff than they are on their bats, that's for sure. Now if we could only get those road games figured out...

Maholm and Lidle

I'm off to the park to hopefully see Paul Maholm snap out of his funk tonight against the Phillies lefty-centric lineup and Cory Lidle. Will be back later will a full report on Maholm and the quality of the "WE WILL" fleece blankets.

Jason Bay

Jason Bay April 2006 (2 games remaining): .278/.437/.494, 5 HR, 11 RBI, 17 R

Jason Bay April 2005: .292/.351/.472, 2 HR, 7 RBI, 9 R

Jason Bay May 2004 (missed April with shoulder surgery): .300/.377/.517, 2 HR, 8 RBI, 7 R

No reason to worry here, not one bit. In the first two years of his career, Bay has slugged over .600 in both second months of the season (May '05 and June '04). Guy just takes a while to get warmed up, that's all.

Pirates 3 Phillies 1

The seven game losing streak is gone, and on it's way out it passed Ian Snell blowing in like a whirlwind. Snell was fantastic boderline dominant last night against the Phillies mixing in at least two (maybe three) other pitches in with what looked like a dominant fastball. According to the stadium gun Snell hit 94 consistently all night and ramped things up to the 95-96 range in the 5-7th innings. It's true that the stadium gun can be anything but accurate, but it had Marte and Gonzalez both topping out around 93-94 last night, and I'd find it hard to believe either of them was throwing much softer than that. If it wasn't for a Joe Randa error in the 7th, we might be talking about 8 shutout innings for Snell last night (Randa dropped what looked like an almost sure double play ball). Also impressive was that Snell's night came against the lefty heavy Phillies lineup including Rollins (switch), Utley, Abreu, and Howard. Howard was especially impressed and had this to say:

He has such a good fastball that he could overpower folks in the minor leagues. He had to learn up here. I knew he was going to try to come up and overpower everybody, but he got me tonight on a 3-2 backdoor breaking ball.

The Post-Gazette recap recounts how Snell heard something on TV during the game that fired him up. I say we best piss him off before every start. Given his last good start against Houston, color me encouraged.

We left a bunch of guys on last night, but the Wilsons and Bay all came up with big hits when necessary to provide the margin of victory. It was impressive the way we managed to work around the black pit known as Burnitz between Bay and Thor last night to pick a run up in a scoreless game. We still left a lot of guys on, but throwing up a two spot in the bottom of the 7th after the Phillies tied things up was impressive. When you come into the night 5-18, baby steps are all you can really take anyways.

Letter

Dear Mark Cuban,

Please buy the Pittsburgh Pirates so that I can go to baseball games as I please and not feel guilty about it. I'm just a college kid who loves baseball and likes to hang out with his friends at the ballpark, I don't need some kind of complex about how I'm feeding a greedy monster that is destroying the Pittsbrugh Pirates every time I go to a ballgame.

Sincerely,
Pat Lackey


(Can you guys tell I'm headed to the game tonight? And actually, by some bizarre collection of circumstances, probably on Saturday and Sunday as well? I won't have fun, I promise. Maybe I'll wear a WHYGAVS bag over my head or something.)

New Bucco link

Another site calling the Pirate fans to arms is up, Pirating Pittsburgh. It's open to any Pirate fan that wants to submit something, so long as they register first. I'd say more, but they can describe themselves better than I can, so head on over and check it out.

Theme music

To avoid actually talking Pirates baseball, let's talk about one of the best things about going to the ballpark, hearing the ridiculous songs that the players have chosen for their at-bat music. Most of the players miss the mark terribly, so I'm here to rectify that. That's right, it's time for at-bat music for all of the Pirates active roster. There's only two rules, I have to be able to find it on my iPod and I can't use any artists twice. And I'll try not to be too mean.

Jason Bay- Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta, The Ghetto Boys. I would imagine that coming to PNC Park for Jason Bay on a daily basis must be similar to what going to Initech was like for Peter Gibbons.

Jeromy Burnitz- Living on a Prayer, Bon Jovi. Let's get the breakdown, Bon Jovi used to be kind of good, but not really. When I'm drunk, Bon Jovi is always a good idea for the jukebox. Jeromy Burnitz also used to be kind of good, but not really. And Dave Littlefield had to be drunk to think signing him was a good idea. And the title aptly describes any hopes he has for a decent year this year.

Freddy Sanchez- Fight for your Right, Beastie Boys. Except he has to keep fighting for his right to play.

Craig Wilson- Elevation, U2. I'm not touching this one, big guitar, awful song, strangely fitting for Craig Wilson. Plus, who's gonna argue with Thor on musical choice? Last year he changed his song to the Killers crapfest Mr. Brightside. In fact, I think I'm making this my ring tone. EL-E-VA-TION

Joe Randa- Better off Without You, The Clarks. I really like the Joker (who's just too past his prime to snag that song) and I feel bad, but this is self explanatory. Prove me wrong Joe, prove me wrong.

Jose Hernandez- Don't Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult. Jose's getting a little old, this is just some helpful advice.

Mike Edwards- Help I'm a Rock, Frank Zappa. Actually, a rock might be more useful than Mike Edwards.

Humberto Cota- Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Aptly describes Humberto, he doesn't bother himself with things like "hitting," he just catches. He's a (say it with me) simple kind of man.

Jack Wilson- Jumpin' Jack Flash, The Rolling Stones. Crazy how the only two people on the Pirates who's at-bat music I wouldn't touch are both named Wilson.

Jose Castillo- Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix. Jose does some great things with the glove, but sometimes when I watch Jose play second base I get the distinct impression that he, well, don't know if he's coming up or down.

Chris Duffy- Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who. Jake Brumfield. Jermain Allensworth. Chad Hermansen. Tike Redman. Chris Duffy. Hopefully Andrew McCutchen can rise above this mess.

Nate McLouth- What's My Age Again?, Blink-182. Seriously, I think this kid has class with my brother. My brother that's a junior in high school. This isn't being mean, it's being observant.

Ronny Paulino- I honestly don't feel like I know enough about Paulino to do this for him.

And good news, we have a bonus selection:

Dave Littlefield, Kevin McClatchy, and the Nutting Family- Song for the Dumped, Ben Folds Five. Sing it with me guys...

Give me my money back
Give me my money back
You bitch(es)
I want my money back
I want my money back
And don't forget
To give me back my black T-shirt.

Kevin Mench

Who wants to bet that if we traded for Mench in the offseason like we tried to he'd still be wearing the wrong size shoes?

A wise man once told me...

Not to dwell on a 5-18 baseball team on an off-day when I have a P-Chem final tomorrow. Some suggestions on how to spend your off-day...

Get angry, go to OnlyBucs.net, and join the IrateFans movement. The only way this is going to have any affect at all is if people stick with this and see it through, not start it and then quit when we win five of our next 10 games. It's going to need as many people as possible.

Laugh at what a bad idea it was for Oliver Perez to enrage Albert Pujols (via Deadspin, I mean where else would I find something like that?)

You could also go the non-baseball route today and...

Think about how freaking stupid it is that Aaron Gray entered the NBA Draft.

Fill out your mock draft sheets or whatever the hell it is that people that care about the draft fill out.

Alternatively, celebrate that Mel Kiper will be gone from your television for the next 49 weeks after Sunday.

You could also watch the first round of the NBA or NHL playoffs, but... naaaah. Save it up for the finals in July or whenever they are.

Of course you could just keep right on feeling bad for yourself and watch this nice little piece of work from Pirates55555 at YouTube

Two thoughts

There were actually two things I thought about yesterday's game that I didn't mention because I was having too much fun acting like a six-year-old with that picture of Albert Pujols. First off, Zach Duke clearly did't have his best stuff again and still managed to have a respectable outing. I mean 53 strikes in 102 pitches is not good and it's certainly very un-Duke-like. It's clear that Duke is still ironing out those changes to his mechanics that Colborn made. Still, I think he's getting there.

Second, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm not sure I pitch to Pujols at the end of the game. Let's weigh the options. First off, Pujols is at the plate. The guy is crazy good. Everyone in the park knew he was going to get a hit. Everyone watching the game on TV knew he was going to get a hit. Hell, I had to leave my apartment before the end of the game (chemistry nerd stuff, one of the grad students in my lab group was giving a public seminar on her research and I had to go listen), but when I snuck a peak at GameCast and saw runners on first and second and Pujols up, I knew the game was over. Especially with the ancient Roberto Hernandez on the mound. He's been decent this year, but the man does not inspire hope when going up against the man who very well may end up best hitter of this generation. On the other hand, Pujols is slow as molasses and if Hernandez could somehow induce a ball on the ground hit either in the general vicinity of Jack Wilson or directly at someone else in the infield it would be almost a certain double play. Still, not exactly something I'd count on, especially given the rather poor range of both Craig Wilson and the Joker and the complete indifference Jose Castillo has shown towards fielding ground balls this year. Oh and given the fact that Pujols doesn't hit ground balls. HE HITS LASER BEAMS. So, say we don't pitch to Pujols, that means Encarnacion comes up. The outfield is playing in the infield at this point because that's the only place they could've thrown anyone out from at that point. In effect, a flyball from Encarnacion is a win because in the 9th inning yesterday, Nate McLouth in right represented our best outfield arm and none of them were throwing Eckstein out at the plate from third. Encarnacion also had a sac fly earlier in the game. Still, he's been awful this year. Just putrid. I mean the only guy he showed any offense against all year is Victor Santos. A lot of people would be a lot better if they could hit against Santos every day of the week. After Encarnacion (assuming a K) is Spezio. Dudes with bright red strips of hair on their chin don't scare anyone when the game is on the line. That's a fact.

