Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

We all know the drill for this one, the last three Bucco managers, Leyland, Lamont, and McClendon, are back in town tonight with a lot of people wondering just what the 2006 Pirates would look like if Leyland was at the helm of this squad instead of the Tigers, baseball's best team. The three managers are bringing some former players back with them, in the form of Tigers hitting instructor Don Slaught, infield instructor Rafael Belliard, and first base coach, as well as my childhood hero and the namesake of this blog, Andy Van Slyke. It'll be strange to see him at PNC in another uniform, but probably no stranger than him having to see his #18 filled by Jose K. Anyways, I'm going to catch this one tonight as I'll be out of town the rest of the weekend and simply can't miss the travelling squad of ex-Buccos that have coached the Tigers to the top of baseball. Kip Wells being on the mound tonight is only karmically appropriate, as I've written nearly a novel in sup...

Just observing here, but did anyone else notice that the when Pirates came flying high into a homestand on June 13th against the Cardinals, they welcomed back injured third baseman Joe Randa. They then promptly dropped 14 of their next 15 games with Randa back with the team, including a Pirates-record 13 straight games. Joe Randa went on the bereavement list for his grandmother's funeral and the Pirates finally won again. It's probably a coincidence... right?

I've done some sidebar updating, putting in links to two Pirates' blogs I linked to earlier ( Mondesi's House and The Dock Ellis Experience ), as well as one of the sites that was involved in the Chuck Finder article with me, Sell the Pirates , and a blog written by one of the regular commenters here and at several other Pirates' blogs, The Parrot . In the opposing team links, I included a link to Thunder Matt's Saloon , the Cubs blog that gave us the invaluable Tracyball post earlier this week. Oh, and I put a button for ArmChairGM down at the bottom because I listed my blog there like a month ago and they asked me to put a button on here and I just never got around to it until now. Whew.

Via the Bucs Dugout , Oliver Perez has been demoted to Indianapolis . All I can say about this is "ABOUT DAMN TIME!" For three days now I've been terrified that we were going to put Ollie on the Ryan Vogelsong career path. That is, move a failed starter to the pen and make him mop-up man, a role that is very difficult to break out of. The only way he's snapping out of this is by pitching, and the only way that will happen is in Indy. Good move by DL for once (gulp!). Also, via Deadspin, this video of two guys and their experience with the new mascot is hilarious. It's also 100% true. I have no idea what's wrong with that thing, maybe the patch causes a loss of depth perception or something, but it couldn't get a t-shirt into crowd if its life depended on it. The language isn't really safe for work, women, or children but I don't really know how many women and children read this thing anyways. Enjoy.

We can talk all we want about wanting to see this team lose as many games as possible to expose our fraudulent owners to the harsh national spotlight, but man, games like today never get old. It's hard to keep on seeing the same shit day after day, it really was getting to be like Groundhog Day. In fact, that parallel is fairly apt as the day that Phil Conners finally breaks out of his own personal slump he hears Sonny and Cher on the radio and is sure that he's still stuck on February 2nd, until he realizes it's a different part of the song and he's finally free. Today the Pirates tried their damndest to keep on losing and with the Thome home run and all, but Freddy Sanchez wouldn't let it happen. Speaking of Freddy Sanchez... sheesh. He piled on four more hits today including his walkoff homer and raised his average to a mind boggling .363. I don't really have any superlatives for Freddy that someone else hasn't said already, but the longer this goes on th...

The Bucs and ChiSox hook up for a business man's special this afternoon. Of course the storyline in this one is that Jose Contreras has won his last sixteen decisions while the Pirates are on a losing streak of two... no six... no twelve... BAKER'S DOZEN ( I told you I was crazy 'bout these cupcakes, cousin ). The law of averages says that Contreras will have to lose soon while the Pirates will have to win soon. Common sense tells us otherwise. So tune in this afternoon for common sense vs. the law of averages, Jose Contreras vs. Zach Duke, the Pittsburgh Pirates vs. the Chicago White Sox. If I were a gambling man, my money would be on common sense, Contreras, and the Sox, respectively.

