Since the break

With tomorrow being September 1st and the call-ups a-comin' the talent pool in the NL will become even more diluted than it already is and the numbers players put up will be meaningless (Tike Redman, Adrian Brown, etc.). That means we should take at least some time now while we're thinking about it to look at the post-All Star stats. Again, we'll use the Baseball Musings Day By Day Database to break things down, hitters here and pitchers here.

First things first, the team is 23-21 since the break. People have said lots of things about their play since then, but the truth is that they've been outscored 216-185 since the break. That would project out to a 19-25 record (using Baseball Reference's pythagorean Win/Loss formula). Over a full-season that only means 69 or 70 wins. That's nothing to be terribly excited about. The numbers bear this out, Jason Bay is the only person with a slugging percentage anywhere near .500 (Nady is next at .466). Bay, Sanchez, and Nady are the only three with OPS's over .800. In fact, 185 runs over 44 games only comes out to 4.2 per game. That's actually less than the 4.4 per the team has averaged during the season, a number that's good for 27th in the league. Clearly this is a huge problem.

The pitching staff hasn't been much better. Out of the three guys (Snell, Maholm, Duke) who have supposedly been pitching well since the break, Maholm's ERA is the lowest a 4.37. Their WHIPs are 1.33, 1.47, and 1.71 respectively (Snell, Maholm, Duke). As previously discussed, Duke and Maholm have cut down on their walks, but they're still both incredibly hittable. Gorzellany was very good, but his sample size is even smaller than everyone else's, making it difficult to judge. Their BABIP (batting average on balls in play, for a good explanation if you don't know what this is, go here) is difficult to calculate from these stats since they don't give exact batters faced numbers and they don't give "sac flies given up", but without the sac flies I have Snell at .236, Maholm at .260, and Duke at .299. That means that none of them have been particularly unlucky when it comes to balls put in play, and actually Snell and Maholm have been kind of fortunate when it comes to things like that (the league average is .290 or so). In terms of total runs given up by the pitching staff, 216 in 44 games is 4.9 per game, only slightly down from the 5.1 we've given up on the season as a whole.

Unfortunately, looking at the numbers doesn't make me think the Pirates have played that much better since the All-Star break. In fact, it just seems that they've been a lot luckier. Since they were a pretty unlucky team in the first half of the season (as evidenced by that record in one run games) we probably had some luck due to head in our way. That doesn't go a long ways towards convincing me that 2007 won't be year #15 of futility.

Another helpful tidbit

Remember what I said two days ago about PUP FLICKS? Again, maybe it's just me, but perhaps all of the possible connotations of a phrase should be considered before slapping the title Sanchez Delievers Happy Ending on an article. I will avoid all of the obvious "Freddy is really popular with his teammates" jokes. Not that there's anything wrong with it.

Something new

We're going to try something new here, the first ever WHYGAVS Poll. I've been kicking around the idea for a while, but I'm really curious to see where Pirate fans fall on this specific issue so I figured this was a good place to start. I may play around with the aesthetics of it a little bit, but I think this is something I'm going to keep around. And of course, feel free to discuss it in the comments.

Ugh

Buried away at the end of this notebook is a little tidbit about Ian Snell experiencing shoulder tightness. Jim Tracy says it's insignificant, but every single pitching injury in the recent history of the Pirates has started out as "insignificant." Keep in mind that the thing about Snell is sandwiched between a story about Salomon Torres making 79 appearences this year and a bit about Matt Capps making his 72nd. Hmm...

Meanwhile Perrotto keeps repeating his DL to be fire rumor. He's still the only one reporting it.

Bleed Cubbie Blue has something up that I wish I'd thought of during our 14 game losing streak, a do-it-yourself recap. Though the Pirates have been the benefactors of the Cubs poor play the last couple days, that's certainly a feeling I think we can relate to.

Pirates 10 Cubs 9

First off, let me apologize for forgetting the gamethread today. As usual, my brain failed to process the afternoon game and I didn't have time to get the thing posted once classes started. Without seeing any or hearing much at all of today's game, it would seem that it had a lot in common with yesterday's game. Both teams tried as hard as possible to lose, and the Cubs turned out to be better at that than we were. Each team racked up 20 hits today, and leads were blown left and right. The Cubs blew an early three run lead, we blew a four run lead, then the Cubs blew a 2 run lead in the bottom of the 11th. If I didn't know better I'd guess that neither team wanted to win this one. Still, someone had to as per the rules of baseball and Freddy Sanchez finally stepped up and ended the ugly fest with his third and fourth RBIs on the day to bring the Pirates within 28 games of .500. I suppose we can consider our sweep in this series our karmic payback from what took place in Kansas City in June.

A public service announcement

I forgot this from the recap, but it really deserves it's own post. Tonight at the park, the Pirates were doing lots of things that were dog-related with it being "Pup-Night" and all. Scooby-Doo was on the scoreboard, the Jukebox songs were "Hound Dog" and Snoop song, and "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night. It really wasn't too bad. They kept the dogs on the deck under the scoreboard so there was no dog crap anywhere in the park that I could tell. It was good that they kept it to a Tuesday night that attendance was low, but all in all it really didn't seem to be a terrible idea. What was a terrible idea was one of the advertisements they ran. In a couple of week's the Pirates are having what they're calling "Pup Flicks Night" where you can take your dog to PNC and sit on the grass and watch some dog movies. Beyond the dog pies that will litter the field, the problem was with the promo itself on the scoreboard. At some point, the western world needs to learn that in most normal fonts, the word FLICK should never be spelled in all caps. Ever. Unless you want lots of unintentional humor to ensue. Pup Flick Night sounds like pretty boring, run of the mill stuff. PUP FLICK NIGHT is another story all together. Or perhaps I'm just one sick flick myself.

Pirates 7 Cubs 6

The Chicago Cubs are diametrically opposed to winning baseball games. I mean I think they seriously might have tried to throw tonight's game in order to get a better draft pick or something because I've never seen anything like tonight's game. If you missed it, the Cubs muffed two shots at inning ending double plays tonight in regulation innings, then did it again in the 11th inning with a 6-5 lead. After that there was only one thing for the Cubs to do, walk Jose Bautista with the bases loaded for a walk off walk. There were other things that happened, like the Pirates sort of fighting back from a 4-0 deficit (I say sort of because the Cubs helped out so much) with Carlos Zambrano pitching a no-no through five innings, but just about everything is eclipsed by the Cubs
incredible suck-i-tude. Zambrano himself screwed up double plays in both the fourth and fifth innings, which was just bizarre to see. I dunno, I'm still kind of speechless. I've never ever seen a team give away a game like the Cubs did tonight. I don't think I can emphasize that enough. I mean I doubt they actually threw the game, but jebus, it certainly looked like it.

Only 30 to go

Paul Maholm and Carlos Zambrano face off tonight as the Bucs try to win their second out of the necessary 31 in a row to finish the season at .500. The pitching matchup doesn't seem favorable, but we did beat Zambrano last time out to end a rather lenghty winning streak. Besides that game, Zambrano has tended to beat up on us and bean lots of Pirate hitters. We'll have to keep an eye out for that trend tonight. Of course, tonight will be dog night at PNC, so we'll see how that goes. I'll be there to take in the fiasco first hand so I'll be back later to let you know how it goes.

I suppose this is good news

To further along the Gonzalez and Gorzellany injuries, Dejan thinks they're most likely out for the year due to the timing of their injuries, but also says that they've both been checked out and neither has any ligament damange in their arms, which is a very good thing. Gonzalez's injury has apparently turned out to be the worse of the two after feeling some numbness in his throwing pinky, which doesn't sound good at all. Both guys feel well enough now to finish the season, but as mentioned, it would seem unlikely to bring them back to only work in a handful of games.

Pirates 11 Cubs 6

Anytime you win a game that Juan Pierre leads off with a home run, you should be thankful. Juan Pierre leadoff home runs might be like the harbinger of doom to an opposing baseball team, but there's not enough of a sample size on Juan Pierre home runs to be sure. Still, the Pirates responded to Pierre's homer with 9 runs and Snell answered by shutting out the Cubbies in the rest of the first and then the next four innings, for good measure. This is where the problems started. Just like his last start, Snell ran out of gas in the 6th inning and nearly gave the whole thing back. The Pirates are going to have to be extremely careful with young Ian from here on out, he seems to be hitting the wall earlier and earlier in his starts and the Bucs may want to think about capping his pitch count a little lower than they have been. Just about everyone chipped in on offense during the 19 hit explosion last night. Duffy, Sanchez, and Paulino had three hits apiece with Bautista, Doumit, and Castillo each adding two and Bay blooping a homer over the right field wall to get the scoring started. Still, the hits seemed to be mostly singles again with only 3 of the 19 hits going for extra bases. I'm not sure but it seems to me that we're hitting a ton of singles lately and not much else, though 19 of anything is usually good enough for a win, as was the case last night.

This series is kind of pointless

The Pirates and Cubs will face off and try to stave off futility early this week at PNC Park. As I'm sure most of you know, the Pirates only need one more loss to clinch their 14th consecutive losing season (as Dejan put it today, their "tragic" number is 1). With a sweep, the Pirates could make up some serious ground on the Cubbies (cutting the distance to 2.5). I'm not really counting on a sweep, though. Tonight's matchup would seem to be favorable with Ian Snell facing off against Angel Guzman, who's been more or less terrible this year.

Links

Charlie has a good post up rounding up this year's draft picks.