So there it is, I think that the fact that he's ALBERT FREAKING PUJOLS probably outweighs the decent possibilty of a double play from him at the plate. The biggest question about the whole thing is the outfield arms. With a decent arm in left or center, there's no chance in hell I pitch to Pujols yesterday. Even with Bay and Duffy out there, you do have to consider that there's no way yesterday's game could've ended worse for us. That sounds like hindsight, but raise your hand if you thought Pujols wasn't getting a hit there yesterday. That's what I thought.

Irate Fans

This is awesome. The fans in the forums at OnlyBucs have grabbed a domain name (www.iratefans.com) and are starting the "IrateFans" movement (see Irate=Pirates without the "P"...). I would describe it, but just check it out for yourself.

Via Zeke at Romo (not Billy as initially noted).

Cards 4 Pirates 3

Hey everyone look...

It's embarass yourself on National TV Day! Mulder and Duke are... well, duking it out on ESPN this afternoon. Duke will probably toss a gem, leading to a whole bunch of "The Pirates really aren't this bad" analysis from the geniuses at BBTN. We know better.

This one's already underway with the ESPN guys telling us how Craig Wilson isn't a good replacement for Sean Casey because he doesn't have great speed and is a double play threat. Heh.

... and of course Craig does hit into that inning ending DP right as I hit publish ending our hope to actually have a lead before the other team bats, something I don't think has actually happened this year.

...Behind after 1 again (1-0). Since I miss the lineups I also notice Jose Hernandez and Joe Randa in the field (Craig is in right today). Duke is struggling with his control again. Not a promising start.

... Sweet Jesus, I just realized that Steve Phillips is in the booth today. And he's talking about Scott Spezio's stupid dyed bright red strip of hair on his chin (I don't even know what to call that thing). No way I'm making it to the end of this one with the volume on, Phillips is worse than Wehner and Blass combined, and much stupider to boot. In fact, I hope no one introduces him to McClatchy today. We're going to be looking for a GM soon and I may have to disown this team if we hire Steve Phillips.

...Welcome back Thor! Two run jack from Craig ties things up at two in the fourth while the ESPN guys marvel over what a great job he's done filling in for Casey. They've apparently been drinking the DL Kool-Aide.

Depressing linkdump time

If you're familiar with Deadspin, you know that "The Closer" is their morning recap of the previous night's baseball related activity (if you aren't familiar with Deadspin, I'd recommend you check it out). The Pirates finally made The Closer, but not for a reason any team wants to. I give you today's second item:

2. But I Don’t Wanna Be A Pirate! Almost as fun as watching a great team is watching one that is deliciously bad. The Pirates, so far, have proven to be such a team — the Plan 9 From Outer Space of the National League. After Tuesday’s 6-3 loss to the Cardinals, the Pirates have lost six straight, where they’ve been outscored 30-9, and are an NL-worst 5-17. The’ve also lost 11 of 12 on the road. Sad, really.

Deliciously bad is catchy. Kind of like Bon Jovi or something.

Anyways, for anyone that missed it, Eldred is our for four months. That will bring us to August at the earliest (other reports are saying he's done for the season). If Craig Wilson gets hurt we should play Ryan Doumit at first, but instead I can pretty much guarantee Tracy will use Edwards or Hernandez there. Good thing thunder gods are immortal, right? Right? Of course the bigger issue is that the guy we've pinned our hopes on becoming a right-handed Jim Thome is taking another step towards Balboni-dom by missing out on what was supposed to be a key year in his development at AAA.

Today's Wednesday, which means it's depressing Q&A day. The amazing thing to me is that so many fans can be so down when they write their e-mails to Dejan, yet 30,000 people will show up on Friday for fireworks and 25,000 more will show up on Saturday for "WE WILL" fleece blankets. Then again, maybe I shouldn't talk, I'll probably end up at both games anyways.

Meanwhile at the Trib, Rob Rossi uses small sample sizes to blame Sean Casey's injury for the Pirates recent dearth of offense. In a related story, I remember why I rarely check the Trib for Pirates news.

And just for shits and giggles, or you know, to illustrate just how frustrating it can be to be a Pirates fan, here's a post I wrote one year ago to the day about how Freddy Sanchez should be playing every day and batting at the top of the lineup (thanks to Jonny O for pointing this one out to me).

All this Pirate talk is depressing. Maybe I'll go check out Fire Joe Morgan or something, that usually cheers me up.

Cards 6 Pirates 3

Not much different tonight. We squeaked out four hits off of a guy we tagged for 8 runs last week, and two of our runs came off of a mighty bloop off the bat of Thor. Tonight we were killed not by Pujols, not by Edmonds, but instead by Juan Encarnacion. Here's some fun facts about Encarnacion coming into tonight: his OPS was .454, he had a grand total of 1 RBI and one XBH (a double). We promptly gave up a double, homer, and triple to him, in that order. The triple was particularly disgusting, as it came with a runner on first and Burnitz decided that an old man slide at the ball was the way to go. The result was that instead of a single and runners on first and second, Encarnacion ended up with an RBI triple and a two run lead (they added the last one later). The one bright spot was that Paulino had half our hits, though they came out of the 8-slot where they were more or less meaningless. This is getting harder and harder to stomach.

Santos and Soup

Tonight's lineup includes Chris Duffy at leadoff, Joe Randa at third, and Freddy Sanchez on the bench. I am accordingly pissed, but not surprised. On the bright side of things, Paulino will be catching. On the down side of things, he's catching for Santos. On the most down side of things, Santos has probably been our best starter this year. The Cards send our old buddy Soup out to the mound tonight and he's hoping to avenge the thrashing we layed on him last week. I've got a bunch of work to do and Tuesday nights of course feature the best in Fake Doctor TV (House and Scrubs), but I'll do my best to keep an eye on this one, if it's worth it.

Anger

After last night's game I was completely incapable of discussing the Pirates in terms that wouldn't manage to make a Tarantino movie look akin to Bambi. Then I read the Stats Geek's column today and I got even angrier. Between Joe Randa, Jeromy Burnitz, the McLouth/Duffy combo, and Cota, Humberto has the highest on base percentage, clocking in at a whopping .286. That's four positions of our lineup that on a regular basis are occupied by guys who get on base about 1 out of every 4 at-bats. Throw in the pitchers spot and it's half the lineup. I can't think of a sentence to describe that without using the f-word, so I'll just leave it alone. Using the Stats Geek's column about on-base percentage as a springboard, let's talk lineup. In fact, let's not talk lineup, let's demand lineup. I could care less how much money Littlefield sunk into these bums, every day we take the field without some variation of the lineup I'm going to propose below I'm going to consider another indictment of the entire organization and their ability to run a baseball team.

1. Freddy Sanchez, 3B- The guy can flat out play. He can hit, he can field, and he gets on base like it's his job (or more accurately, he realizes it's his job to get on base). Since last September 15th he's hitting .386 with 20 XBH (13 doubles, 1 triple, 6 homers) in 114 ABs. The fact that he doesn't play everyday in itself makes us the laughingstock of baseball.
2. Jack Wilson, SS- I was wrong and I'm happy. Jack's bat is back and it's not showing any real signs of going away.
   
3. Jason Bay, LF- Seriously, the guy's a superstar. I don't know how many people know it, but he is.
   
4. Craig Wilson, 1B- Greg Brown, if you're reading I think it's very important that you start referring to Craig as Thor on the air (you have my blessing, seriously). A guy nicknamed after the Norse god of Thunder with long hair and a badass mustache is someone that can provide Jason Bay with some more protection than this fruitcake can. End of story. Actually it's not. Dave Littlefield, if you're there, the Brad Eldred thing is getting worse every day. I just don't see it working out. Swallow your pride and if you haven't choked to death on it (and trust me, I pray to God that you do) sign Craig to a two year extension.
5. Ryan Doumit, RF- "But Pat, Ryan Doumit isn't a right fielder," you say. "Well, neither is Jeromy Burnitz," I say. "Touche," you say. If we're going to send him down for a rehab stint, stick him in right and see what happens. He can't be worse than Burnitz or Lawton, it's just not physically possible. If he is, stick him and first and put Craig in right field. After all, he tries to scoop everything behind the plate like a first baseman. Just get his bat in the lineup every day.
6. Jose Castillo, 2B- He's slumping now, but he'll hit. Also, he's young and I'd rather watch him than some washed up guy.
   