Rise and shine campers, and don't forget your booties 'cuz it's coooooold out there. It's cold out there every day. What is this, Miami Beach? Not hardly. So the question on everybody's lips... On their chapped lips. ...their chapped lips is, does Phil feel lucky? Punksatawney Phil, that's right wood chuck chuckers, it's... GROUNDHOG DAY!!! I feel like I already saw this episode. Starter cruises through six, hits a wall in the seventh, Pirates lose. When it happened the first time, the Snell vs. Liriano game, I defended Tracy for leaving Snell in because at some point in his life, Ian Snell will need to learn to work out of a jam. The second time it happened to Snell, against KC (I know, this one was in the sixth, but same premise), I felt like Tracy should've been a little better prepared, simply because it had just happened and the team was slumping badly, getting a win was more important than Snell working through is problems. Tonight it really pissed...

Last night my friend and I went down to the ballpark, expecting to see the Pirates lose their 12th game in a row. We bought our tickets and realized they were for Section 143, Row J, Seats 12 and 13 . Karma says this thing is going through at least tonight. I don't care what Jim Tracy says, the only way we win tonight is if the White Sox play like ass again. The Sox send Freddy Garcia to the mound, and honestly whenever I hear his name all it brings up are painful memories of our own Freddy Garcia . We send Maholm out to counter. Paul hasn't given up less than three runs in any outing since June 1st, and has had a couple rough starts recently. Also, ESPN says he is righthanded , which should make things rather interesting tonight. To be honest, I just don't see things going well for us in this one.

The polls are closed over at Dodger Math and the results are in, the Worst General Manager of 2006 is no one but our own Dave Littlefield ! Since DL couldn't be here to accept his award, I posted an acceptance speech for him in the Dodger Math comments that I feel obliged to replicate here: I’d like to thank Dodger Math for this prestigious honor. It’s hasn’t been easy to make the Pittsburgh Pirates worse than I found them in 2001, but I’ve finally done it. There’s so many people I want to thank, Kevin McClatchy, the Nutting Family, Randall Simon, Daryle Ward, Jose Hernandez, Bud Selig and his ridiculous revenue sharing system, but especially Jim Tracy, who’s arrogant stupidity has made this final dive for the depths of baseball possible. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hammer out a 3 year/$18 million extension with Sean Casey to ensure that I can take this thing home again next year.

I tend to shy away from the breaking down stupid things that are written about the Pirates, but seriously, check out Paul Meyer's recap of last night's game. He describes the White Sox win as efficient. They had 15 hits, we walked 2 batters and allowed a batter to reach via error, yet scored only 4 runs. That's kind of the opposite of efficient. Actually, in these circles I believe it would be called "Pirate-like." They got caught stealing once and made two stupid baserunning errors, yet Tracy says in the column that we played a good ball game and the White Sox were just a little bit better. That is patently false. We played our typical game, replete with poor fielding, average pitching, and an allergy to this thing the experts refer to as "hitting," but because the White Sox played a bad game, we didn't get destroyed. The sixth paragraph brings this: "They had one out that was not productive," Tracy said admiringly. BAM! That was my head...

I meant to post this in the linkdump I did earlier, but here's John Sickels' midseason review of our preseason top 20 prospects (thanks to Robinson Checo for the heads up in the comments). And I mentioned this in the post below, but White Flag is officially gone , replaced by Jonah Bayliss for now. Oliver Perez is moved to the pen presumably to replace White Flag in the "can't get anyone out" department, and Gorzellany will likely be called up for someone on Saturday to make a start as Victor Santos' hangnail/shoulder problem/fictional injury isn't healed yet. I would presume that some kind of trade or other roster is coming before then as we currently have four lefties in our pen and none of them are very good (well, Gonzalez might be very good, but his WHIP this year is around 1.60, so really he hasn't been much more than lucky this year). I've always been one of Vogelsong's biggest supporters and I'm kind of sad he could never get thing...

