The one week report

So the season is officially one week old and the Pirates are 1-6. That alone doesn't tell the whole story, or really anything close to it. Let's look at the high and low (mostly low) points of week 1 of 2006:

• Jack Wilson is off to another solid start. He's also playing some good defense, despite his three errors thus far. His heads up play today might have saved the win.
• Jose Castillo is killing the ball at the plate. Still batting 7th on a nightly basis, but he's killing the ball.
• Humberto Cota has made 4 starts to Doumit's 3, but Doumit has been pretty crappy behind the plate. OK, Doumit's been more or less awful behind the plate. Then again, Cota can't hit at all. It's actually quite a conundrum.
• Oliver Perez might be back. He also might not be back. Kinda tough to say so far.
• Pointless extension watch: Jack Wilson good, Salomon Torres bad, Dave Littlefield bad
• Speaking of bad Dave Littlefield, Randa and Burnitz are looking pretty useless in comparison to the two guys that would otherwise be playing their positions. Not that it's surprising, but it's certainly something. I do think that this will eventually work itself out. It's pointless to hope that Tracy will bench the most expensive spending spree in Pirate history and start a feud with his new GM a week into the season, but it isn't something he can ignore forever.
  
• In the one game that we got a good start AND a good outing from the bullpen, we won. This does tell us something that I've kind of suspected the whole offseason, that the pitching is the key. We might not have a great offense, but we might have a great pitching staff. That hasn't borne itself out in the first week, but often it takes the staff awhile to come around, especially if four of the first seven games are played in Cincy in April with rain clouds surrounding the first couple days.
• We're better than 1-6, we really are. We lost six close games in a row and responded with a win, rather than rolling over and getting killed in a game with our worst starter on the mound. We have seven more games in the next seven days, four against the Dodgers and three against the Cubs. It'll be a tall task for the Buccos to be sitting at 7-7 at this time next Sunday, but if they're at 5-9 I think we can safely say that they're headed in the right direction.