Tigers 9 Pirates 8

Tell me if you've heard this one before. The Pirates fell down by a large amount, then battled back only to fall one run short. New stuff, huh? Today the suspects were Ian Snell (bad start before a strong finish), John GraBLOW, Jose Castillo (rallying killing DP with the tying run on third in the 7th, then a K with the bases loaded an one out in the ninth), and Humberto Cota (game ending groundout off of Todd Jones after Castillo's K). Here's fun fact, using the Win Expectancy Finder at walkoffbalk.com, the home team has historically won 56% of games that they trail by one run with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the ninth. I suppose when you're 28-55 you need more than a 56% chance against a team like the Tigers.

On a sidenote, congratulations to Jason Bay and Freddy Sanchez for making the All-Star team. If two guys from a 28-55 team deserved, it's definitely those two. I'm especially happy that Freddy is getting the recognition he deserves (not that Bay DOESN'T deserve, because he does even after being down the last couple weeks, but he's been more or less a lock for the team since the end of May). Hopefully someone from ESPN will mention that no one in the Pirates organization thought that Freddy Sanchez was even a starter for this team in April, and here he is in the All-Star Game in July (then carry on to say that by extension, perhaps decision making like that is why we're so freaking bad).

UPDATE: Holy cow, I didn't even see this until I saw it posted at Romo Phone Home, but in the article I linked to above about the All-Star team, Jim Tracy actually admits that he was wrong about something!

"Shame on me for saying Freddy Sanchez is a utility player for what this guy has
done," said Jim Tracy. "Freddy Sanchez is a winner."

Popular posts from this blog

WHYGAVS has moved

It's official. WHYGAVS now has a new official home. It's actually at WHYGAVS.com , which means that it's the same as the old home, but I'm off Blogger now, which means that this old link won't redirect. You'll have to subscribe to a new feed if that's how you read WHYGAVS, but beyond that things are going to be mostly the same.
Read more

Links

For reasons that will become shortly apparent, I've been working on cleaning/updating the sidebar links. That means that I've got some new links to add to the sidebar, as well as some other things for your general perusal. Cory Humes, Geeves, and Alan from Bucco Wire are all blogging again at MVN under the header Pirate Revolution . There's also The Green Weenie and The 'Burgh Blues , two blogs I should've added some time ago. Meanwhile, Dejan's series about the Pirates' presence in the Dominican is awesome. I'm sure most of you have been checking it out as it's been published, but if you haven't I can't recommend parts one , two , and three , Renee Gayo's list of the top 5 prospects yet to play in America , and everything else that DK's put on his blog on the subject enough. It's an awesome look in to the Bucs' international operation and how things have changed since Bob Nutting took the lack of Pirate presence in the reg...
Read more

The Pirates are talking to Mark Loretta

There are a couple of possible reactions when reading that the Pirates are talking to Mark Loretta . The easy reaction is, "Well, so long as he's replacing Chris Gomez, I'm fine with that." That's true. Loretta's a useful utility infielder that can still handle a bat fairly well and can play just about every position in the infield in a short-term capacity. In fact, he's probably a better hitter than Gomez and he can't really be a worse fielder. That may make him more the successor to Doug Mientkiewicz, which is fine by me as well. But then I started thinking. Aren't we trying to trade our shortstop away? Isn't "successor to Jack Wilson" a position that needs filled on the depth chart at the moment? I mean, I know Huntington's not looking at Loretta as a starting shortstop next year ... but what if he is? This is how the offseason drives people crazy. You can go months and months without hearing any rumors, then as soon as rumor...
Read more