This team is absolutely fried. Tonight the White Sox fell all over themselves, failing to drive runners in in key situations, making base running errors left and right, and we still couldn't even make it feel like a game, final score notwithstanding. Snell managed to dance through raindrops long enough to keep us in the game even though he didn't seem to have his best stuff (difficult to tell, in the first inning the scoreboard showed his velocity at like 103, then they shut the radar gun off for the rest of the game, presumably because there was a problem). After Snell departed, Jim Tracy went back to Salomon Torres, even though we just cut the White Flag and brought up Jonah Bayliss to ensure that we wouldn't need to keep overusing Torres (side note: how bout that roster shakeup, cut the mop-up guy, bring up Bayliss, and demote Perez to the pen, leaving a pen with Torres, Bayliss, Hernandez, and FOUR semi-effective lefties, and they wonder why we lose... I'd guess Ma...

Yep, I'm going to the game tonight, weather permitting. I'll be there in my Irate Fans shirt (with an extra for the saxophone man on the bridge) which should be fairly easy to spot among the crowd of hundreds that I suspect will be there. I'm going because Ian Snell is pitching and because this is my only shot to see the White Sox as I can't go tomorrow or Thursday. Last time Snell pitched I said I would be watching for two reasons , 1.)Ian Snell and 2.) I am insane. My dad and brother (who both do the Jumble in the newspaper every morning, explaining how they made the connection) pointed out to me that "Ian Snell" is simply "insane" with two extra Ls. I don't know what that means, except that I'm still probably crazy. I mean, we all saw what the White Sox did to the Cards last week, right? I can't even imagine what's going to happen in this series, and I think it's just because my mind isn't twisted enough. UPDATE (6 PM): I...

Here's the good thing about the Pirates being so horrifically awful; the things written about them on the internet get exponentially funnier. Some examples: From Dejan's scouting report on the White Sox : Three things to know about the White Sox: 1. They are the defending champion, the hottest team in baseball on a 9-1 roll, batting .335 in that span, racing with Detroit for the best record and owners of maybe the best rotation. Other than that, they are nothing special. And my personal favorite: The Pirates' key to success: Rain. Also, via Honest Wagner , find out if your favorite baseball team is infected with Tracyball . I've got a bad feeling about this... Also, in the less funny vein, the Stats Geek takes the Pirates defense to task for being downright terrible this year.

I've been sitting on this one for a while, ironing all the details out and connecting the last few dots. That's right, after countless Q&A references by Dejan and the discussions that they blossom into on this blog, it's finally time for the Pittsburgh Pirates/ Office Space comparison. I connected all the dots I could, if you guys can think up anything for the people that got left out, I'll tack it on to the bottom if I think it fits. Dave Littlefield/Bill Lumbergh - They're both the bosses, they're both jackasses, they both terribly mistreat their employees, and they even look alike . Creepy. Craig Wilson/Milton Waddams- The parallels are eerie. In the Pirates Q&A on June 7th, a reader asked Dejan if he had, by any chance, heard the following mutterings from the clubhouse: And I said, I don't care if they trade me either, because I told, I told Dave that if they put me on the bench one more time, then, then I'm quitting, I'm going to quit....

Remember last week when I said this ? Note to Dave Littlefield, Kevin McClatchy, and co.: While Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, Romo Phone Home , and now The Dock Ellis Experience exist, no one is ever going to name a blog after Raul Mondesi, Matt Stairs, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, Chris Stynes, Jeromy Burnitz, Jeff D'Amico, Joe Randa, or Roberto Hernandez. There is a reason for this. Well, three days later I've already been proven wrong. I give you Mondesi's House . And of course, don't forget to check out Dejan's chat transcript . Surprisingly, the Pirates fans are pretty angry. Also, it involves this: WHYGAVS: Was the reaction by the players (especially Bay and Jack Wilson)after yesterday's game in any part due to their frustration with the way Tracy publicly blames them while never looking in the mirror, or did they actually mean they thought the roster needs a shakeup? Dejan Kovacevic: Yes on both counts. The players have made clear -- more as ea...