7. Ronny Paulino, C- This guy's the real deal. He's smooth behind the plate and he can hit a ton.
8. Young, fast, toolsy guy, CF- I'd prefer McLouth but his D isn't quite up to snuff when compared with Duffy. Really, either one can go here.

Everyone tells me Cota is a decent backup, so he can stay as a backup catcher. I don't see it, but whatever. I don't see his value as Oliver Perez's personal catcher either, as the only thing he's managed to do in the past two years is keep Ollie from literally spontaneously combusting. Crappy pitchers don't get personal catchers, end of story. Mike Edwards can pack his bags to let this happen and I'll try not to get too broken up over it. And while we're at it, we can take Jose Hernandez back behind the shed we needed to take Mesa behind last year. Say it with me Jim, just because a guy has good career numbers against someone doesn't mean he'll reproduce them AT THE AGE OF THIRTY SIX. Randa, Burnitz, whoever doesn't start between Duffy and McLouth, and DeCaster round out the bench.

Alright guys, I'm waiting...

Albert Pujols and Oliver Perez are not friends

Remember the first time Albert Pujols took Oliver Perez deep this year in Pittsburgh? Pujols tossed his bat straight up in the air like he was David Ortiz or something, an act pretty out of character for the very classy Pujols. After taking Perez deep again yesterday, Pujols explained (saw this mentioned over at Romo, found the link via a diary at the Cards blog Viva El Birdos):

If you look at it, he struck me out last year and he did all his dancing and all that stuff, and I remembered that. That's what happened in Pittsburgh. I hit that ground ball back at him [in the first inning in Pittsburgh] and he did his little dance again, and I got really upset.

I went to the video room and I told my guy Chad, 'I'm going to hit the next ball and I'm going to hit it a long way. But don't look at the ball. Look at where the bat is going to land.' Because I respect this game just like everybody else. And when I see a guy like that, with the talent that he has, disrespecting the game -- that might be the way that he pitches, but I don't care... I probably shouldn't have taken it to that level, where I threw my bat like that. But at that moment I was pretty [angry].

Ouch. Granted, I think this is a case of two guys that are very passionate at what they do, and they go about it in slightly different ways. Still, pissing off Albert Pujols was not a good idea, as he's flat out owned Perez this year. Of course the Oliver Perez he owns is a stunted shadow of the Oliver Perez that once existed. Last night Ollie only cleared 90 on the TV gun once or twice (the TV crew said the ballpark gun was about 3 mph faster than the TV gun, but ballpark guns are often padded). In 2004, Ollie would've come firing at Pujols with some pure heat for the bat flip, he would've brushed him back, then tried to throw the ball by him. The thing is, that Oliver Perez might have succeeded. Last night he threw a pitch he described as "a little cutter that was supposed to be outside and it was in the middle." There is something wrong with Oliver Perez. That is not the Oliver Perez I know, nor is it one I want to know. We seriously need to figure out what's wrong with this guy.

Cook on Hope

Yesterday I asked for hope, today it is provided from an unexpected source, Ron Cook. He becomes the second embittered Post Gazette sportswriter to trade e-mails with Mark Cuban (remember, Smizik did it late last summer). Cuban is again rattling cages about purchasing the Pirates. When asked if he'd put up with the losing that the Nuttings and McClatchy seem to be alright with in exchange for returning a $15-20 million profit (which is about what Forbes put us at in their study released around a week ago) he responded:

Not me. Oh, no. I'd have to win. Winning vs. losing money, I'd take winning every time... It's a simple equation. Running a team to break even vs. running it to make $15 million or $20 million means a lot more money for player development and players.

Cuban is a smart guy. He first popped up last summer when the Bucs started to slide and now he's making himself visible again. Above everything, he's a great businessman. Though the current ownership seems intent not on selling, I'd imagine Cuban's got some kind of plan he's putting into motion here. I suppose all we can do is hope that it works.

Cards 7 Pirates 2

We are a truly pathetic baseball team. If I had enough energy, I'd rant. Maybe tomorrow.

Carp and Perez

Ollie doesn't look so bad, but he once again insisted on throwing Pujols a strike when he had no reason to. Pujols gave the ball a ride, almost to the empty, unfinished seats in the upper deck in left. Seriously. Stop. Throwing. Pujols. Strikes. Ever.

Anyways, McLouth gets another start tonight, which is encouraging as he's been much better than the Duffster to this point this year. Sanchez is starting, but Tracy has him hitting 7th, which seems like a waste. A Sanchez/Wilson/Bay/Wilson top four sounds pretty respectable to me. Back with more as this one progresses, though I have a feeling Pujols may have just provided Carpenter with all he needs to beat us tonight (at least Thor has picked up a hit so we don't have to worry about being the first team no-hit in 2 years).

UPDATE (8:35)- Cota=not clutch. Strikes out looking with two guys on and two outs. I'm going to be pissed when a healthy Doumit gets put on a rehab assignment because we don't want to cut Cota. As for Perez, well he started off with a ton of strikes which all got hit somewhere, so he promptly walked Molina on four pitches. He started throwing strikes again, more hits, 2-0 Cards. Things are not looking good.

UPDATE (9:41)- After trying to battle back via a Bay homer and a string of hits a couple innings back, Perez gives up another run on a Pujols double in which McLouth almost made a sprinting diving catch (which would've been a certain double play) only to see it go under his glove to make it 5-2 in the 5th. Craig Wilson and Freddy Sanchez run into each other while chasing a pop-up hit by Encarnacion behind the pitcher's mound while Cota and Perez stand dumbly (as in not saying anything to help the situation) by. Just plain pathetic on the account of everyone, Sanchez and Wilson for not calling the ball, and Perez and Cota for not doing anything to help the situation. And now a run is singled in giving the Cards a four run lead, making it a costly error. I'm disgusted.

UPDATE (9:50 PM)- After another RBI single on an 0-2 count, Wehner faults Perez for "not picking his fielders up." Let's do a count this inning, McLouth misses a flyball on a tough, but very makeable play that should've been a DP, Wilson and Sanchez don't call and easy pop-up (which admittedly Ollie could've helped avoid, but honestly, the majority of the blame goes on those two) and drop it, and the last RBI single comes on what is a routine flyout with any normal right fielder (Jeromy Burnitz is, of course, not a normal right fielder but instead a very old one with absolutely no range at all, making into what looked like a single by a wide margin). Right, Perez needs to pick up the fielders, but mainly only to drop them off the Arch. The dude should've had four extra outs that innings. Seriously, this team makes me want to puke.

UPDATE (10:15)- "We Will... Rise Again." Seriously, Billy's right, those commercials need to be shelved ASAP. This team is a joke.

UPDATE (10:21)- Taguchi just caught a Freddy Sanchez at the wall without actually watching the ball. I mean his head was down and his eyes were actually shut. If Jeromy Burnitz tried that shit I'd guarantee it hits him in the head and goes over the fence.

Falling behind

Rowdy makes a good point as to why the "7 losses by 2 runs or less with the tying run at the plate" stat is meaningless: it's easy to score off other team's Ryan Vogelsongs, which is exactly who we see after we fall behind by an aggregate of 48-18 after 3 innings. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Tonight we get Carp and Ollie, which two years ago would've seemed like a fantastic matchup for us. Of course now, Carpenter owns us and Oliver has happily taken the mantle of "Most Maddening Pirates Pitcher" from Kip Wells (who took it from Kris Benson, who took it from Jason Schmidt). The Cards lineup should be a little more formidable than it was when we saw them last week as Edmonds and Rolen should both be in the starting lineup, something we managed to avoid in the 'Burgh last week. They need a couple wins to make up some ground on the 'Stros in the Central, and I'd think they can probably count on getting them against us. On the bright side, I am curious to see the new Busch on TV tonight. I hear it's quite nice.