Billy muses about the general positivism of the average Pirate fan and how misplaced he feels that postive atitude is. I've noticed that the Pirate bloggers have tended to look at their stretch of decent (I wouldn't even call it good) play since the break with a lot more caution than the typical Pirate fan or even the "message board" Pirate fan, if you will. I'd like to think that we're just more cynical and that the Pirates will prove us wrong, but I don't know how likely that really is.

Ed Eagle identifies Jose Castillo as a potential tradee this offseason. I've always kind of felt that Castillo is a bit of an underachiever who might be worth more to someone who he's never played for before, but I'm incredibly freaking nervous about trading him after this most recent trade deadline. Simply put, yes, we have a surplus of guys who can play middle infield. Yes, Jose might fetch the most in a trade. But yes, Castillo is still a decent young player with a high ceiling and an OPS of around .740, not bad for a second baseman. A serious return would have to be involved to trade him. If the Pirates can do it, I say great, but they're going to have to be careful.

Mike Gonzalez and his "dead arm that isn't a big deal" and Tom Gorzelanny and his "little glitch in the elbow that won't make him miss more than a start or two" are now both on the DL. Seriously, lying about how serious an injury is doesn't make the injury seem less serious. Either the Pirates have the worst team doctors in the league or they think we can't handle the truth about... I dunno, something I guess. They also sent Britt Reames back to AAA. DL's plan to have the deepest bullpen in the history of the universe comes into play here as Brian Rogers (immediate dividends on the Casey trade; I guarantee Rogers won't get thrown out at first from left field), Jonah Bayliss, and Marty McLeary (aka Britt Reames) have all been called up for the new look bullpen.

Empty promises

There's lots of interesting stuff in the PG's notebook today. Littlefield is confident that Nutting and McClatchy will give him enough money to meet payroll next year. How that money is spent is a different story. Littlefield is currently saying he's after "a left-handed power bat -- for right field or first base -- and a starting pitcher." He's filled those needs with Jeromy Burnitz, Victor Santos, and Shawn Chacon this year. Speaking of Burnitz and Chacon, they join Randa as the three known Pirates to pass through waivers. Not that that really means anything, because for them to be traded someone would have to have "interest" in them. Also noted in the notebook today is the possibility that Tom Gorzellany will be shut down for the rest of the year with his "stiff" elbow. It's amazing how quickly one start becomes the rest of the season.

Astros 13 Pirates 1

If I told you before the game today that some combination of Shawn Chacon and Britt Reames was going to pitch the first six innings today, most of you would've probably guessed the Astros would have somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 runs by then. You would've been wrong, but only because you underestimated how bad the two of them suck. The combined to walk 7 and only strikeout 4, pretty much a recipe for disaster when 11 hits are also involved. We didn't do much against Hirsh, though out of the 5 hits, 2 walks and 1 HBP we garnered off of him, we managed to load the bases twice and not score either time. Luckily for us, Nady ripped an RBI single in the fourth to avoid the indignity of being shut-out by a rookie. Not that that would've made things much worse than they've already gotten this year.

Now this is exciting

After three nights of skyblasting, punk music controversy, Roger Clemens, and Andy Pettite today brings us Jason Hirsh vs. Shawn Chacon. Hirsh is a pretty good prospect (13-2 with a 2.10 ERA at AAA Round Rock this year before his callup) that's gotten pounded in his three starts in the bigs so far. Chacon is, well, BP Chacon.

UPDATE: We've got a rain delay. Not even God wants to see this one.

Astros 7 Pirates 4

I'll be honest, I didn't pay much attention to tonight's game. Duke got pounded pretty good (10 hits in 6 and 1/3rd) though he kept the walks down and the defense didn't really help him much with Joe Randa making an error that lead to two runs and Ronnie Paulino allowing two important "wild pitches" (both announcers seemed very skeptical of the actual wildness of these pitches) to skip by him. We did the flurry of singles thing again, but apparently that magic only works once a night and it wasn't enough. As previously mentioned, Willy Taveras continues to give Chris Duffy hope that someone that is mostly bad at baseball but very fast and very "center fielder"ish can bat leadoff for a decent team and rack up a very long hitting streak, thus rendering very long hitting streaks irrelevant. Seriously, if somehow Willy Taveras gets to 56 games, I think baseball will cease to exist as we know it.

Besides that, I was actually more interested in another game tonight, Oliver Perez's debut in Mets'... I dunno, how 'bout in Mets' "ugly." They can have their own uniquely named color scheme. Predictably, Perez pitched very much like he did with us this year, in a maddeningly frustrating manner. His first four innings against the Phils went like this:

1st- ground out, walk, walk, ground out, K (looking)
2nd- K (looking... by Jose K!), ground out, K (looking... by Abe Nunez!)
3rd- K (swinging), K (swinging), ground out
4th- ground out, pop out, walk, K (looking... Jose K again!)

Very good. No hits, three walks and six K's, so at least the K's balance the walks. The fifth then went like this:

Walk, fielder's choice, walk (the pitcher), fielder's choice, single (first hit of the night) HBP, Grand Slam, K (looking)

Only Oliver Perez could pitch five innings and give up 5 runs on two hits (of course the 7 Ks, 5 walks, and a hit batsmen were characteristic as well). No word on velocity, though, which is probably the key to it all. In other news, Ryan Howard is a beast (he was the author of the grand slam) and Greg Brown and Steve Blass were fondly remembering the days when Brad Eldred was a better prospect (the guy did have 50 RBIs in a month once) than Howard and hinting that they thought maybe Eldred could reach that status again, giving stupid and uninformed Pirate fans hope that one day Brad Eldred might have 46 homers and 121 RBIs on August 26th.

Duke and Pettite

The progression of things is funny. On Thursday night, not only is the Pirate game on TV, but the post-game Skyblast was televised as well. Last night, only the game was on. Tonight, you have to find a radio or a computer to know what's going on with Zach Duke and Andy Pettite. As usual for Duke, the key to his success will probably be control. If Duke can manage to not walk a lot of people, the Bucs will probably stay in the game. Also, look for Willy Tavarez has already extended his hitting streak to something like 27 games, proving that you can be bad at baseball and still manage to get a hit in a whole bunch of games in a row (his line is .285/.334/.341, only 19 of his 124 hits have gone for extra bases this year). Jack Wilson is still fighting a virus, which means we get Randa at first, Nady in right, and Bautista at third tonight. Which I suppose is better than the alternative of playing Burnitz against a lefty.

The X-Factor

The title of this post refers not to Xavier Nady, but rather the x-factor from the Xavier Nady trade, Oliver Perez. If Perez regains his 2004 form (however unlikely that is), no amount of Craig Wilson impersonation and comic book nickname fun will make Nady worth Perez, things are that simple. Tonight, Ollie dons the blue, orange, and black for the first time as he makes a start against the Phillies at Shea in a game that is much more important to the Phillies and to Perez than it is to the Mets as a whole. We can use this post as an impromptu discussion thread when Perez starts throwing 100 mph on his way to the inevitable 17 K no-hitter he will be throwing tonight.

Things could be worse

I did a lot of complaining about Jim Tracy early in the year. Since about June he's tended to shut his mouth, stopped blaming his players for everything that went wrong, and stopped praising his staff for everything that went right. He's shifted towards playing mostly younger players, and in general given Pirate fans very little to complain about. I'm still not sure he's a great manager (and this isn't an analysis of his work this year), but as stupid as he can seem, he's never said anything as mind bogglingly stupid as this Dusty Baker quote:

"On-base percentage is great if you can score runs and do something with that on-base percentage," Baker said... "Clogging up the bases isn't that great to me."

Of course, a special thanks to Fire Joe Morgan to alerting the world to just how stupid the people that run baseball can be at times.

Pittsburgh says "Don't 'Gimme' anything"

Today's PG has an amusing article about the incredibly poor reception recieved by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes during Skyblast part one. In fact, people were so pissed with them that the Pirates canned them for the next two days. When they started playing, two things crossed my mind:

1. They're a punk cover band. Why would the Pirates hire them for this thing? Pittsburgh will hate this. Wasn't Donnie Iris available? What about the Poverty Neck Hillbillies? The Clarks? Any other stereotypically "Pittsburgh" band?
2. Holy hell, they're covering Stairway to Heaven. Any chance of success is ruined. Everyone knows that's a no-no. They're screwed. Didn't they see Wayne's World?
   

And that was before they attempted to rip off William Shatner's version of Rocket Man. Speaking of which, you can never have too much of a good thing...

Astros 5 Pirates 1

It's tempting to say that Clemens was simply better than the Pirates tonight, but that isn't really true. Clemens really didn't bring anything exceptional to the plate tonight. He worked 6 innings and only allowed 1 run, but he did give up six hits and only struck out two. In his own right, Victor Santos wasn't much worse with his 6 innings, 8 hits, 3 runs, and 4 Ks, though he did walk 3 to Clemens' 1. Still, there simply wasn't much offense to go around tonight against the Rocket. Freddy and Burnitz had two hits apiece and... well that was actually about it. Xavier Nady had an RBI single and walked once. Britt Reams... pitched. Yeah, I'm stretching at this point.

Rocket and Skyblast

Should be quite a crowd tonight, not only is it Skyblast part deux, but Roger Clemens is pitching for the Astros (duh). Even with the Steelers playing and everyone in the city complaining about the performance of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes last night, I'd expect a sellout tonight. The legions of fans will get to see quite a lineup, featuring Joe Randa, Jeromy Burnitz, and Ryan Doumit. Jack Wilson gets the night off against the Rocket as Pirate fans wonder if Victor Santos really is the best we can trot out on a night like this.

Raining on the parade

Of late, there's been many positive things written about the Pirates and their 20-18 record since the All-Star Break, and while it's true that they've been playing better, it's also true that things are not completely rosy yet.