With today being an off-day and all, we get fun talking points from everyone involved with the team about what needs to be done to prevent the entire city of Pittsburgh to be sucked into the gigantic black hole that is forming at PNC Park. Well, talking points from everyone but the one person with the power to do anything, Bob Nutting. As much as I dislike Smizik, he's been so frustrated recently that he's stopped writing his typical pieces that bait all of Pittsburgh into disagreeing with him and has been ranting on the state of the Pirates. Today he explains that while Kevin McClatchy stands out in front of the organization as a public face for everything that it does, the mysterious Bob Nutting is the man behind the curtain. He actually tried to get a hold of Bob Nutting for an interview , but was shooed away. Of course, McClatchy has something to say , and he talks to Dejan today. "I'm extremely disappointed," owner Kevin McClatchy said shortly after the team...

Kip Wells wasn't nearly as awful today as he was against the Royals in his first start. He pitched pretty well through three innings, then ran into trouble in the fourth on a bunch of bloopers and tweeners. His velocity was hard to get a read on, as the gun was placing his fastballs in the mid to low 80s, but that's where pretty much everybody's fastballs were in LA, leading me to think there was a problem with the gun in LA this weekend. Or none of our pitchers can throw over 85 mph, which would explain A LOT. Besides Kip, there wasn't much positive. I'm finding the games exceedingly tough to watch as the Bucs are just kind of drifting around the diamond listlessly waiting for bad things to happen. This is the worst kind of baseball to watch. Not losing baseball, hopeless baseball. I was thinking about making the "This one goes to eleven" joke that Grubb made in the comments, but then I realized that this one is probably going much further than 11. In fac...

Kip Wells takes another shot at ending this excessive losing streak, which has reached a whopping 10 games. Things already don't look good, as the Dodgers are sending Brad Penny out to face Wells and Penny has been excellent this year. I wouldn't count on much happening today that isn't bad. This is really getting tough to watch.

Sorry for not getting the gamethread up last night, I was running around like crazy between home and school to meet up with some friends that were back in town after heading home for the summer and just didn't have the time. I did end up watching the game in what's quickly become the best place to watch a Pirates game, the bar with lots of alcohol immediately available. I didn't see much, but it wasn't pretty. I'm running out of ways to describe these games, so I'll let Dejan take over for this one: Someday, the Pirates will win again. Someday. Maybe. But it might not happen before they have carved for themselves one of the most dubious distinctions in franchise history. It's sad, but carving out one of the most dubious distinctions in franchise history is probably the only way things are going to change. Ugh.

I think my favorite part was probably when Ollie gave up five runs in the fourth on only one hit. That was pretty original. Also, I'm pretty sure that I'm happy to see Jim Tracy get steamrolled in LA.

The Bucs head out west tonight with Oliver Perez trying to stop awfulness. We've lost, let's see, 8 in a row now and a whole bunch of our last certain amount. The amazing thing is that things are likely to get worse. We play some fantastic baseball teams in the coming stretch, LA, CHW, DET, NYM, and PHI all before the All-Star Break. All I'm getting is that we should probably stop saying that "It can't get any worse," because it can, and it likely will.

