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.