At the Bucs Dugout, Charlie brings up some very valid concerns about the young pitching staff. I'm interested to see what the Baseball Reference comps will be for Snell, Duke, and Maholm at the end of this season (unfortunately, I left my copy of BP 2006 at home when I came back to Pittsburgh so I can't see their pre-season PECOTA comps at the moment), though I doubt they'll be as encouraging as we'd like to see. The one thing about their performances in the second half that has been most encouraging is that both Duke and Maholm have managed to cut their walks down. When they were successful last year, Duke was only walking 2.46 batters per 9 innings and Maholm was walking 3.73 per 9. Up to the All-Star break this year, Maholm was walking 4.57 per 9 and Duke was walking 3.39 per. Since then, they've cut those numbers to 3.20 and 2.20 respectively. Still, it's easy to see that none of them have really pitched like aces at any point during the season (besides a start here or there). I'm still not entirely happy with the 38 games since the break as a relevant sample size though, and this doesn't take into account their minor league numbers (to look at what they might be capable of). This is something I think we'll have to come back to at the end of the season.

Also, Wilbur Miller has an informative (which is the word I will use instead of "depressing") look at Ed Creech's drafting record at OBN, way back to his mid-90s days with the Expos. Let's just say that there has been an established track record, and it's one that isn't pretty. In fact, it might be fair to say that he's gotten worse at drafting players over the years. Only time will tell on guys like Walker, McCutchen, and Lincoln, who seemingly might help Creech redeem parts of this list, but until they get to Pittsburgh they're only minor leaguers.

A plan

Dejan uses the end of this week's Q&A to outline a 7 point plan that he would follow (using a hypothetical $70 million) to get the Pirates back on track. The two most important parts of this plan are increased Latin American and Far East scouting. The Pirates presence in both of those locations has been virtually non-existent in recent years and getting talent from alternative sources would seem to be essential to a small market team (though I don't even really think Latin American can be considered an "alternative source"). I'm also intrigued by the idea to stow away what we'll call the "Burnitz/Randa/Hernandez" money in an escrow account until the team can compete, though I have no idea what it's viability would actually be (I kind of doubt that the owners or players would ever let that happen).

That idea made me think of something else though, in order for the Pirates to do something like that, they would have to admit that they aren't playing for this year. That is something that, to date, I don't think Littlefield has ever publicly done. Each year, moves and made and things are said that essentially infer that Littlefield thinks he is building a .500 team that could compete. Making these moves essentially replaces any other "plan" that might be in place. This team isn't built around it's ballpark (as evidenced by the lack of lefty power), it isn't built around the pitching staff (the pitchers are mostly not strikeout pitchers and coming into this year, Jack Wilson was the only above average starting infielder, in defensive terms, and most of the outfielders are average at best), it certainly isn't built around the lineup, it isn't built around anything except the idea that we're just a quick fix or two away from being average, which is clearly a faulty premise. This team doesn't necessarily need to subscribe to Billy Beane's plan, or Dejan's plan, or my plan to compete, but they do need some kind of plan, any plan at all. Most GMs operate with a vision of the team they want to put on the field and how that team will succeed, but that is something that is clearly lacking here.

Van Benschoten update

Since I mentioned it yesterday, I figured I should go the full nine yards and post an update about Van Benschoten's start last night. It seems to be mostly a mixed bag, he struck out 8, but walked three, gave up 6 hits (5 for extra bases) and four runs and only lasted 4 and 2/3rds (which is probably a result of a pitch count). He also recorded no ground outs, which is not good. Still, the 8 Ks against a pretty good team (Toledo is tied with Indy for the lead in the IL West division) in only his second start at AAA is encouraging. I haven't seen any reports about his velocity yet, though I'll keep an eye out for them.

Pirates 5 Astros 3

This is starting to get pretty amazing. For the third straight night, the Pirates managed to win a low scoring game with timely hitting, decent starts, solid bullpen work, and Mike Gonzalez slamming the door in the face of the other team. Like Snell and Chacon, Maholm was nothing amazing tonight but he managed to keep things close enough so that the singles brigade could put the Bucs ahead in the bottom of the sixth. Curiously enough, Matt Capps walked the only batter he faced tonight and Damaso Marte struck out the only one he faced. Things don't get much more bizarro than that. As for the offense, Bay had three hits, Duffy, Paulino, and Bautista had 2, and we had three more RBI singles tonight. It seems that we're getting an inordinate amount of those lately. Not that I'm complaining or anything.

If I may, I'd like to take a moment to look at Gonzo's performance over the past three nights.

3.0 IP, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 H, 0 BB, 6 K with a total of 39 pitches, 30 for strikes.

That is absolutely dominant. I'd like to see that a little more often, if at all possible.

Skyblast uno

Since I'm moving back to Pittsburgh today and have some running around to do, I'm going to put the gamethread up now to make sure it's up by game time. Here's what you need to know about tonight's game.

There will be fireworks. Lots of them. Shot from buildingtops.

If you can't go to the game, FSN will televise the festivities.

Also, I might add that our young Pirates are not playing so badly and can help stick a knife into another undeserving team's playoff hopes. Paul Maholm and Wandy Rodriguez will face off on the actual field and with a pitching matchup like that, you can understand why 98% of the crowd will be there for the fireworks.

Not much news

The Pirates claimed Juan Perez yesterday. He's had a pretty decent minor league career as mostly a middle reliever (though he's 27, not 25 as the Baseball Cube has listed), but then again we have plenty of those kind of guys and 27 is not exactly a spring chicken. Charlie thinks he has Littlefield's plan figured out, and sadly he's probably not far from the truth.

John Van Benschoten makes another start for Indianapolis tonight. His first start in AAA was pretty good, going six innings and only allowing 2 runs on 2 hits with 2 walks and 5 Ks. I know he's old and oft injured, but he's been pretty impressive on his comeback trail thus far this year. His mound opponent tonight is none other than Brian Boehringer who's pitched for first the Omaha Royals and now the Toledo Mud Hens in the IL this year.

Another Met is on the waiver wire at the moment, Victor Diaz. Rotoworld says we should be all over him and the fact is, at the moment both Rajai Davis and Mike Edwards are on the 40-man (hell, Davis is on the 25-man) and Diaz is probably better than both of them. And remember, that's not counting the two empty spots we have at the moment. He's not even 25 yet and he had a decent stint with the Mets last year, though he's been awful both in New York and in AAA this year. Still, picking up a guy like this probably can't hurt. If you'll recall, this is who the Mets were believed to be offering for Mike Gonzalez early last year (I think).

The Royals scored 10 runs in the first inning last night and still lost. I don't even know how that happens. Then again, we scored six in the first and lost earlier this year.

Pirates 5 Braves 4

A second straight Bucco win that had a little bit of everything. Early on we get a healthy dose of Jason Bay, with his solo homer and RBI double providing our first two runs and two of our first three hits off of Hudson. Snell cruised through five innings, giving up only 3 hits (though 2 were solo homers) and helping stake the Bucs out to a 3-1 lead before completely losing it to the point that he walked Jeff Francouer. That's 100 times crazier than a Ronnie Paulino infield single. Counting tonight's walk, Francouer has 12 walks in 515 ABs. Randall Simon never even approached anything like that. Anyways, Grabow came in, issued a bases loaded walk, and promptly left, leaving Georgia native Matt Capps to clean up the mess. He managed to do so, getting a K to get out of the inning. Freddy Sanchez immediately responded with his sixth homer to give the Pirates their final margin of victory. It took a nice Jason Bay diving catch, a ridiculous play by Salomon Torres (Nady fielded a grounder and flipped it about 3 feet above Torres' head, so Sal leaped up, grabbed it, and came down on the bag without breaking his ankle, it was impressive to watch) and a flat out dominating ninth from Gonzo (11 pitches, 9 strikes, 3 Ks, daaaaaayum) to get there. Beating the Braves always makes me feel a little warmer on the inside.

Not-so-great expectations

Ian Snell and Tim Hudson face off tonight as the Pirates try to steal a road series from the Braves and finally close the door on the Braves playoff hopes, as small as they are right now. It's funny to note that Snell (11-8, 4.51 ERA, 1.46 WHIP) and Hudson (10-10, 4,77, 1.44) have almost identical numbers this year but Hudson has been a huge disappointment while Snell has been one of the few bright spots in Pittsburgh this season. Actually, that's not funny, it's depressing. If you dig a little deeper, it's also not really fair to Snell. His strikeouts and K/BB numbers (127 K's to 105 and a 2.27:1 ratio compared to 1.7:1)have both been considerably better than Hudson's in about 20 fewer innings. Snell also had some horrendous early season performances that are still skewing his numbers at least a little bit. Oh, and Snell is 24 and Hudson is 31. This comparison thing, Snell doesn't do that. Continue on with the hope.

Since the All-Star Break

The comparison point for the Pirates of late has been their performance since the All-Star Break. It's a logical breaking point in the season and the Pirates haven't sucked since then, so I used the Baseball Musings Day-by-Day Database to separate out the Pirates stats since the break, for both hitters and pitchers. I didn't spend a lot of time studying the numbers, but here are some knee jerk reactions:

• The starters have all pitched better since the break (when compared to their fullseason numbers).
• Tom Gorzellany was quite good in the starts that he made.
• I shouldn't complain about Torres or Grabow as much as I do.
• Bay is hitting better than his lack of homers since the break would suggest.
• I like Xavier Nady. That SLG seems kind of low for a middle of the line-up first baseman, but he's been bringing it up of late.
• As much as we said Jose K was coming around of late, only one of his 13 hits since the break wasn't a single. That's not very good.
• Duffy has been pretty awful. I'm not sure he's ever going to be a leadoff guy.
• Jack Wilson has been hitting surprisingly well since the break. Jose Castillo has not.
  