Bad Baseball

Note: This should've published at the timestamp, but something got screwed up and it didn't come through until 3:45.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are a bad baseball team. I've tried to avoid saying it to this point, but we're getting to the point where the sample sizes are getting bigger (we're an eighth of the way through the season) and gets harder and harder to ignore certain trends. Specifically hard to ignore are the facts that it's only April 24th and we're 10 games under .500 and we've scored less runs than every team in our division except the Cubs (who are down to us by only two runs in three less games) despite our initial hot start with the bats (and that we've played one less game than Milwaukee and Cincy, and two games less than the 'Stros and Cards). It's not just the ugly record that's especially hard to take, if it were being done with young players turning a corner there would be something to be encouraged about. Instead, the "Tracyball" Pirates are doing it in the exact same fashion as McClendon's Mauraders did, namely by being full of worthless veterans that are playing a lot and knowing less fundamentals than a T-ball team. Not only are we bad, we're bad while Jeromy Burnitz and Joe Randa prevent us from ever finding out if we can be good, we're bad while either Jose Hernandez or Mike Edwards seems to be in the starting lineup every other day, we're just plain bad. Compounding this problem is the fact that the owners are making money hand over fist off this team and though they may be forced to fire Littlefield in the coming months to appease the masses, the man they hire will likely run things in the exact same manner that Littlefield has (business first, team second).

That brings us (or more specifically me) to an interesting crossroads. It's easier to write a blog about a bad team than it is about a good thing (because the very nature of these things is to question), but it's hard to write about a hopeless team. The same goes for readers, people will read about a bad team, but not about a hopeless one. Still, this blog only exists in the capacity that it does because the Pirates are a bad baseball team. I can say almost for certain that there would be no WHYGAVS if the Pirates were a good team last April. There may be a different baseball blog written by the same person, but it almost certainly would nothing like what we have right now. The question is, of course, how a team with Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Jason Bay, Mike Gonzalez, the Wilsons, and Oliver Perez in the majors with Gorzellany, Burnett, and a few others in AAA can be hopeless. There's no reason we should be. We might be bad, but I still find it hard to believe that we're this bad. And so I'll keep watching and writing because as bad as things are right now, how could they possibly get worse?

I almost miss Jose Mesa

Last April I went to two Pirates/Giants games hoping to see Jose Mesa throw at Omar Vizquel and for all hell to break loose (some history for the uninformed: after Vizquel blamed Mesa for blowing a save in Game 7 and losing the '97 Series. Joey Table literally threatened to kill his former Indians teammate and made a statement somewhere along the lines of "If I face him 10 times, I'll bean him 10 times). I've been to a ton of baseball games in my life, but I've never seen a brawl. Ever. So, for the only two times in my life, I set out to PNC actually hoping to see Jose Mesa take the mound. Of course, the Mesa and Vizquel never faced off on those cold April nights and I left PNC as I often do, feeling unsatisfied. So what happens? Mesa gets signed by the Rockies and guns at Vizquel the first chance he gets, which leads to today's beanball/ejection fest (highlighted by Matt Morris being tossed after EIGHT pitches in the first inning). I could've been a part of something great if the Pirates could've just gotten a lead against San Fran last spring. But nooooo, they had to go and lost both games and not set the table for one of modern baseball's most entertaining feuds to continue.

Astros 7 Pirates 2 and week 3 in review

Seriously, this team is pretty effing bad. Through three weeks, Monday-Sunday span has seen us at 3-4, to go along with a 1-6 and a 1-5. After starting the season off with tons of hitting and very little pitching, we've regressed to fantastic pitching and absolutely no hitting at all. Maholm's start today was the only non-quality start we've gotten all week from our rotation, and yet we went 1-5. Against Houston we mustered 4 runs in a three game series in a ballpark built for Jason Bay, Craig Wilson, and Jack Wilson to hit in. We only scored 17 runs all week, 12 of them came in one whupping of the Cards (our only win). Simply math leaves us with 5 runs in our 5 losses this week. It doesn't matter if Clemens, Carpenter, Santana, Schilling, and Buehrle take the mound for those five games, you aren't going to win many of them with one run a game (unless you're playing the Pirates of course). From what I saw today, it was just an all around sloppy game, missed cutoffs, bad defense, bad base-running, just about everything was done poorly. This is what Jim Tracy promised us wouldn't happen, these are the things that were supposed to change. They aren't changing and now we find ourselves with a winning percentage only slightly better than the Royals, who started 2-13. Seriously, I'm having a hard time thinking about this right now. I think I have some Simpsons and Family Guy on the TiVo.

Oswalt

Today we attempt to avoid a sweep by sending Paul Maholm out to the mound against Roy Oswalt. Common sense dictates that we have very little chance in this game, as Oswalt is an incredibly tough righty, our best hitters are right handed, our worst hitters are left-handed, and it's Sunday and thus quite likely guys like Humberto Cota, Jose Hernandez, and Mike Edwards will find their way into the lineup (lineup check: yes on Cota, yes on Hernandez, thankfully no on Edwards, then again there's no Sanchez either so Hernandez starting is just as bad). Anyways, Maholm is going to try and get that ERA under 5 or 6, but the bats have been surprisingly quiet on both sides this series so I'm thinking some team is going to put a bunch of runs up on the board today (and if I had to guess which one, I wouldn't guess the team that's facing Roy Oswalt).

UPDATE (2:25 PM)- Pretty sure this one can go in the books already, it's 4-0 after the first and Maholm is getting hit quite hard. He's only actually responsibly for two runs (the Biggio and Engsberg homers) as Berkman reached base on a "single" that Hernadez just couldn't get to (you know, because he's got the range of a brick) and the fourth run scored when Jason Bay and his noodle arm threw a rainbow 8 feet over the head of cut-off man Jack Wilson on a play that would've meant a sure out at the plate.

Astros 3 Pirates 0

Ugh. 2 runs in three days against Wandy Rodriguez and Taylor Buchholz? That's just ugly. We looked absolutely baffled the first time through the lineup last night, and though I didn't watch past the top of the fifth, I'd have to imagine we stayed that way since we only managed 2 hits off the guy. Since I didn't know much about him, I pulled out BP 2006 hoping to hear that he's supposed to be the next Roger Clemens. He's not. The only rally we put together ended in the ninth with Jason Bay up and watching a pitch that has been described to me as "not anywhere near the strike zone" and "exactly where the pitch before was, and that one was called a ball." This whole anemic offense thing is going to get depressing fast. The $10 million we paid to get protection in the lineup for Jason Bay has provided a doubling of his walk rate. GMs have gotten fired for less than that.

Heading out

Snell looks really good through four tonight against the hot Astros lineup. The offense looks pathetic against whoever the hell this young'n on the mound is against us. As much as I'd like to stay and watch the end of this one, my friend is 21 at midnight, and, well, you can figure out the rest.

Typical Pirates

Snell just pitched a first inning in which he allowed a pop-up, three ground balls, and a shallow, softly hit single and finds himself behind 1-0 (Duffy misjudged the pop-up like that kid that used to eat dandielions in center on your t-ball team and Castillo let a slow grounder roll under his outstretched glove, though in fairness he was positioned up the middle on the play). This is why we've lost 7 games by 2 runs or less.

Operation Crackdown

I know you've been wondering just what Derek Bell looks like after having lived the, umm, "high" life for the last 49 months since the beginning of Operation Shutdown. Well, it ain't pretty (via Deadspin). Keep in mind that Jeromy Burnitz is only about four months younger than Derek Bell. Of course, I hear that staying off crack can take years of wrinkles off your face.

Catching up

I'm a little behind on things here (it being the last weekend before finals will do that to a guy), so let's see if I can get caught up. I only caught highlights from last night's game, but Burnitz's liner up the middle off of Lidge last night was an incredibly bad break. As Dejan mentions in his game recap today, the Bucs have now lost 7 times by 2 runs or less and got the tying run up to the plate in each situation. Sure, this isn't a World Series team or a playoff team, but if it keeps on rainin', the levee's going to break.

As I said, I only saw highlights of Duke's game last night, but it sounded like he had a pretty middling outing. He simply isn't going to win a ton of games by only throwing 62 of 107 pitches for strikes (he threw 71 of 104 for strikes in his last outing, the excellent start against the Cubbies). Still, the rotation keeps coming around and if Snell can give us a good start tonight that will make a full turn of the rotation (and 6 of 7 total) with good starting pitching. Snell has certainly been shaky early on this year, but his best career start came against the 'Stros (albeit not in Houston). He's up against Taylor Buchholz in his second career starts. Snell is due for a good start and the bats are due to wake up a bit, but then again good things never seem to happen to us in that stupid little park in Houston (unless they involve close games, Brad Lidge, and Jack Wilson... go figure), so maybe getting our hopes up tonight isn't a good idea.

'Stros

Bucs and 'Stros. Zuke and Wandy. Thor and the Crawford Boxes. Maybe Jumpin' Jack and Lidge. What can I say? I think I like our odds in this one.

The start

Dejan has a big feature on the fans' reaction (or lack thereof) to the Pirates ugly start (featuring a quote from yours truly). I actually kind of thought that the fans were actually too angry about it after the venemous questions that landed in the Q&A last week (I think that my quote in the article kind of bears that out), if only because I sort of expected the young pitching to struggle a bit in the early going and wasn't expecting a Mets-like start or anything. I'll admit, I don't watch much of the Nightly Sports Talk stuff on UPN and I've only been to the ballpark twice so far this year (mostly as a function of schoolwork, so that will change) so I suppose I wouldn't notice much if things were quieter than expected.

