Sorry for the delay

I wanted to get this post up earlier, but I sat around my empty apartment all afternoon watching House on DVD because it's much more interesting than thinking about the Pirates. I mean the usually dependable Zach Duke gave up a nine billion foot homer to Washington's resident psychopath Jose Guillen, who likes RFK about as little as anyone can like anything (he hit something like 3 homers there last year and 22 on the road). Duke's 5 run meltdown in the third (which came almost directly after my last post about how he should be able to keep us in the game) provided the Nats with enough runs to win, as we only managed to put four up all day. On the bright side, Bautista was 2-for-4 and from what I can tell, didn't actually screw anything up in right field (I spent the afternoon drinking beer and playing horseshoes at a friend's graduation party, time much better spent than on a Pirates game). Also, Jack Wilson pinch hit and got a hit which means that his hammy problem is probably not that much of a problem. Curiously, Ian Snell pinch ran for Jack after he got on. Between that, Doumit playing first, and playing Bautista in right field over Burnitz while refusing to do so with Craig Wilson can only lead me to conclude that Jim Tracy has lost his mind and is incredibly desperate. People are playing out of position left and right, he keeps screwing with the lineup, he says one thing to the media and does another thing in the games. Basically, he has no idea what's wrong with this team and accordingly, has no idea how to fix it, so he's just trying random schemes and hoping they work. It now occurs to me that this is an awful lot like an episode of House. Except it's not nearly as funny and I really doubt that the Pirates are going to be cured when it all ends.