Only links

Chronicling a very bad baseball team in their quest to not lose 100 games doesn't really lend itself to lots of original material by the end of the fifth month of the season, and for that I apologize. Still, I find myself with some links to share, for everyone that hasn't seen them yet.

First up, Ryan Doumit (not Mike Edwards!) will fill Jose K's spot on the 25-man roster. He had been hitting very poorly in his rehab stint both in Bradenton and Altoona but since he's killed minor league pitching in the past, I don't really think that's much of a concern for the team. He played a bunch of positions (catcher, first base, outfield, DH) and managed not to hurt himself, and I think that's pretty much all we can ask for. He would've been up on September 1st anyways.

The Bucs Dugout helps us catch up with an old friend, Raul Mondesi. Apparently good old Raul committed some kind of "electrical fraud" back in July and was elected to the Dominican House of Representatives for a term starting on August 16th. I have no idea what the rest of the article says, but it's very entertaining (it's translated from Spanish by Google language tools and makes no sense at all).

Pirates 5 Braves 3

This was a weird game to watch unfold. For 7 innings the Pirates made Oscar Villareal, Chad Paronto, and Tyler Yates look kind of like John Smoltz while the Braves eeked out to a 2-1 lead. Then, suddenly the 8th inning started and every single thing they hit found a hole. After walks to Duffy and Wilson, Freddy Sanchez, Jason Bay, Xavier Nady, and Ronnie Paulino all hit RBI singles (with Sanchez tying the game, Bay putting us in front, and Nady and Paulino applying the insurance). Those 5 runs were enough for Capps and Gonzo to hold on to the lead, somehow getting Damaso Marte an actual win.

Chacon pulled his dancing through the raindrops crap again today, with 5 walks and 3 hits in 5 innings that luckily only lead to one Atlanta run. Since arriving in Pittsburgh Chacon has struckout 6 and walked 13. That is not a good ratio. The real story tonight was the defense, with Castillo making a ridiculous over the shoulder basket catch, Nady and Wilson combining on a very nice and very timely 3-6-1 DP in the 5th to get Chacon out of a bases loaded/one out jam, and Freddy making a nice play on a strangely hopping grounder that nearly handcuffed him with the go ahead runner at third. After the Braves broke out about 5 web gems against us last night, it was only fair that we evened the score tonight. Gonzo also very calmly shut the door tonight with a 1-2-3 inning featuring 2 Ks. I suppose it's only fair that I mention it since I point out every single roller coaster save he puts us on.

Goodbye Jose K

The Pirates traded Jose K to the Phillies today for an undisclosed amount of money. That's not really particularly interesting unless you think Dave Littlefield is sending a message top Jim Tracy, who's been praising Hernandez to anyone that will listen this week. The interesting part about the article is that despite everything that we've heard, Gorzellany will miss another start with the "lingering stiffness" in his elbow. The Pirates really should mix up the script a little bit on these things.

More Chacon?

We have to endure yet another Shawn Chacon start tonight, as he takes his crooked hat to the mound against Oscar Villareal. I'm almost positive that I heard one of the Pirates TV guys refer to Villareal as the Braves #2 starter this year, but I'm going to hope that I wasn't paying attention and they actually said "Villareal will be making his second start of the year" because the alternative is just incredibly embarassing. He made a decent start in his first start of the year against the Nats, but his numbers from his time in the pen don't really match that gaudy 9-1 record (ERA- 4.13, WHIP- 1.36, only 40 strikeouts in 60 innings, etc.). I mean, he's no John Smoltz or anything, so we should probably get an extra base hit or two and maybe score a run tonight. Maybe not, I haven't seen tonight's lineup yet so anything is possible.

A way for DL to impress me

The main topic of today's Pirates Notebook is the Pirates' need for a left handed masher. The Pirates' inability to find one of those is kind of curious. Their park is clearly built specifically for left-handed mashers, and yet we haven't had anything even close to one since Giles left. Leaving the "clutch" argument aside, Bay has pretty much done a dead-on Giles impersonation at the plate since he's gotten here. The thing is, he hits most of his homers on the road (18 of 25 so far this year and 25 of 32 last year with SLG split of .500 at home vs. .589 on the road this year and .488 vs. .595 last year). This is pretty logical given the design of PNC, it's just that if Bay had ended up in Houston or Cincy, people would probably refer to him as the Canadian Pujols. Littlefield purportedly turned down a shot at a lefty masher in the form of Ryan Howard and took Wigginton (and while I know that rumor was everywhere, I suppose it's unfair to hang Littlefield for something we can't be 100% sure about, but then again this is a blog, so we'll do it anyways). This year he signed Burnitz, hoping that the call of the Clemente Wall would coax 30 or so homers out of a guy at the twilight of his career. It won't. Most likely, his desire for a left-handed bat will just lead to another failure on the level of the Burnitz experiment. There is one palatable (however unlikely) solution, mentioned briefly in the now famous "Six Man Rotation" notebook of late last week. Korean-born Japanese baseball star Sueng-Yeop Lee wants to come to America next year and the Pirates are supposed to be interested. He is the only player in the Japanese league to reach 400 homers before the age of 30 (he's got 404 and just turned 30 last week) besides the legendary Sadaharu Oh and is chasing down the all-time single season record of 55, held by Oh and the immortal Tuffy Rhodes. Sure, it's a risk. Sure, Japanese fences are typically a bit shorter than American fences. But who wants to see Burnitz or someone similar again? He wants to come to America and the supposed starting point is $3-$5 million a year. We can afford that, or maybe a little more. I don't know how you convince a guy to come to Pittsburgh when other MLB teams (Yankees included) are making offers, but I think Littlefield would be wise to find a way.

JR House

I've been looking for the typical "Fallen top prospect who was playing college football just a year ago reaches majors again" story, but apparently no one in Houston has written it. In fact, this was the most I could find in the Houston papers. Still, JR House's return to the majors is a pretty impressive story. There's some rumblings on the message boards that DL screwed up by letting him go, but House made Ryan Doumit look like Cal Ripken Jr. in his last couple years in the top levels of the minors. And yet, I have no doubt in my mind that House will do something to make Pirate fans aware of his presence this weekend. If House does kill the ball in Houston like he has in the minors (his numbers this year have been reeeeeeediculous, though maybe not for a 26 year old in AA and AAA, then again he was fighting Pat White for the QB spot at WVU this time last year), well, I suppose it will just be another notch in the "Littlefield and co. have no ability to develop prospects" belt.

UPDATE (3:08 PM)- Just found this, which includes the laundry list of JR House injuries:

• Abdominal hernia, unspecified torn muscle, and Tommy John surgery, all in 2002, limiting him to 35 games in '02 and 41 games in '03.
• Rotator cuff surgery in '04 which limited him to 92 games for Indianapolis and 5 in Pittsburgh, leading to the Pirates cutting him shortly after.

Like I said, he makes Ryan Doumit look like Cal Ripken.

Braves 3 Pirates 0

Zach Duke pitched fairly well tonight, going 7 strong innings giving up 3 runs on 7 hits and a walk, but it wasn't enough against John Smoltz, who turned the clock back to 1996 in an absolutely dominating performance against the Bucs tonight. He whiffed 10 Bucs in 8 innings tonight on a variety of fastballs, nasty splitters, and huge bending curves. It was impressive to watch. We didn't even manage an extra base among our four hits tonight (3 off Smoltz and one against Wickman, who was curiously brought into close after Smoltz shut us down for 8 innings on only 83 pitches...Edit: Duke threw 83 pitches, not Smoltz, who threw 109... still wouldn't trust Wickman if I was a Braves fan though). There really wasn't much else to this one besides Smoltz and Duke, so we'll just leave it at that.

Atlanta

Zach Duke and John Smoltz will face off tonight with Duke taking the place of the "glitch-elbowed" Tom Gorzellany. As we speak the scribes (or more accurately, the people who replace "Kris Benson" and "Jason Schmidt" in the form columns with "Ian Snell" and "Tom Gorzellany" and "10 losing years" with "14") at Pirates.com are probably churning out tons of tripe comparing the young Pirate staff to that of the Braves circa 1990 (I wouldn't know, I can't even bring myself to look). That is, of course, stupid because John Smoltz has had one of the most unique careers in the history of the game. That's all semantics and I know we've discussed it once already since we faced Smoltz once this year. Smoltzie has owned us in the last few years, he's won both of his starts against us since returning to the rotation last year and he also converted all six of his save opportunities against us during his span as a closer. Not that I expected anything else. The Braves are 7 games under .500 and still only 5 and 1/2 games back in the Wild Card race. Since there's like 8 teams in front of them it's unlikely they'll get the extra playoff berth this year, but it would be nice to finish them off this week, just for good measure.

Some notes from Altoona

Over the weekend Gavin (regular commenter and one of the fine guest recappers from my vacation week) got to attend some baseball in Altoona with some primo seats and a chance to see the best (only?) position player prospects in the Pirate system, Neil Walker and Andrew McCutchen. He was kind enough to send along a summary of his time at Blair County Ballpark.

I had the distinct pleasure of attending Blair County Ballpark yesterday to see the final six innings of a delayed game from the previous night, followed by a second seven inning game featuring our AA affiliate Altoona curve facing the Harrisburg Senators. I got the full VIP treatment and sat right behind home plate by the radar guns and Pirate GM David Littlefield and Special Assistant to the GM Pete Vukovich (editor's note: So Vuke has become George Costanza?). I did resist the urge to ask the Vuke to revisit his role as Clu Haywood in "Major League" and I had a small conversation with DL but also remained classy enough not to make any snide comments when Taber Lee was batting and when Matt Peterson was missing the strike zone by large distances. Due to the recent promotions of both Andrew McCutcheon and Neil Walker, Altoona is now a "hotbed" of future prospects by Pirate standards, which is about all you really need to know. The Curve split the two games, winning 8 to 5 in the first game and dropping the second contest 7 to 4.