I guess anytime a team with a small budget goes out and spends the kind of money DL spent this offseason, better results than 5-12 are certainly expected, but to be perfectly honest this start hasn't been much worse than I expected. I figured that we'd be better than 5-12 right now, that's for sure, but I also didn't see us being much better than 7-10 or 8-9 right now, either. We opened this season up with our most two proven starters being Victor Santos and Oliver Perez. That simply does not bode well for a great start to a season. I'm certainly angry about the way the team is run, but I'm no more angry that DL got a hankering to start a money-fire this offseason by signing Burnitz, Randa, Hernandez, etc. now than I was when it happened. I'm not pleased that to this point I was more or less right about those signings being bad ones (Hernandez has pitched well, but do we really NEED a 40+ year old set-up man on this team for almost $3 million? I mean he's not helping us get to the playoffs or anything), but it's not surprising to me. And I do think that we're better than we're playing, I mean the pitching is going to come around and there's nothing but help on the way for the rotation in the form of Gorzellany, Burnett, and (in my opinion at least) Kip Wells.

So I guess the question is, should I be angrier? Have I been so jaded by this team that a 5-12 start after an offseason spending spree doesn't even faze me? Are they winning by lowering my expectations? Is it wrong that everytime we lose part of me says "Well, if we're really awful this year maybe Littlefield will get the axe and good things will come out of it," hoping for a new GM and a new rebuilding period, because what's a few more years at this point? I don't really know the answer to those questions, and I'm not so sure I want to either.

Two things

Alright, on this off day I've got two pieces of news that you can do with what you please, one is important to the Pirates, I guess while the other is just kind of cathartic.

First off, Jody Gerut has decided to NOT have surgery and keep playing, so he'll report back to Indy until we can find a team willing to take a malcontent gimp, I'd assume.

Second off, Derek Bell was found with a warm crack pipe in the back seat of his car today and arrested for feloncy cocaine possession. What can I say... $9 million will buy you a lot of crack. Glad to see you spent that money well, Derek. There is at least a little bit of justice in this world.

Off-day

The Pirates are off today, and I think I'm giving myself the day off from thinking about the Pirates. You know, because they're 5-12 and it's really nice out and thinking about them more or less makes my day worse.

Cards 4 Pirates 0

Carpenter's good, I'll freely admit that. He's real, real good actually. In fact, there's not many pitchers I can think of that have been as dominant as he's been since the beginning of last year. Just because he's so good doesn't mean it's OK to toss a white flag up and let Mike Edwards hit in the most important at-bat of the game, especially with Jack Wilson on the bench (all indications from the radio team today were that Jack was not hurt and he just got the day off, presumably because he's struggled against Carp, I'll have to look his numbers up but it's not much of a stretch to presume Jack's numbers against Carpenter are not good). Since Duke's start last Friday we've now got four quality starts in our last five games (though I hesitate to call any start that includes giving up a homer to Eckstein "quality", though we should take what we can get from Santos) but only managed to win two of those games, mostly because our offense has gone bankrupt minus yesterday's explosion. I will say that if this team can ever put the offense and pitching together for any considerable amount of time I don't think anyone will be happy to see us rolling into town. The caveat is, of course, that I don't really know if that's ever going to happen.

A letter to Jim Tracy

Dear Jim Tracy,

I've been trying to cut you some slack to open this season out, I really have. I understand you're under a lot of pressure from the front office to keep slackers like Burnitz and Randa in the lineup. I know they don't like Craig Wilson a whole lot, and trust me, I've seen Ryan Doumit's impersonation of a catcher and I know it isn't pretty. And the rotation making the first 2+ turns that it did, nothing is easy. Still, you should probably be fired today for the stunt you pulled with the lineup. Give Jack Wilson a day off? Fine, Freddy Sanchez is a fine choice to play short if Jack needs a day off (though it's kind of dubious since we have a day off tomorrow and Jack's already sat one game this year). But giving Randa a day off and putting Edwards at third on the same day you're giving Jack a day off is ludicrous. And batting Edwards SIXTH, to protect (I use the word loosely) your best hitter to this point in the season (yes, I'm talking about Craig Wilson) is absurd. Jose Castillo has hit the ball well this year, and even Paulino mauled some decent pitching in the WBC. Edwards is a bum. What I'm saying is, you're officially on the list, Mr. Tracy. I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for most of the dubious decisions you've made to this point, but if you're playing Mike f****** Edwards at third and batting him sixth in a game we need to win to finally take a series THE DAY BEFORE AN OFF DAY then I'm going to have to be suspicious of everything that you do. I hope you understand.

Sincerely,
Pat Lackey

An early one

We've got a 12:35 today that isn't on TV, not that it would matter much as I'll have class through most of it anyways. Since it's Victor Santos (arguably our least talented starter) against reigning NL Cy Chris Carpenter (weird, every time I try to type his name I accidentally type a "t" on the end, maybe someone is trying to tell me something about my Norse trip... nah, Carp is probably just that good) we'll need Thor and his half brother Loki, god of mischief and among other things, chance, to make up before this one to have much of a shot at all.

UPDATE (Gametime): Things don't exactly look fantastic, no Jack Wilson at short (Freddy's there) and Mike Edwards (who we were promised wouldn't play much) is starting at third. And my mid-morning nap ran too close to gametime for me to switch Carpenter off the bench in one of my fantasy leagues. Dammit.

Pirates 12 Cards 4

Sometimes, laughers can be good. After the bizarro first, in which Ollie took 8 pitches to put down the side and we had a 3-0 lead after three batters courtesy of a Jason Bay three run shot (seriously, the man is a Cardinal killer), it was almost smooth sailing from there on out. I didn't have the game on the radio, but all reports say that Ollie's velocity was good. The lack of strikeouts was kind of unsettling, as is his inability to pitch to opposing pitchers (2 walks tonight), but it all in all seemed like a pretty decent outing for him tonight. He breezed through the first, second, and sixth innings and besides walking pitchers and giving up bombs to Pujols (which is more or less expected at this point) we'd probably be saying he had a great start. This one's a quality start at least, and it's something to start from.

As for the offense, well, every starter except Ollie either scored a run or knocked one in. In fact, the Odin-son was the only starting position player without an RBI, but he smote three doubles so we can forgive that. Burnitz and Jack added homers, Duffy added two hits and got his average over .200, even Jose Hernandez managed to not suck, which is a feat for him (but seriously, if Castillo needs a night off how does Hernandez get the start at second over Sanchez). Maybe most importantly we made it through an entire game without using Hernandez, Torres, or Marte. I'd have to check, but I think this is probably the first game all year in which at least one of the three hasn't made an appearence. Good win all around in this one, it's nice to think we're in position to steal a series from the Cards tomorrow (though I suppose it seems unlikely with Santos v. Carpenter on the mound).

A bizarro first inning

Tonight in the first inning, Oliver Perez gets through the top half in only 8 pitches (7 strikes), and Jason Bay hits a three run dinger in the bottom half. In other news, cats are sleeping with dogs, pigs are flying, and the New York Mets have a five game lead on their division on April 18th (oh wait...).

Ollie and Soup

Not sure why, but I have a good feeling about Perez taking the mound tonight. It seemed to me that his last outing was decent, even if the numbers didn't bear that out (great against some hitters, awful against others). The Cards will probably trot out a lineup similar to the one they did last night, one that amounts to Albert Pujols and a bunch of stiffs (well, there's that Rolen guy too, but Pujols is just on a different planet right now). Anyways, given Perez's propensity to give up the long ball in recent years, I suggest treating Pujols like he's a certain former Pirate outfielder with the initials BB (and I don't mean Bobby Bonilla). Does anyone remember the Jim Tracy Test that ran in the PG about three weeks ago? In it he said he'd walk Barry Bonds in the bottom of the 9th with two outs and the bases loaded with a two run lead. It's time to start pretending Pujols is Bonds, though 15 years from now we may look back at that statement as an insult to Pujols. Still, if Perez can avoid trouble from Pujols, I think this may be the outing that gets him back on track. He's facing off against Suppan, another solid righty starter that isn't spectacular but gets the job done. Of course, Marquis dominated us last night, so maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up for tonight, either.

Slow day

No Stats Geek this week for the second Tuesday in a row, which is disappointing. The biggest news we have today is the continuation of Jody Gerut's quest to become the most infamous Bucco since Derek Bell, as now the Players Union has filed a grievance against the Bucs on behalf of him. This really is a strange situation, towards the end of camp he was completely healthy, then he claimed he was hurt and the Pirates disagreed, now they both agree he's hurt (patella tendonitis) but the Pirates refuse to agree that he needs surgery. I don't know how this is going to play out, but I'd have to assume that at this point it will end with Jody Gerut wearing colors other than black and gold the next time he's in the majors.

