Some Sunday links

Oliver Perez was pretty good in his Indy debut, striking out 13 in seven innings but still taking the loss, 2-1, to the Toledo Mud Hens. It's hard to make any thing of just one start in AAA, but if I had to guess, he never thought we'd actually send him down and we've pissed him off pretty good.

Speaking of wayward Pirates, Chris Duffy is ready to return to center field for Indy after going AWOL for 7 weeks. He tries to explain why he needed to leave in a vague, roundabout manner, but it sounds like his head is on right now and hopefully he can turn things around.

Via the Bucs Dugout, there's an article about Jim Tracy's struggles in a Sarasota, FL paper. Interestingly enough, Tracy was coaching high school baseball there only 10 years ago. I suppose that explains a lot.

And I meant to link to this on Friday, but I missed it and kind of forgot about it. Dejan hands out his midseason grades and pulls no punches. Let's put it this way, Freddy got an A+, Bay got an A- (which I think might be a little high though he did have the best month by a Pirate in recent memory and we really shouldn't forget that, he's been very cold of late but I doubt it'll take much to turn him back around again), and that's all we have at the top of the grading scale. There were two Fs and they couldn't have been pulled down by more deserving people, Dave "Worst GM" Littlefield, and Jim Tracy.