The most impressive performance belonged to former Bucco Ray Sadler, a 25 year old outfielder who showed off his raw power by hitting 3 homeruns and belting out five hits. Sadler has had a disappointing year in Altoona but you wouldn't have known it by the way he was turning on the ball and none of the three HRs were even remotely cheap. His approach actually looks very similar to Ron Gant's as he is a skinny guy, but he has a hard and violent turn through the ball. He looks to me to be the type of player that could possibly "get it" at some point and really put up some huge numbers in the minors and get to the bigs.

Andrew McCutcheon is a wonderful talent, you can literally see in about four seconds that this kid is destined to be a good one. His bat speed is extraordinary for a skinny 19 year old and he can really run the bases and track down flyballs. He hit a rocket homerun to left field that left the yard in about two seconds and never got any higher than about ten feet off the ground. He still struggles somewhat with pitch recognition and was flailing after a couple curve balls in the dirt for strikeouts in the second game, but I saw very little not to like about him. He easily has the highest upside of anyone on the field yesterday.

Neil Walker was sick with strep throat according to his father, but he did make a pinch hit appearance and lined out sharply. He has a beautiful swing and the ball jumps hard off of his bat, but it is hard to tell much of anything from one AB. Ryan Doumit was on rehab assignment and started the second game behind the plate, but he looked very tentative at the plate and was hitless in four trips, although he did reach base on an error on a hard ground ball in his one left handed at bat. He has some work to do before he gets back to the bigs.

Nyjer Morgan is an intriguing prospect because of his unbelievable speed, although he is a little old for a prospect at 26. He was a former junior hockey player in Canada in the WHL who runs the bases like a frightened deer. He stole two bags and was caught stealing one other time when he overslid second base, which I was told is not the first time he has done this recently as he hits the bag with such ridiculous force on his slide. He has improved dramatically at the plate since I saw him a couple years ago in Williamsport and has a fairly simple approach, hitting line drives to all fields and letting the ball get deep in order to hit the left side of the field to use his speed to reach base. He is very exciting to watch, but might be a left-handed version of Rajai Davis.

Brian Bixler is a very solid shortstop, with decent range and good hands. He has excellent bat control and hits the ball hard consistently, usually line drives and ground balls. He seems to have a pretty good concept of the strike zone and looks to be a future .300 hitter with limited power, although he is only 23 years old. He also possesses some pretty good speed, which is clearly in abundance in Altoona (and just as clearly limited in Pittsburgh). He is really doing a nice job considering it is his first time through AA.

The Curve pitchers were less than impressive, with the exception of 22 year old lefty Dave Davidson. He has an extremely unorthodox delivery which is murder on righties because he winds around with the ball behind his side so that they can't pick up his pitches until very late. He struck out both righties he faced on seven total pitches. He does not throw hard, but he does have a sweeping sidearm curve ala Scott Sauerbeck that should enable him to get lefties out if he can improve on its command. I think that he can be a suitable set-up guy someday in Pittsburgh.

Romulo Sanchez is another intriguing guy, with a very live arm and great stuff. He is very raw and very wild, but there is no doubting his stuff is of major league quality. Wardell Starling started the second game and got hit pretty hard early on. He does not throw particularly hard, but seems to use only about one half his body when he throws and does not drive with his back foot at all. He has a pretty nasty curve, but he hung it quite a bit early on and only had success with it in the later innings. His command is questionable as well, and although he is only 23, I was not overly impressed with his stuff. I also got to see Matt Peterson, his stuff is no better than average and his command is awful. He has bust written all over him.

My conclusion is that the closet is certainly not bare in the Pirate organization, but the outlook is not exceptionally rosy either. The big power bat that eludes is likely not among this group of prospects, and only McCutcheon seems to be of that "can't miss" quality, although I didn't get to really evaluate Walker. It is a beautiful facility in Altoona and run as well as any ballpark I've ever been to, including PNC. I recommend making the pilgrimage for any Bucco fan who simply loves the game of baseball.

Thanks, Gavin!

Gorzellany's elbow stiff

So says the Pirates Notebook in the PG today. He'll miss his start today and for now is being pushed back to Thursday, which means more Chacon in the rotation. Tracy and Gorzellany both go out of their way to emphasize that it's nothing serious, calling it a "glitch" and "not a setback." We all know what that means... see ya in 2008, Tom.

Meanwhile in non-Bucco news Tom Glavine has a mystery arm ailment that sounds an awful lot like Kip Wells' mystery ailment in Spring Training. I've never been a Glavine fan because of the awful childhood memories he heaped upon me, but I still hope the guy's OK. If he's done for the year it probably makes a Yankees/Dodgers World Series a mortal lock, ending in the 3rd consecutive sweep of the NL in the Series and endless flashbacks to the '50s as FOX tries to revive the rivalry when the two teams played in the World Series, like, every year (though they were in the same city at the time). Of course the alternative is a Subway Series, which would be even more painful for the fans to watch. Or maybe the Yankees won't make the World Series at all, but I kind of doubt that given that the vast improvements they made to themselves at the deadline made a good pitching staff kind of optional.

Reds 5 Pirates 1

I knew this was going to be a long one in the first inning when Duffy and Jack both reached on infield singles to bring Freddy up. Instead of the guy that's hitting .600 against the Reds, .500 in his last 11 games, and .350 on the season getting to swing away he wasted two strikes on bunting and struck out. Seriously, Jim Tracy enjoys losing. Anyways, Victor Santos pitched not particularly well giving up 2 run homers to Scott Hatteberg and Adam Dunn in the third and Jason Bay's solo homer provided our only offense. That's not really a recipe for any kind of success at all.

Finale in Cincy

The Reds hope to salvage this series, which was looking pretty bleak after the top of the 7th last night, and they're going to have the pitching matchup to do it. I don't see Victor Santos and the homer happy Great American meshing very well today, while the Reds trot out ace Aaron Harang. The Pirates best hope is Jason Bay, who has very good career numbers against Harang and at Great American, and Freddy Sanchez, who is hitting everything that anyone throws at him of late.

This has to be a typo

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reds 14 Pirates 7

I was in the car for most of our comeback last night (which was as good of a place as any to be since there was TV). Right as I pulled in to Pittsburgh we had tied the game at 7 and I thought to myself "The Reds owe us this one. We blew a 6-0 first inning lead to them in May and they're going to do the same for us. Plus, Bay already has two big hits tonight and that bastard owes me a third one. This one is in the bank." I proceeded to head to the South Side and saw nothing of the game (since all Pittsburgh bars were focusing on the Steelers) until the news came on the TV after the Steelers were done. Imagine my surprise to see that we lost by the same margin that they did, that David Ross continued to kill us in his "Abraham Nunez 2005" year, and that Britt Rheames was the only reliever not to give up a run. I don't even want to know the particular details of this one. The final score is bad enough.

Overkill

The Pirates will attempt to continue their run as season killers tonight against the Reds at the odd time of 6:10 PM. Paul Maholm gets a glance at what we all hope he doesn't become in his mound opponent tonight, Eric Milton. Milton hasn't been quite as bad as last year, but that's kind of a meaningless statement given how bad he was last year. If you're in Pittsburgh and trying to watch this one on TV, you're out of luck because the meaningless Steelers' preseason game is on two different channels tonight (FSP and KDKA, and yes, I know the Pirates' game is meaningless as well).

Afternoon links and musings

Shawn Chacon is headed to the bullpen for now. I don't know how a six-man rotation works with him in the pen. Sadly for Chacon, Victor Santos is better than him, so this is a good move for the Pirates. Apparently Jim Colborn wants to work on his mechanics or something, and the pen is the best way to do it. Sure, we all believe that.

Also, from the same notebook, John Van Benschoten is going to Indianapolis to make his next start, which will come today.

Andrew McCutchen is off to a fast start in Altoona.

In the past week both Charlie and Sam have pointed out the flawed reasoning that the Pirates will be the "next Tigers" or the "next Reds" at the Bucs Dugout. Here's the thing about the 2007 Pirates, they're currently the same as the March 2006 Pirates. Coming into this year everyone assumed that we had some young pitching that was probably good and if they held their own, we would be a decent baseball team. We've seen some good things from those young pitchers this year, especially Snell and Gorzellany, but they haven't been Justin Verlander or Francisco Liriano or Jered Weaver. Not even close. Duke and Maholm have stepped back. I'd love to see a staff anchored by twin aces Gorzelanny and Snell with Duke and Maholm as solid backing guys. It's certainly possible (and it's probably our only hope to be a good baseball team in the next ten years), but it's by no means a foregone conclusion at this point. We still have no semblance of power to back Jason Bay in the lineup. We're still paying Jack Wilson a ton of money to not get on base from the 2 spot in the order. We're still waiting on Jose Castillo. There are a lot of things that have to fall into place for us to be the next Tigers (because as Charlie points out, being the next Reds wouldn't even really be that great of a thing) and they aren't going to happen with the front office that we have.