Also, Tony LaRussa says he can't understand why the bad blood between the two teams would continue into this year. He blames Jose Castillo for getting hurt last year (and he's probably right), and he effusively praises Jim Tracy, presumably because LaRussa seemed to have the irrational dislike for McClendon that only a Pirates fan could have. In the same notebook, Tracy says that Snell will stay in the rotation. He makes this lovely circular quote on whether rotation changes were imminent:

"Not in the immediacy of the situation. I don't want to have these guys feel like we're jumping the gun. At the same time, I want to make perfectly clear we're reaching the point where we expect results."

Translated: "We're not going to yank guys out of the rotation right now. Unless they keep sucking." I think Snell is on a pretty tight leash right now.

Cards 2 Pirates 1

Well, that was a quick one. Pujols hit that homer in the first and it was all the Cards would get and all they would need, as Marquis had us down on one hit through seven. We managed a run in the 8th on Jose Castillo's double and Nate McLouth's 2 out, pinch hit single, but the heart of our order came up dry in the 9th after Jumpin' Jack's leadoff double. In fact, Bay, Burnitz, CWilson (he must've forgotten to pound his bat in the ground and change into Thor today), and Randa were a stellar 0-for-14 today, with only Bay reaching base on a walk.

On the brightside, we did get a good outing from Maholm today. He threw a ton of pitches, but gutted his way through a tough sixth inning in which he entered with over 100 pitches and put the leadoff batter on before working his way through the inning. That makes two quality starts in three games for the Buccos, though we've only scored 6 runs in those three games. Torres was exceptional tonight, throwing only 17 pitches (15 strikes!) in two innings and even managing to get Pujols to make an out. Gonzo similarly mowed through the Cards in the 9th to keep things close for us. Unfortunately, four hits isn't going to get you much of anywhere, especially against a team like the Cards. We're 4-11, but at least it looks like parts of the rotation are making some strides forward. Wins will have to come eventually... I think.

Danger...

I see we're bringing Maholm back out for the sixth. Just like yesterday, I know our pen is worn down, but he's thrown well over 100 pitches and this just seems like a bad idea... (as I'm hitting publish Hector Luna is busying singling).

UPDATE (8:38): Fortunately, I'm wrong on this one as Maholm sets down Skip Schumaker (who?), Marquis, and Eckstein to get out of the 6th. This makes two out of three starts in which the Buccos young pitchers have given us 6+ solid innings (Sanchez just hit for Maholm meaning his day is definitely over).

Stupid Poo-Holes

So I'm sitting in the computer lab on the chemistry floor trying to get some work done on a presentation for this week with the GameCast (of course, it would've been on GameCast if I'd been in my apartment as well, since none of the Bucs/Cards games are on FSP this week) for the Bucs and Cards open. With Taguchi on first and Pujols up, I get the line "Ball in play- run scoring play" after like 4 foul balls. I wonder to myself just how many runs were scored on that play...

Two. The correct answer was two, on what GameCast made to seem was a mammoth shot to dead center. I'm assuming it will be on SportsCenter tonight since all of his homers are. If someone could remind me why he ever sees anything over the plate ever, I'd be much obliged to you.

Player of the Week

Though noble Asgardians are not preoccupied with mortal honors, it's nice to see Craig Wilson named the "Bank America Presents the National League Player of the Week for April 10-16, 2006." He earned the honor by matching his entire 2005 season output in homers (5) in 22 at-bats, also adding a triple among his 8 hits. He lead the NL in RBIs over the last seven days (10) and tallied 8 runs.

Snell

I've seen this wire article on Ian Snell linked by both Charlie and Rowdy, and the resulting discussions on both sites, and figured that I'd throw my two cents in on the Ian Snell situation as it stands at the moment.

Apparently, the Pirates have taken another manic turn on Ian Snell, they were down on him last fall when he pulled out of the AFL, high on him this spring after a couple of Grapefruit League starts, and they're down on him again now, after a whopping three starts since the season's begun. If the Bucs want to bring Gorzellany up, that's fine with me, the guy probably deserves it with the way he's pitched this spring and the way he's opened the season at Indy (he made another start today and gave up three runs in five innings, but on only four hits and two walks to go with 6 K's), but if he's coming up right now or any time fairly soon, it should be in Santos' spot, not Snell's. It would make no sense to keep Santos in the rotation over Snell if only because Snell has something to offer us down the road, whether it's in the rotation or the pen, while I'm not so sure that Santos does. If it gets to be June and Snell still hasn't turned the corner then I certainly won't be opposed to sticking Burnett or Kip into the rotation in his spot, but at this point it just doesn't make sense to build a team around a young staff and then start bailing on guys 3 starts into the season. If anything, Snell's stellar minor league record has earned him that.

Cards in town

We welcome the Cards into town for three days before our first off-day of the season and I'm not sure St. Louie could show up at a worse time. The Cards have to feel more comfort at PNC than they do anywhere else, last year they were 5-1 here (and Zach Duke got hurt in our only win against them), two years ago they were 7-3 here, lifetime they're 30-10 (all these numbers are supposing that my quick calculations with ESPN and Retrosheet are correct) on the North Side since PNC was built. Curiously enough, we've outscored the Cards by 7 runs coming into tonight's game (though we've played two more games then they have). Of course the four game difference in the standings is more than explained by runs allowed, they've given up 48, we've given up 90.

The pitching matchups are Marquis vs. Maholm, Suppan vs. Perez, and Carpenter vs. Santos. Maholm actually looked pretty good in his last outing against the Dodgers (which I was at). He gave up a couple tweeners and Damaso Marte let all of his inherited runners score, but like Snell yesterday, he had a chunk of good innings in the middle of the game. If he can give us a good start tonight I think we might have a shot as Marquis has never really impressed me all that much. I'm going to stick with the sentiment that the third start is a key one for all of these guys that Colborn's been working with, because they really should be able to adapt to the changes he's made by this point in the season. The other two matchups are scary, as anything can happen with Perez on the mound and Carpenter vs. Santos is a mismatch from hell.

Week 2 in Review

The Buccos played 7 games this week for the second week in a row, which leaves them with more games than any team in the league. They pulled out a 3-4 week, which shouldn't be that disappointing in the light of their 1-6 first week, but in all honesty things weren't that much more encouraging this week. Two of the wins came over the Dodgers and they required a total of 8 homers (5 by people with the surname Wilson, if you still insist upon calling Thor by his mortal name). In starts other than Duke's gem on Saturday night against the Cubbies, our starters put up an ERA of 10.92, a WHIP of 2.24, and a K/BB of 0.86. Throw in Duke's one solid start and you still get 9.08/1.99/1.13. It's only a week, but that is a terrifying week, especially given that the first week was only vaguely better. I don't think I could summarize any better what went wrong with this week, because that's it in a nutshell. If I'm remembering correctly (and I think I am), the only game that we scored first in was our 2-1 win on Saturday. We hit a ton of homers fueled by the 8 we hit on Tuesday and Wednesday, but they've served mostly to dig us out of two holes and make the final scores of most of our losses look respectable. We also lost a guy who is arguably our third best offensive player and All Around Nice Guy(tm) to a broken back. Early reports say he's gone 6-8 weeks, but I think that might be optimistic.

If we're looking for positives on Week 2, they come in the fact that we won three games, our second best offensive player gained a starting spot (and probably played well enough to add another Player of the Week trophy to his mantle, though it may go to Pujols after today's performance), and our bullpen shored itself up pretty nicely this week in a Herculean effort (our starters averaged less than 5 and 1/3 per start this week). Oh, and we found out that Craig Wilson changed his at-bat music back to U2's "Elevation", which is waaay cooler than that stupid Killers song he had last year.

Next week the Cardinals come to Pujols N' the Cardinals' Park (because seriously, they own us here), then we head out to whatever the hell they call that bandbox in Houston now. I'd say a good week for us would be to somehow salvage a split down the middle and roll into the 23rd at 7-13, but I'll be ecstatic if we can avoid being 4-16 with the way things are going right now (though I'm fairly confident we'll get another good start out of Duke).