DL is in the Dodger Math Worst GM Finals , you know what to do. Maybe it's a tradition to have the home manager be a coach on the All-Star team (I know Leyland was third base coach in '94, one of the more enduring images of that game is him waving the winning run home in the 10th inning like a madman... can't tell you who scored the run, but I remember Leyland windmilling him home), but it's flat out bullsh!t that Garner named Tracy a coach . It's nice that he made Tanner an honorary coach, but he should've stopped there. Tracy may not be the source of the problem here this year, but the way he's treated the players in the press and taken credit for every small thing that's gone right while deflecting all the blame is despicable. He gives all managers a bad name with the stuff that comes out of his mouth, and I can't believe Garner would wantto be anywhere near him. New Pittsburgh sports blog: The Dock Ellis Experience . Of course, that reminds me of...

Sorry for the late post guys. The internet crashed in my apartment. It's still down, actually. I had to run back to my lab to print some stuff out for tomorrow and the internet is still running here, so I figured I'd put a post up to let everyone know that I haven't killed myself or gone on a murder spree or shut down the blog forever. There's not really any words to say about the Pirates at this point. Today we were swept by the Royals, a team that was off to one of the worst 68 game starts in MLB history before they played us, then Jim Tracy was named to the All-Star coaching staff as a reward for quitting on his team and throwing most of them under the bus repeatedly. Dave Littlefield still has a job. It's all insanity.

The Bucs and Royals finish their pointless series up this afternoon and by about 5 PM this evening the Pirates will be the happiest team in recent history to high-tail it out of KC. Paul Maholm and Scott Elarton will pitch in a game that the Pirates just seem predestined to lose. Me? Hell, I'm just excited for one more game of Joe Randa at DH.

I try to keep this site PG-13, which I'm sure all of you have noticed by now. It's not because I'm morally opposed to the f-word, because I'm not. It's just because I don't know who's reading this (besides the fact that I DO know that my mom and grandparents stop by from time to time) and I don't want someone to NOT read because of the language I use here. There's myriad other reasons that people can choose not to read this blog and that's fine with me, I simply don't want to limit my readership over something stupid like language. That being said, it is getting tougher and tougher to write a PG-13 post about this baseball team. In fact, I could whip up a pretty good NC-17 post at this time that would probably make Loki blush at Ragnarok and still be holding back on how I feel about this baseball team. How do I feel about the Pirates after tonight, you ask? Perhaps a refreshing game of MadLibs will reveal the answer. HOW IN THE BONDS ING BOND...

For some reason, I will probably continue to tune into the Pirates, even after last night's hideous debacle. I can only think of two reasons why I will do so: Ian Snell I am insane Anyways, I may not be around for the first pitch, so I'm putting the game thread up early. There won't be a live blog tonight, but I'm figuring that we still may need a place to commiserate. I would give you facts about these two teams, but you know the tale of the tape by now. All that's left to do is watch the games because you can't look away from the wreckage. I hope Brad Lincoln wasn't watching last night, or he'll seriously be wondering what he's gotten himself into. UPDATE: I don't know what happened to this post, but apparently it spent 3 hours in no-man's land. It's here now.

Ugh, I'm still mentally drained from last night's debacle. Sure, doing the liveblogging sent a ton of readers my way today, but I'm pretty sure it also caused irreversible emotional and mental damage. The only thing I want to talk about at all is Kip Well's performance. Even with all of the talking up I did for Kip in the past couple weeks, I wasn't expecting much last night. He missed almost two full months, then has been expected to complete Spring Training coming off of two months without doing any throwing, and all against non-Major League players. I was hoping for something in the neighborhood of 5 innings, 3-4 runs, 3-4 walks, 5 or so Ks. Nothing special, just a sign that he could pitch at a Major League level. Last night wasn't completely devoid of that. He threw his fastball in the low 90s (at least reportedly, FSP suspiciously didn't give pitch speeds last night), he got through the third inning on only nine pitches against the heart of the Royals o...