Pirates 7 Reds 3

I was fully expecting Jason Bay to come out tonight and justify my 1700 words from yesterday with some kind of huge late game home run. Instead, the two guys that sandwich him in the lineup made sure that we never got to that point with huge games (not that Bay's 2-for-5 night with 2 runs scored was anything particularly shabby). Freddy Sanchez went 4-for-5 with 2 doubles to push his average up to .351 and Xavier Nady went 4-for-5 with a three run homer that gave the Bucs a 5-1 lead in the third. It's Nady's second four hit game in his short time as Bucco the homer was his first as a Pirate. When Nady had originally come to Pittsburgh I figured that his logical nickname would be "The X-Man," but I was unaware at the time that Greg Brown and everyone else involved would be calling him by that name. Instead, all I could think of every time Nady got a hit tonight was Mallrats and the exchange between Brodie and Jay early in the movie.

Brodie: Shall I call you Logan, Weapon X?
Jay: NO! WOLVERINE! SNIKT SNIKT SNIKT!

And so the replacement for "Thor" has been found. Only time will tell if Weapon X can live up to such a lofty designation.

Beyond Freddy and Nady, Ian Snell had another pretty decent start tonight. He wasn't mind- blowingly impressive or anything (you can never be THAT great with 4 walks in 7 innings unless you're throwing a no-hitter or something), but he did manage to hold a Reds' lineup that loves their ballpark to 4 hits and one run in 7 innings, so it's not like I'm complaining either. Jack Wilson also added a homer, his third since his DL trip in early May (he hit 5 in April). The game also featured one of the rarest occurences in all of baseball. I don't mean a triple play. I don't mean a cycle. I obviously don't mean a no-hitter. I mean a Ronnie Paulino infield single. Take some time to digest that one.

Holy cow

The Bucs head into Cincy for what is undoubtably one of the most important series' of the year for the Reds. They almost have to sweep the Pirates to stay within striking distance of the Cards in the division and there are several teams bearing down hard on them in the Wild Card race. Lucky for them, the worst team in baseball is rolling into GAB this weekend as we lug our 14-45 record into the most homer happy park in the league. I would say that I want to see Pittsburgh stifle Cincinnati again because they've been such sore losers after the whole football thing, but that's not true. In fact, Reds fans have been nothing but nice to me since I started this blog and a large part of me wants to see the Reds make the playoffs to show the Pirates how much of a difference a new front office can make. But if the Pirates want to win, I won't complain either. Ian Snell faces off against Chris Michalak in the first of three tonight and Snell has the benefit of possibly the most logical Bucco lineup Tracy has trotted out all year.

1. Duffy
2. Wilson
3. Sanchez
4. Bay
5. Nady
6. Paulino
7. Bautista
8. Castillo

Jack Wilson is still batting too high, but "most logical" and "best" are two different things when it comes to Tracy's lineup card, so I'll settle for "most logical"... for now.

Links

A couple of days ago, ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick wrote an article about Freddy Sanchez and the odds he's overcome this year. That article caught the eye of the guys at Fire Joe Morgan, who were convinced Crasnick accidentally wrote a "David Eckstein article" about Freddy Sanchez. Dejan also wrote a piece about Freddy and the final leg in his chase for the batting title.

Today being Friday, it's time for Pirates Q&A with DK. After talking about Tracy's inconsistent handling of the young pitching staff this year, someone asks Dejan what we all are wondering, why oh why is this team so good at home and so bad on the road. Dejan tells the writer that he had just asked Tracy the question, and Tracy stunningly responded that the Pirates have not gotten the "situational hits" they need on the road. That answer is so amazingly moronic I'm not sure what to say. The correct answer is, as Kovacevic points out, that the Pirates OBP is .347 at PNC Park and .317 on the road, and that their ERA at PNC is 4.20 while it is 5.25 on the road. Why does this happen? It's hard to say, but it's not some flukey "We don't get clutch hits on the road" type thing. The Pirates haven't been unlucky on the road this year, they've been BAD. The Q&A ends with a reader survey: If you were given a $70 million baseball operations budget, how would you spend it?

And finally, Steeltown Mike has a pool going at his blog wondering on which day the Pirates will lose their 100th game or win their 63rd. My guess? Well, the Bucs do close with 6 games at home, but they're six games that Cincy or Houston will need much worse than us. If we flip to the 6 man rotation as expected, I don't think our current stretch of decen play will last enough to avoid 100 losses. We drop #100 on the last day of the season to Cincy, who clinches the Wild Card with the win, which would seem to be some kind of poetic justic. Feel free to head on over to his blog and post your answer.

Bayrod?

With today being an off-day and Pirate fans recovering from two days of Joe Randa in the cleanup spot, I think it's finally time. "Time for what?" some of you are asking, while some of you probably already know. This summer, the Pirates best player has been branded by some as a choker in clutch situations. I've tried to defend him, but I've noticed that he's given me very little opportunity to do so. I've avoided the situation because I didn't want to do it unless I had time to reason it all out. But finally, I'm going to address the two-fold question, 1.) Is Jason Bay clutch? and 2.) Does whether he's clutch or not matter?

As I've said, I've been very loathe to even touch the situation until know. It was partly because of the large amount of reseach I knew I'd have to do, but it's also partly because of the very origin of Bay's nickname, A-Rod. Yankee fans have managed to do something I never thought I'd be capable of, feeling bad for a guy that's pretty much univerally loathed. In the three years prior to this year (two of them as Yankees), Rodriguez had a .945 OPS in close and late situations (7th inning or later in a 1 run or tie game, or with the tying run on base, at the plate, or in the on deck circle), almost exactly the same as his regular season OPS (.972). Despite this, Rodriguez came into the season fighting the "not clutch" rep because of a poor performance against the Angels in the ALDS, a series in which no Yankee played particularly well (A-Rod career playoff OPS: .927). He was frequently compared to Derek Jeter, who's numbers paled in comparison to his in just about every way (from 2003-2005 his close and late OPS was .744, DOWN from his overall .835 number in those three seasons and his career playoff OPS is .842, almost the same as his career number, though he is much much better in the Division Series than the LS or World Series... choker). Anyways, A-Rod put more pressure on himself to come through in these situations and failed pretty badly early on, which only increased the fan and media pissing and moaning. It's a sliding scale, handling the actual situations themselves is one thing, but doing it while you're thinking, "I've gotta get a hit because it's a close game and the fans moan about me and if I don't the media won't let me forget about it for a week" is another. We say stuff like that shouldn't affect professional athletes, but it does. What I'm saying is that any struggling Rodriguez has done in clutch situations this year (and they do appear to be there, his close and late OPS is waaay down to .631 this year), they've come because of the added pressure of actually trying to be "clutch" as opposed to simply trying to win games. Because of this, I've left the subject alone when it comes to Bay this year. Not because I think Bay reads the blog or because I think I have such a wide ranging audience, but simply because I don't want to contribute anything at all to a similar situation with Bay. I should mention that I feel dirty for defending A-Rod now (though bashing Jeter is always fun), and I'm done talking about Yankees, I'm simply giving you an idea where I'm coming from.

So let's move along to Bay. Last year in 88 "close and late" at-bats, Bay went .273/.387/.545 with 6 homers and 15 RBIs, scoring 9 runs. Those all match his fullseason numbers almost right on the nose (especially given the rather small sample size) and since Bay was one of the best players in either league last year (his VORP of 72.6 was 5th in the ML last year behind Derek Lee, the aforementioned Rodriguez, Pujols, and David Ortiz and ahead of a hell of a lot of great players) it means that he could not have been not clutch last season. You can expand the definition of clutch to just about anything, since close and late likely doesn't nearly cover it, but Bay's numbers all went up with runners on base last year in comparison to his bases empty numbers. The numbers really don't support any argument that Bay was unclutch last year.

This year it's true that Bay's numbers have gone down in clutch situations. I can't argue that without making myself look stupid. His close and late numbers are very down (.556 OPS with only a .235 SLG in 68 at bats to this point) and his OPS with runners on is .850 this year compared with 1.029 without. I can't ignore those numbers, but I think I can explain them (at least a little bit). Last year in 105 close and late PA's, Bay walked 17 times (16% of the time). This year he's walked 18 times in only 85 close and late PA's (21%) of the time. On the whole, he's walked in 16% of his PAs this year, compared to 13% last year. This seems insignificant, but it generally conveys the idea that Bay is getting pitched to less this year. All hitters, minus Barry Bonds from 2001-2004 (and that doesn't count), have holes in their swings. In Ted Williams' Science of Hitting he talks about how he can't hit a low and away pitch to save his life. Jason Bay is the same way, we all know that he can't hit a low and away pitch that breaks out of the strike zone from right handed pitching. When he's hot, he can foul it off. When he's not, he misses it entirely or pops it up. When he's being pitched around, he's pitched to almost exclusively in that spot with the thinking being that either he'll make an out or he'll walk and Joe Randa or Xavier Nady or whatever comparitive stiff is batting 5th certainly will. There's a reason his on base There's simply no motivation for any pitcher to come anywhere near where Jason Bay can hit the ball in an important situation. There's a reason why his on base percentage is nearly 200 points higher than his batting average in those situations, and I think that's it.

It is true that a great majority of Bay's homers and RBIs (in the vicinity of 70%) have come in the first 6 innings this year. I can't argue with things like that. But it's also true that of his 25 homers, 14 of them have either tied the game or given us the lead (1 tied the game, 13 gave us the lead). Only 7 of his 25 have come with the Pirates down by 3 or more (5 times) or up by 3 or more (2 times). Sure, lots of the homers have come in the early innings, but 1.) runs don't count less if they're scored before the sixth, and 2.) the whole first month of the season we struggled to get out ahead in games. Without breaking the numbers down (because there's no real way to do it), I'd say that except for a few recent exceptions, Bay's numbers late in the game come more from being pitched around than being avoided. Yes, Freddy Sanchez has been walked twice recently to get to Bay late in close games, but that likely has more to do with Bay only hitting 7 homers since his ridiculous streak ended in May, or with Bay only having 22 doubles to this point in the year than with him not being clutch.