Cubs 7 Pirates 3

The whole first inning today I was thinking that Snell was throwing well, but seemed to be way to preoccupied with Pierre on the basepaths. That seemed to lead to Ramirez's run scoring single. His anger at giving up that single seemed to lead directly to Todd Walker's two run homer. Snell really settled down after that and breezed through innings 2-5 like he knew what he was doing. Of course, Glendon Rusch was shutting us down, but Snell seemed to look good. I hopped in the car to drive to Murrysville (from home, not from Duquesne, so it was a bit of a longer drive) and put the game on. When Snell came out to start the sixth, I thought to myself that even with the bullpen being as depleted it is, it might be a good place to pull Snell, though that was just a hunch. After Pierre and Bynum got on, I had a bad feeling, which was only multiplied by the fact that Derek Lee was at the plate. Let's just say that two batters later I was fuming to my brother and his girlfriend about how Matt Capps needed to be in AAA and the iPod was on, because it was 7-0. We tuned back in to hear that Thor had smited another mortal ball with the mighty Mjolnir, but it wasn't going to be enough. I'm trying to stay positive due to the extreme earliness of the season right now, but 4-10 just looks ugly to me. I suppose we can take solace in the fact that Snell pitched four really good innings today, but they're kind of meaningless when the other 1+ involve 6 runs.

Snell and Rusch

Like everyone else in the rotation, Colborn has been working with Ian Snell on his delivery. If he's on a similar time table to Duke, we might see him finally get comfortable with those changes today. That would hopefully mean more strikes from Snell, and perhaps more innings than runs given up. If he can do that, I think he can keep us in the game today as he's facing off against Glendon Rusch. Rusch will go down in baseball history for the way he's started this season, namely by giving up homers to Bronson Arroyo in each of his first two starts. Still, Rusch has managed some success against us in the past three years or so with a 2.43 ERA in 11 appearences including 5 starts, so scoring a lot of runs against him today isn't guaranteed. We need a win today to pull off a winning second week (4-3), no small feat after going 1-6 in the first week.

One extra note, you can safely ignore the headline on the Pirates Notebook linked above, because Doumit has in fact been placed on the 15-day DL and Paulino's been called up. I'd like to think this means we'll get a chance to see Paulino get some decent playing time, what with the suckitude of Cota and all, but I kind of doubt it.

UPDATE (12:50 PM)- More Rusch against the Buccos stats to throw in. Despite his recent success against us, careerwise he's 1-7 against us, and in PNC Park he's 1-2 with a 4.20 ERA. Odin-son himself is 14-for-26 with a homer against Rusch, so don't look for him to cool down today.

Pirates 2 Cubs 1

Tonight Craig Wilson stole a base and hit a triple, leading to both of our runs, and neither was even remotely close to being the most improbable thing to happen in the game. That honor, of course, goes to the fact that a Pirate starting pitcher pitched 7 innings only giving up one run. Duke pulled those honors tonight and though the game wasn't on TV, I'd imagine he looked a lot like the Zach Duke we saw all last year. I sort of thought that it might take a couple real starts for him to adjust to the changes Colborn made and though one start does not a season make, it looks like Duke is back on the right trail. Also impressive tonight was Gonzo, who picked up his second save with a 1-2-3 ninth that required only four pitches. Tonight's a good win for a number of reasons, we lead the whole way, we got a good start, the bullpen was good, and we found a way to get enough runs to win. I could be wrong, but I think we're going to win a lot more games along the lines of tonight than we are in the mold of our first three W's.

Zach Duke and the seach for a Quality Start

Duke keeps up the quest for a Pirate starter to go 7 this year (hell, I'd take six at this point) and he'll do it against Jerome Williams. No FSP tonight and my Adelphia at home doesn't carry WGN, so this one's going to be radio and GameCast only. Through two Zuke seems to be throwing well, though he has given up a couple hits already.

Casey out

Looks like the injury Sean Casey suffered yesterday after taking a flying elbow from John Mabry is pretty serious, as Casey will miss 6-8 weeks with two lower back fractures (thanks to Brian in the comments for the heads up). This is good only in the sense that Tracy is forced to play our second best offensive player every day. It sucks in several ways, that Craig should be playing over Burnitz, not Casey, that Mike Edwards is now on the roster and Tracy will find a way to get him ABs because he loves Mike Edwards, and that Casey is an all around nice guy who you just don't want to see get hurt.

Anyways, Kip goes on the 60-day DL (meaning he can't be back till mid-June at the earliest) to make room for Edwards. Edwards almost certainly isn't better than Mike Restovich, who we let go for nothing over the winter. This is what kills me about what the Pirates do, they claim to be building a strong team with a good bench, but they just brush off good bench guys like Restovich and Wigginton as if they're dandruff. I was no fan of either, don't get me wrong, but both were severely misused in their time here in Pittsburgh. Wigginton was expected to be an every day player when he clearly was a guy that could come off the bench, kill lefties, bulldoze anyone in his way on the basepaths, and plug in a few infield positions if necessary. And as much as I disliked Wiggy, he's better at what he does than Jose Hernandez is. Last year the Bucs didn't use Restovich at all, they just kind of randomly plugged him in here and there against lefties. He went out this winter and killed the Venezuelan Winter League when he got to play regularly, then got released. I was no Restovich fan either, but I'd bet he's a better 5th outfielder than Mike Edwards. Keeping guys like Restovich and Wigginton around, guys with specific skill sets that are good at what they do, is how you build a good bench, not by keeping your starting third baseman and right fielder off the field.

Coincidence?

"I, like God, do not play dice and do not believe in coincidence."

Cubs 11 Pirates 6

I do think the pitching will get better, honest, I do. Still, it's hard to wait for it to happen while we give up a million runs a night. The thing about tonight was, I honestly didn't feel like the pitchers were that bad. Santos gave up some tweeners, and when that's coupled with bad defense suddenly you find yourself down 8-2. The main culprits on the bad defense side tonight were mostly Burnitz and Randa. They didn't do anything blatantly bad (except Randa's throw in the 9th on a should've been double play that put the game out of reach for good), they just didn't do things you'd expect people that have been in the league forever to do. In the first, Randa stayed on the base to wait for Jack's throw to get Todd Walker at third. It would've been a close play either way, but by waiting for the throw he ended up putting a high tag on Walker and he was pretty clearly safe. He essentially played that throw like he was a first baseman. Then in the fifth, Jack ranged all the way deep into the hole to get a sharp grounder. He made an off balance throw to third and Randa went off the bag to get the throw when he needed to play it like a first baseman. I'm fairly certain he would've got the out on that play, which may have stemmed the tide before the levee broke (I believe it would've placed runners at first and second with two outs instead of bases loaded and one). As for Burnitz, he's played two full seasons in the NL Central as a right fielder since 2001, meaning he's seen PNC Park and the Clemente Wall before. Despite this, it remains an absolute mystery to him. He seriously looks like Matt Lawton out there trying to figure out what the ball is going to do off that thing. Last year when we went to Boston the annoucers raved about Jason Bay spending an extra half hour or something playing balls off the monster learning the bounces. Why can no one do this with Burnitz? It's seriously painful to watch him play right field right now.

Anyways, I have a couple other observations from tonight. First off, as bad as Doumit's been behind the plate, Cota has almost been as bad. He simply hasn't made up for the giant chasm between the two at the plate. Tonight he tripled clutched after a pitch-out on a Pierre steal and failed to block a strike three on Aramis in the dirt, which started the 9th inning rally for the Cubs. I just can't find anyway to justify him playing at this point, sort of like how there's no justification at all for Craig Wilson to be out of the lineup, especially when a lefty's on the mound. Also, I'm done defending Vogelsong. He and Capps need to be off this team right now, Capps more so because he needs another pitch to be effective. As much as we're using the bullpen right now, we need more reliable arms in there. Hernandez, Torres (since the first couple games) and to a lesser extent, Marte have all been fairly effective, but none of them are exactly spring chickens and there's no way they hold up under the kind of usage they've seen in these first 12 games. Right now in my mind I see this horrible snowball scenario where the starting pitching comes around, then suddenly no one can get an out in the pen. And seriously guys, this hitting isn't going to last forever. This is the best I can ever remember the Pirates hitting, and it's killing me to watch us waste it.

A barrage

The Bucs just used a hail of homers from McLouth (solo) CWilson (two runs) and Bay (solo) to make tonight's game interesting (8-6). They brought Wuertz in to pitch to Craig and he was almost certainly tipping his pitches, as Craig went yard, said something to Bay as he crossed home plate, then grabbed Joe Randa and said something to him in the dugout. Bay responded by working the count, fouling off a two strike pitch, and hitting a bomb over the notch. Randa responded with a check swing infield single that was only so because the Cubs third baseman is terrible defensively. Who the hell is that guy? But yeah, how can Craig Wilson not be in our lineup on a daily basis? I just don't get it. Anyways, Baker finally got a clue and yanked Wuertz, bringing in Williamson to pitch to Burnitz (I am positive Burnitz would've gone yard off of Wuertz and I'm not kidding at all). Burnitz singled, Jose Castillo flew out (and got congratulated in the dugout by Tracy for hitting a sac fly, you know, because making outs is the kind of thing we encourage here), and Cota and Sanchez (pinch hitting) both struck out on a total of six pitches. Cota's K was especially rank as the only pitch he saw in the strike zone, he stared at. Anyways, it's time to see if the pen can hold (off to a good start, a 1-2-3 inning from Marte) and if the pseudo-Lumber Company (because they can't actually be this good at the plate, can they?) can pick us up three runs. Back with more after the game.