The worst team in the NL. The worst team in the AL. Bad young guys. Cagey veterans. The wreckage Allaird Baird left behind. The destruction Dave Littlefield is creating. Mark Redman. Kip Wells. The most anticipated return of an 18 game loser in history. David Glass. Ogden Nutting. There is only one way to chronicle this amazing event. LIVEBLOG . Check back for updates as they happen, new stuff at the top. Welcome to the carnage, Deadspin readers. 11:35- And of course, thanks to all of the brave souls who stuck all, or any part at all actually, of this one out with me. 11:29- Some fun stats: the Pirates committed 3 errors tonight, walked 11 batters, gave up more runs than hits, threw a wild pitch, allowed a passed ball, and gave a win to Mark Redman and his "5 innings, 6 hits, 5 runs (all earned) 5 walks" line. All told, our pitchers threw 168 pitches tonight (!) and only managed to get 89 of them across the plate. If you remove Matt Capps, it's 75 out of 151 (less than 5...

Not content with just ruining the Pirates, the Nutting family has bought another Pittsburgh institution , the Seven Springs ski resort. I saw the same phrase highlighted in bold letters that Rowdy did , when asked about the gaming license that the family was planning on persuing for Seven Springs and the possible clash of interest with the Major League Baseball team that they own, Robert Nutting said: We would do nothing that would embarrass the Pirates or the sport of baseball. Ugh. UPDATE: Bill Toland's Casino Blog at the PG is looking for reactions and punch lines to go with Robert Nutting's statement (fifth paragraph down for the June 20th entry). Somehow, I've got a feeling that some of you guys out there might be able to help. His e-mail address is in the sidebar of the Casino Blog. If you do send him something, make sure to leave it in the comments here as well.

I'd like to congratulate the WHYGAVS readers for their strong showing in a recent poll. I'm not talking about Jason Bay's eyebrow raising, likely fraudlent leap to the third place in All-Star ballotting, I'm talking about Dave Littlefield's gigantic, crushing win over Kevin Towers in Dodger Math's Worst GM Poll. DL nearly doubled the total votes recieved by anyone else in any round and won by the highest percentage as well. Round 3 brings DL vs. Bill Bavasi of the Mariners .

I had originally read Ed Eagle's account of Tracy's tossing Jack Wilson under the bus early this afternoon, before the awful travesty that was this afternoon's game and had a post all drawn up in my head before anger clouded it over. Thankfully, Bones dropped me a reminder in this comments thread . You'll recall that last night (early this morning actually) I accused Tracy of throwing Jack Wilson under the bus because, well, he did. In the above linked column from this afternoon, Eagle has this to say: As Tracy sees it, pointing out that certain plays could have or should have been made during the course of games does not constitute throwing his players under the bus. He's merely pointing out the difference between plays that winning teams make and those that losing teams do not. Now, it's a pretty common phrase and it's exactly what Tracy did to Wilson yesterday so it's entirely likely that we're looking at a coincidence. Still, I can't help ...

What everyone says in the comments on the post below is true, when you're 16 games below .500 there isn't much that should bother you, there isn't much that you shouldn't see coming, you should always expect the worst from your baseball team. And yet, somehow the Pirates find a way to make each loss worse than the last. To further the Office Space analogy established in Dejan's last few Q&A's (which have been moved to Friday's to accomidate his new weekly Monday chat : Peter Gibbons : So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life. That's kind of like the Pirates season. When a team has 44 losses in mid-June, you think you've seen everything. Then, it gets worse. After coming back from a 4-0 deficit to tie the game against a team that's lost 9 of ...

I feel obliged to mention that the D'Backs are in town today only to make up their rainout from early May. Appropriately, it is an overcast and rainy day here in the 'Burgh, though they will likely get the game in anyways as the weather is not that bad. The D'Backs are road weary, playing some bad baseball and probably pissed they have to come to Pittsburgh to play this game at all, as it should've been played six weeks ago (remember, the Bucs called the day game like at 1:30 and things cleared up shortly afterwards). The Pirates are looking for anything to postpone the embarassment they will likely levy upon themselves in Kansas City. The most intriguing plotline in this one is whether Jim Tracy will get a chance to play Julius Caesar while the rest of the team takes the role of the Roman Senate. Starring in the role of Brutus will be T-Bone Shelby of course, if only to hear the words Et tu, T-Bone?