So it is true that Bay has been less clutch this year than he was last year, there's no arguing that. But his big differential in close and late stats from last year to this year makes a solid argument that the sample size is too small to do anything with anyways. The existence of clutch has been debated for a long time by people much more sabermetrically oriented than I am. Cyril Morong has written several articles, one exploring the affects on team clutchness on W/L records and one about the affect of clutch hitters themselves on records. In the articles he concludes that non-clutch situations (defined as close and late and not close and late) are more important than clutch situations when it comes to team record and that while there may be clutch players, most of them don't affect a teams' win total any more than would be expected from the regular stats. Baseball Prospectus' Nate Silver dedicated a chapter in this spring's Why Everything You Know About Baseball Is Wrong to the question "Is David Ortiz really Mr. Clutch?" The article was excerpted at ESPN.com this spring and though it leaves a lot of the math out of things, but his basic conclusion is that even though he found more evidence of clutch than most people who've investigated the subject in the past, even the most clutch hitter since 1972, Mark Grace, only won the equivalent of 13 games over 16 with his clutchness. Included in Silver's top 10 of clutchness are Jason Kendall and Jeromy Burnitz.

So we go back to the original questions. Jason Bay might be clutch, or he might not. My own guess is that after his breakout last year, when he performed very well in every concievable situation, he gets pitched to very carefully late in the games given the protection he has in the lineup. The point that we should be concerned about is that his OPS this year is .940 compared to his .961 from last year. That's very, very good whenever those numbers are racked up, and they're going to help win games, no matter when they're racked up. They're even more impressive given that over these past two years he's been protected by the likes of Daryle Ward, Joe Randa, and Jeromy Burnitz more often than not. All I'm saying is that maybe we should give the guy a break and if we're calling him "Bayrod", it should be more of a compliment than anything (actually, he's having a better year than A-Rod, but that's neither here nor there).

Stats from ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and Baseball Reference. I did some of them on Sunday and some of them today so if some things are a little off, forgive me.

Boring Day

Off day today, which means not much is going on. I'm working on a big post, but it's not quite done yet. The biggest news of the day is that Littlefield says the Bucs may go to a 6 man rotation in order to prevent young arms from falling off, which seems pretty logical even if it means Vogie or Santos will go back into the rotation. Also in the above notebook: Bay will be back tomorrow (thank all that is holy, no more clean-up Randa!), John VB is heading to Indy next (EDIT: I'm an idiot, you guys are right, the article says Altoona, not Indianapolis, and Indianapolis and Altoona are two words which are difficult to confuse), which is interesting given all of the time that he's missed, Brad Lincoln is throwing again, and Ryan Doumit is playing all over the field in his rehab assignment at Bradenton.

Brewers 5 Pirates 2

This one, like most of these stupid afternoon games (see: huge first inning lead blown to the Reds, bases loaded no outs in the 9th of a tie game against Arizona), was so pitiful that its pretty tough to write about. Let's just say that last night, 99% of Pirate fans would've told Jim Tracy that batting Joe Randa cleanup was a bad idea if they were given the chance. Tracy elected to keep the same strategy today and Randa stranded 8 men on base, including leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th of a tie game. Seriously, what did he think was going to happen? The pitiful lineup wasted a gutty start by Duke, in which he somehow made it through 6 and 2/3 innings with only 2 runs on his record despite giving up 9 hits (though the key stat there is zero walks). The pen looked like they would be able to hold things down until we stumbled into a run, but leaving Damaso Marte out on the mound for a second inning is never a good idea. Today it lead to 3 runs and Marte's 7th loss on the season. The fateful thirteenth was also marked by the curious choice to intentionally walk the light hitting Damian Miller in order to load the bases to face David Bell, he of three hits on the day. Maybe Tracy figured that Bell sucks (he does) and he'd never get 4 hits on the day. If that was what he figured, he figured wrong. It was just a stupid, painful baseball game for everyone involved (except for the Brewers, who won, and Jim Tracy, for obvious reasons).

More afternoon games

Duke takes the mound right about now to try and make his second consecutive start without sucking (SWOS). Unfortunately he won't have much punch backing him up as Jim Tracy has elected to make today one of the few days he starts the same lineup as the day before. That's right, last night's crapfest has been reincarnated on the field today. I saw the egg that popped up on Jack Wilson's hand after his Monday beaning, but batting Jose K second is insane, as is batting Randa clean up. The Brewers send Capuano out to the mound, who we've owned in two starts this year. I'm not counting on a third with this lineup.

Brewers 6 Pirates 3

This was one of those games that was doomed from the beginning by the lineup we put on the field. After Gozellany came out trailing 2-1 in the 7th, I was all ready to write my "Gorzo pitched great by Tracy's ass backwards lineup only scored one run and cost us the game." Jose Bautista ruined that post with his two run homer, which also doubled to get my hopes up. Unfortunately, the bullpen was due for a meltdown and it came tonight. Marte couldn't get anyone out, Torres couldn't strand any of his runners, and Freddy Sanchez misplayed a grounder into an RBI Bill Hall single to put the Brewers up 4-3. As if that wasn't enough, Grabow went back to putting the "L" in "GrabLow" and gave up two more runs in the top of the 8th to put things out of reach. The Pirates still fought back to load the bases with one out in the bottom of the ninth, which prompted this discussion in my house.

Dad: You know a grandslam wins it here.
Me: You know a double play loses it here.
Brother: Why are you so negative? He's going to crush this ball.
Me: It's not negative if it's going to happen. What seems more likely? A grand slam or a double play?
Jeromy Burnitz: I'd say a double play. Ha ha ha (goes to the bank with his $6 million)

If we're anything, we're predictable. Still, the Pirates take all the fun out of being right about something.

Jim Tracy hates winning streaks

And I have the evidence. Tonight's lineup:

1. Duffy (CF)
   
2. K (SS)
3. Sanchez (3rd)
   
4. Randa (1st)
5. Weapon X (RF)
6. Paulino (C)
   
7. Almost Paulino (2nd)
8. Bautista (LF, and an 8 hitter if I ever saw one)
9. Gorzo (P)
   

If no one's said it yet, Welcome to Pittsburgh, Tom Gorzellany. Shit like this happens waaay too often.

Movin' up

The Bucs' two top prospects are moving to Altoona together. Neil Walker, formerly of high A Lynchburg and Andrew McCutchen, formerly of low A Hickory, are both going to the Curve, which strongly increases the chances of me taking an impromtu road trip to Altoona sometime at the end of this summer. Walker got off to a slow start at Lynchburg this year coming off of his wrist surgery but he's been killing the ball of late, so this promotion is a logical one. McCutchen impressed most of the brass with the big club in Bradenton, then started hot at Hickory before cooling off in May and June. He's been hot again recently and his .291/.356/.446 line is awfully impressive for a 19 year old in his first year of full-season ball. I'm surprised to see him skip Lynchburg and go all the way to Altoona but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad move. In fact it's nice to see the Pirates actually move their prospects along when they deserve it. The Pirates also promoted 26 year old non-prospect Vic Butler from Altoona to Indy.

Thanks to Gavin for the tip in the comments.

Things to think about

We'll start with the big one, on Sunday John Perrotto mentioned in his "rumors" column (which I can only assume replaced his plog, whatever the hell that thing was) that the Nuttings are upset with Dave Littlefield and thinking of canning him after this contract is over, not for the poor product he's trotted out on the field this year, but rather for wasting their money. We can file this in the "I swear to God if you're f****** with me there's going to be trouble ahead, Johnny Boy" because I might be crazy but I honestly think that if a new (and good, Steve Phillips won't cut it) GM were to take the reigns of this team on October 2nd the Pirates could be a .500 team or better next year and in the National League, who knows what that means. Then again, in his chat yesterday Dejan indicates that he hasn't heard anything about Littlefield going anywhere.

The Stats Geek writes an Ode to Freddy today, not just to his high batting average or his slew of doubles, but also to his nearly Golden Glove. Yep, just about every reason we were given in March from the team as to why Freddy Sanchez shouldn't be a starter is down the drain at this point. And I still heard Greg Brown refer to third base as a weak position in the organization last night.

Dayn Perry at Fox Sports writes about the worst owner in baseball, and it's not G. Ogden Nutting (via Honest Wagner).

Nate McLouth goes on the DL, Rajai Davis is called up. Can you feel the excitement? Ryan Doumit is final on the rehab trail in Bradenton and John Van Benschoten may be headed to AAA.

Two new blogs for the blogroll, first off is We Should Be GM's, a mostly Phillies but sometimes Pirates blog (featuring a Pirates/Phillies praise post currently at the top). Second up is Che Steadman's The Bad News Bucs which I often see in his "Homepage" link in the comments but always forget to link to. Both will be added to the sidebar shortly, if they aren't there already.

Pirates 4 Brewers 2

It struck me during tonight's game that the Craig Wilson trade was even stupider than we thought (it's like this thing gets worse by the day, first it was bad, then Chacon got shelled and it was worse, then we found out Chacon was hurt, and so on) because Shawn Chacon isn't even better than Victor Santos. Santos was nothing special tonight as he did his usual Victor Santos thang, putting tons of guys on base and trying his damndest to not let the game get out of hand. The only inning that was troublesome for him tonight was the second which he got out of with only two runs crossing the plate, runs we got back quickly. We put up singles in each of the first four innings, two on solo homers by Burnitz and Castillo (in the 2nd and 4th respectively) and two scored by Chris Duffy (who picked up two more hits tonight) on groundouts by Freddy Sanchez and Xavier Nady. Watching Castillo, I think the "benching" (I don't know if sitting 3 of 4 games is even really a benching) may have actually lit a bit of a fire under him. He made a nice grab on a pop-up today, which is a play that he RARELY makes. Or it could be (read: probably) coincidence. The pen did another great job tonight with Torres, Grabow, Capps, and Gonzo each pitching a shutout inning to close out the win.