Hmph

Victor Santos is not the one to give us that start we were looking for. Though I should add that he didn't really get hit very hard and was victimized by a ton of tweeners and Joe Randa's inattentiveness to Jack Wilson's fantastic range (Jack somehow miraculously got to a ball deep in the hole and Randa wasn't ready for a throw at all, didn't play it like a first baseman, and failed to get the force out, which would've been a key out in his fateful top of the 5th). Also, after seeing Randa ground into a DP with the bases loaded and no outs I'm thinking maybe I should change the name of this blog to "Sons of Freddy Sanchez." Tracy again failed to get Craig Wilson's bat into the starting lineup with a young lefty on the mound, so at this point I'm going to have to assume that he's either really really stupid or he honestly makes every lineup up under gunpoint. Then again, Casey got hurt so he's in the lineup anyways so maybe I should be thankful he didn't start in right, because then Jose Hernandez would be at first.

The Cubs

Last Sunday, when we were sitting at 1-6 after one week, I said that being 5-9 one week later would be a good second week for us. I said that supposing that we'd have to split with the Dodgers and take 2 out of 3 from the Cubs to get there. We did split with the Dodgers, and we did see some encouraging things in those four games. This weekend we see Sean Marshall, Jerome Williams, and Glendon Rusch. That means that I think our huge offensive outburst through 11 games can probably continue, though that may be contingent on Craig Wilson staying in the lineup (which is definitely not set in stone).

It also means that our pitching may have to do very little to keep us in games. Instead, I'd like to see one game this weekend where we win because of our pitching, not in spite of it. Colborn's getting a lot of crap for the way this season's started, but I'm not sure it's completely deserved. I mean yeah, the stats are horrific (our team ERA is something like 6.77, I don't even want to know what the team WHIP is). Still, one of the biggest critcisms of the prior regime was how often young pitchers got hurt. If Colborn found inconsistencies in Duke and Perez's motions, fixing them may very well prevent those injuries down the road. Now that we're entering the third time through the rotation, these guys should be able to start adapting to those changes and working through the trouble. Or at least that's what I'm hoping.

How often can this happen to one team

Jody Gerut has decided to blatantly ignore the Pirates and go ahead and have a knee surgery that the team says he doesn't need. I have no idea what to make of this, but Charlie breaks it down pretty well. It would seem that he's mostly just pissed at the Pirates for putting him in AAA. It is true that the severity of his knee injury seems to be inversely proportional to the level of play we see from Chris Duffy and Nate McLouth. Then again, as Charlie points out, he's losing money for having this surgery. Is it possible that the situation is so bad in Pittsburgh that a player would rather do anything he could to sully his image in the eyes of the front office, including not getting paid for a chunk of the year, just to get out of the organization?

Dodgers 13 Pirates 5

To open with, I figured a split would be a good outcome in this series. Coming back from a 1-7 start won't be a quick process, and this team is currently not ready to take much more than baby-steps forward. Still, losing 13-5 always sucks, especially when Ollie makes a bad start. I tried to get the game on the radio in my lab today, but the only radio we have in there doesn't really get much in the way of AM stations, and I couldn't even get it to pull in KDKA on the third floor of a building on the top of a hill in Pittsburgh. Thus, I spent most of my afternoon huddled around the GameCast trying to figure out what was going on with Ollie. Someone who watched/listened can correct me, but it seemed like a bizarre outing for Perez. He seemed to switch from having great control to none at all, and it seemed to happen almost batter by batter, like certain batters just terrifed him. He threw almost 60% of his pitches for strikes today, so I don't think he was quite as wild as the 5 walks in less than 5 innings would indicate. The GameCast didn't have velocity, so I'll assume that it stayed just about where it's been this year (high 80s to low 90s). So I suppose what I'm saying is that he's still a giant question mark (big surprise).

I think this was a good series for the Buccos, especially given the way the season started. We saw some bad pitching and we absolutely preyed on it. Craig and Freddy got a lot of ABs, and I think they made sure that they're going to get their share of them as the season goes on. Next up we have the Cubs coming into town and I hate losing to a manager who likes to think that Nefi Perez is an every day player. I'd say the goal for this series is to play some games where we don't have to start the game down 3-0. That means it's on Santos, Duke, and Snell to get us some good starts.

Help is on the way

Here's some good news, Kip Wells' comeback is going smoothly and he's scheduled to start throwing on Monday, or earlier if he has his way. He also hopes to be back well before his scheduled return of the All-Star break for a couple reasons, he didn't have a throwing related injury to his arm and his arm was in good shape when he went on the shelf. I know a lot of you don't like Wells, but I really think that a veteran presence not named Victor Santos can only be a good thing for this young pitching staff. Hopefully early reports of a Pirate recovery going well will actually stay true for once.

Early game

Things kick off at noon today with Ollie and Derek Lowe. Apparently the Jims saw something wrong with Perez's delivery in Cincy and he's worked on it since then. We're rolling out the exact same lineup as last night, and that's just fine with me, though I hope it doesn't mean that Doumit's injury is more serious than initially reported (he pulled himself out of last night's lineup and now isn't in the lineup in a day game after a night game). Still, Freddy and The Mighty Thor get another crack at showing everyone in the 'Burgh just how stupid and wasteful David Littlefield was this offseason, and you know I'll be rooting for that. Lowe hasn't been to great this year, but then again neither has Perez. I won't be able to catch this one on TV, but I should be able to get the radio on in the lab, so my fingers are crossed that Lanny and Blass aren't on the radio today, because I like random stories about the early 70s as much as anyone, I'd just also like some updates on the game I'm supposed to be listening to from time to time as well.

The Q&A

Today's Q&A was incredibly angry. I mean, the questions were just flat out bitter. I seriously could barely even make my way to the end of it after reading things like "No team in the history of baseball needed to get off to a good start more than the Pirates. I know it is early, but this start almost ensures another losing season," and "Yeah, Lloyd McClendon and his coaching staff sure were the problem," and other such sentiments. Yeah, 1-7 is ugly. Yeah, even 3-7 is far from great. Still, I think it's pretty early to be jumping overboard. Too many people had expectations for this team that were beyond realistic. Somehow, adding two guys the fans like and one guy the fans know suddenly had every casual Pirate fan thinking that we were winning the division this year. Our ugly start was compounded by 100,000 people suddenly learning who Chris Shelton was, all at once. So maybe I'm not as angry as these people because my expectations were lower and because I already knew about Chris Shelton, I don't know. The fact remains that the one thing about McClendon's teams that galled me to no end were the fact that except for the 2003 season, they never seemed to get better as the season wore on. We were always supposed to be young and rebuilding, and yet we could never semm to figure out how to get past July and August without massive swoons. My point is simple. In 2002 we started 12-5, and we finished 72-89. Did it suck less to lose 89 games because we started 12-5? No, of course it didn't. Did starting 12-5 keep us from sucking that year? Of course it didn't. So, knowing that our this year our team is lead by an incredibly young pitching staff that is very talented, but was very shaky in the spring, should anyone be surprised by this start? Nope, we probably shouldn't. What ever way this season ends, it won't end that way because we started 1-7. We just need a little perspective, that's all.

Pirates 9 Dodgers 5- The return of Thor

We saw something like this once. It was only two springs ago, actually. Jason Bay, our prize acquisition/question mark from the Brian Giles trade started the season on the DL and Lloyd McClendon told Craig Wilson he would be given the opportunity to prove he belonged in the Pirates lineup. Thor and his golden locks banged the mighty hammer all April and never looked back. This spring, Craig's been given an inch with Sean Casey's day to day rib problem, and thus far he's taken a mile. In two nights against the Dodgers, he's hit a game tying homer and two go ahead homers, all coming after in the fifth inning or later (Damaso Marte couldn't hold the lead tonight, making it necessary for Craig to hit two go-ahead homers). Anyways, it was a great game to be at, even the irritable fans in the bleachers (who booed everything that went remotely wrong) were in good sprits by the end of the game. Paul Maholm actually pitched well, he was a couple feet either way on a blooper in the third from getting out of that jam entirely (it was just out of Jack's reach but just in front of Bay's), and Marte pulled the Rick White special tonight, which is come into the game and let everyone on base score, then get the rest of the outs so your ERA isn't hurt. Anways, this marks two nights in a row that we've fallen behind early and came back swinging (literally). I mean, sure, I'd like to see us score some runs in a way other than homers, but mostly, I just like to see us score and win. Two nights in a row, the bullpen has got the job done (minus Marte tonight), two nights in a row the bats have come through, and two nights in a row the starters have kept us in the game. It may not be time to hit the panic button just yet.