There was one thing that drove me nuts tonight. With runners on first and second and no outs in a tie game in the third, Jim Tracy elected to bunt Freddy Sanchez. Now I realize that the bunt worked and that it ended up allowing Duffy to score on Nady's groundout, but are we seriously taking the bat out of our three hitter's hands? I mean, the guy is hitting .345, he's knocked in 64 runs this year, and he's doubled 41 times. Regardless of whether the bunt worked, it was a stupid play. The bunt ended up letting one run score, but a double scores two.

Jack Wilson left the game in the seventh inning with a hand contusion, which allowed us the pleasure of seeing Jose K man shortstop for a couple innings. And if you're keeping track at home, the Pirates are undefeated since September of 2004 in games in which Jason Bay has sat out. Sadly enough, Jim Tracy has made important decisions with similar sample sizes.

Brew Crew in town

I've come to the realization that I don't really like any of the other teams in our division. It's not really anything personal, it's probably the whole familiarity breeds contempt thing. I dislike LaRussa and everything associated with him and that means the Cardinals, the Astros have freaking ugly uniforms and Roger Clemens pitches for them, the Reds delievered me my first awful baseball memory, the 1990 NLCS (before that it was all roses as far as I can remember), and some part of me can never forgive them for that, and the Cubs are, well, the Cubs. The Brewers are something different, though. They haven't always been in our division and once they joined they were our brothers in ineptitude for a lot of years. Then in 2005 they finished .500 with a promising young team. They haven't quite fulfilled expectations this year, but good young teams often take a step back before they can surge forward. My dislike for them springs more from jealousy than anything.

Tonight is a good example of that. Our starting pitcher is one of their castoffs. Our starting right fielder is a guy they had the sense to get rid of years ago. Interestingly enough, our starting left fielder is not Jason Bay. He's not in center either. I don't actually have a huge problem with this, it might not be a bad thing to get him some rest here and there. A consecutive games played streak is pretty useless as I don't really see anyone touching Cal's record. I couldn't understand Tracy's logic that guys like Castillo and Sanchez need days off seemingly once a week, but that Bay never needs one off because he played every day last year. Of course, with Victor Santos on the mound we'll be needing all the offense we can get. The Brewers absolutely need to win this series to keep any semblence of hope that they're still in the Wild Card race (currently 5.5 back of the Reds). The Pirates need to win this series to keep me from writing very nasty and sarcastic things about them. I'd say it's a push.

More thoughts on the deadline

While on vacation last week, my younger brother read Moneyball for the first time. Throughout much of the week, my dad and I (who both read the book in the winter of 2003) were constantly amused by my brother quoting passages from the book that seemed to advise doing the exact opposite of what Dave Littlefield does. Charlie at the Bucs Dugout did a great post on this last summer (and updated it for Irate Fans this summer). The best example that my brother came up with in his reading came from the chapter about Billy Beane's performance at the trade deadline (it's the best example because the whole thing is freshest in my mind, of course). Beane has 5 simple rules that he always tries to follow at the deadline. Let's break it down (if you're reading along at home, the rules come on page 193 of the original hardback printing of Moneyball, which I suspect at least several of you have, if you have a different version, it comes about 5 pages into Chapter 9, right after the AL West standings on July 1st of 2002).

Rule #1- "No matter how successful you are, change is always good... When you have no money you can't afford long-term solutions, only short-term ones. You always have to be upgrading. Otherwise you're f*****.
The part about long and short term doesn't really apply to the Pirates because they aren't contending at the moment, as Beane's team was when Lewis was following him around for the book. Everything else does, especially the part about constantly upgrading. The Pirates very obviously failed to do this at the deadline this year. They brought in Xavier Nady, a guy who is likely no better than Craig Wilson. They brought in Shawn Chacon who is much worse than Kip Wells. They traded Sean Casey and got nothing particularly comparable. They traded Oliver Perez and got nothing even remotely comparable in return. They traded Roberto Hernandez and ended up with 2 minor league middle relievers on the day, something they already had plenty of. With a change to upgrade the team, Littlefield failed to do it.

Rule #2- "The day you say you have to do something, you're screwed. Because you are going to make a bad deal. You can always recover from the players you didn't sign. You may never recover from the player you signed at the wrong price." (emphasis mine)
The Pirates could've (should've) traded Craig Wilson over the offseason after they signed Burnitz and Casey. They should've traded him in May or June when the Yankee outfielders were dropping like flies and Melky Cabrera was unproven. They waited until nearly 4 PM on July 31st to pull the trigger on a deal with a player that everyone knew they had to trade at that point. Same goes for Kip Wells since most teams probably knew the Pirates had no intention of offering him an extension. Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez, well, one was going to be a free agent and one may only get worse. Littlefield clearly felt he had to deal both of them. Same for Casey. By waiting until well after noon on July 31st to make 3 of his 4 deadline day deals, everyone in baseball knew that Littlefield had to deal at that point. As a result, we got screwed. I italicized the last part not because it had anything to do with the deadline, but rather because it pretty much sums up everything wrong with both Cam Bonifay and now Dave Littlefield.

Rule #3- "Know exactly what every player in baseball is worth to you. You can put a dollar figure on it."
Does a man who traded Craig Wilson for Shawn Chacon straight up seem to have a handle on what every player in baseball is worth to him? How about Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez for Xavier Nady? Or to go further back in time, what about asking for David Wright in return for Kris Benson, (apparently) rejecting Benson for Ryan Howard, and settling on Benson for Ty Wigginton? Or what about the now infamous 2003 Rule 5 draft? Yeah, didn't think so. Actually, not making the theorized Benson for Howard deal is a great example of how bad DL is at this. Supposedly the deal wasn't made because we already had Eldred rising through the minors at the same position. The thing is, with a short right field at PNC, Howard was more valuable to the Pirates at that point because he's left handed, despite the similar minor league stats he and Eldred had at the time. DL could've traded for Howard, then swung Eldred to a team while he still had value. Instead we took Wigginton, a crappy AA pitcher, and swapped prospects so that we could get one of our Rule 5 draft losses back.

Rule #4- "Know exactly who you want and go after him. Never mind who they say they want to trade."
I'll freely admit that Littlefield actually does this. The problem is that he so thoroughly ignores Rules #2 and #3 that it renders this rule useless. In addition to knowing what everyone is worth to you, you must know exactly what everyone on your team is worth to the GM of the team you're trying to trade with. Littlefield is so clueless in evaluating players that I wouldn't trust him to go within a mile of any fantasy team of mine. This results in laughable offers like Benson for Wright or CWilson for Anthony Reyes or... you get the picture.

Rule #5- "Every deal you do will be publicly scrutinized by subjective opinion... Not everyone believes that they know everything about a personal computer. But everyone who ever picked up a bat thinks he knows baseball... You have to ignore the newspapers."
I'm sure if Moneyball was written in 2005, Beane would've added "and blogs," so technically, advising Littlefield to follow all of Beane's rules would mean that he should ignore this post, and thus ignore the rules. Regardless, I'm going to press forward. Littlefield didn't actually make any moves that make the 2007 (and beyond) Pirates better, unless Xavier Nady really blossoms next year. By adding Chacon, he may have made them worse, assuming Chacon spends any considerable part of 2007 in the rotation. By trading Perez he may have made them worse because, well, if Perez regains his form there's nothing that can equal that in a trade, though Littlefield got nothing even close in value to Perez's hyopthetical worth. If he made no moves at all Wells, Casey, Wilson, and Hernandez would all still be gone in 2007. Still, the public outcry if Littlefield dealt none of them would've been huge. Thus, Littlefield felt like he had to deal those guys, which brings us back to rule 2.

The great thing about the five trading rules is that, like most of the rest of Moneyball, they're just common sense. Much of baseball operates without common sense, thus small market teams have to have it. When a team like the Pirates is run with little common sense, well, it's obvious what happens.

EDIT (2:10 PM)- I forgot about Charlie's posts on the subject of the Pirates and Moneyball, so I've added the appropriate links in the top paragraph.

Pirates 7 Cardinals 0

Strangely enough, the Pirates swept the Cardinals at PNC today with a relatively easy 7-0 win and the sun and moon are still in the sky following their same relative patterns, and near as I can tell hell hasn't frozen over.

All kidding aside, the Pirates put together their third consective good baseball game against the Cards today. Maholm pitched fairly well and got himself out of several jams to put up his 6 and 2/3rd shutout innings. Torres bailed him out of some trouble in the 7th and Marte and Capps shut the door over the next two innings. Bay and Randa provided enough offense for the pitching in the second inning with their back to back solo homers off of Marquis that landed in nearly the exact same same spot in the left field bleachers. Lanny was actually in the middle of providing valuable insight when Bay went deep as he was busy telling us that Marquis was tied for the NL lead in homers given up. The rest of the offense was provided by Chris Duffy (?) and his 3 RBIs as well as a 2 RBI double from Freddy (who added another hit to bring his average to .346). Duffy also had another good game with two more hits, a walk, and another stolen base. The Pirates are now 15-13 since the All-Star break and 31-28 at home. That would seem to be pretty good, minus their 30-60 record before the break and their 14-45 record on the road.

And if something apocalytic happens overnight, well, blame the Pirates.