You would think that a team that's been around 15 games under .500 would have had the wheels fall off before now. Impressively, the team and their resident jackass manager have stuck together fairly well. That all ended after Sunday's game. If you missed the game, the play in question was a ball hit by Luis Castillo with two outs in the top of the 8th. Ollie jammed Castillo and the ball kind of blooped out in front of Jack, who couldn't get to the ball in time to catch it on the fly. He hurried a slightly off mark throw to first, which Casey came off the bag for (it was a pretty weak effort on the stretch). It might not have mattered, as Castillo can move pretty good. In all honesty, at first I thought Jack let the ball play him a bit, which resulted in it falling in. After seeing it a couple more times, I don't know if there's anything else he could've done. He was coming in pretty hard and Castillo hit the ball with some major top spin or something because ...

There's no shame in losing to Johan Santana. There is shame in being a lifeless shell of a baseball team. There is shame in wasting three straight very good starts from your young pitching staff. There is shame in becoming the next Rick White, and I'm talking to you, Sal Torres (good analogy, Jeremy). There is shame in being 26-44, no matter how young you are. The D'Backs have lost 9 of 10 and they have to be licking their chops right now for our one game series tomorrow. Ugh.

We wrap up what's quickly becoming a nightmare of a series against the Twins today with another interesting pitching matchup, Johann Santana and Oliver Perez. Unlike the first two matchups of this series, which were interesting for what might be down the road, this one is curious for what it might've been. As in, what might've been if Oliver Perez didn't fall off the face of the planet the last two years. Santana is still almost certainly the best lefty on the planet, despite lacking the record to back it up. Considering how flat the Bucs have looked since we've started this homestand, how hot the Twins are (6 in a row), and that Santana guy, things aren't looking so hot for the Buccos today.

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this already, but last night Kris Benson, he of zero home runs after six years in the National League with the Bucs and Mets, hit a home run for the Orioles last night. In New York. Against the Mets. Off of PEDRO MARTINEZ. To make things even more bizarre, it was the first homer Pedro's given up to a pitcher since Doug Drabek. If you're keeping track at home, Benson's now 8-5 in Baltimore.

I don't know what to say about this one, it was a pretty uninspired effort from our Buccos tonight which made for a really boring night at the ballpark. I don't know if I've ever really seen a crowd as large as tonight's (30,000) so completely disinterested with a baseball game, though it really wasn't their fault. The Twins tossed a ton of mediocrity at us off the mound tonight and we couldn't do anything with it. Instead, we seemed content with three runs. That was enough to keep the game tied after Paul Maholm settled down, but not enough after our dinosaur bullpen came in in the 8th. Maholm looked pretty good tonight and was even hitting 94 on the stadium gun from time to time (which shocked me), but he still gave up back to back homers to Jason Kubel and Terry Tiffee, not exactly Murderer's Row. I don't know what else to say about this one, the team seemed affected by the general malaise that typically affects Pirates fans around this time of year.

Tonight we get game 2 of intriguing pitching matchups, out of three on the weekend. Paul Maholm and Boof Bonser are kind of like the B-team compared to last night's Liriano/Snell matchup, but given the way that Snell and Liriano pitched I'd say that's pretty complimentary. Apparently the Pirates have run out of bobbleheads to give away, as they're back on Bill Mazeroski, the guy that they started the whole trend with about 5 years ago.

I've got some links for everyone to chew on while they watch some USA/Italy soccer and get ready for Paul Maholm and Boof Bonser tonight (because it takes time to prepare to face a guy named BOOF). I have a piece up on Irate Fans entitled "The Illusion of Competition" that is culled from a couple of my Dave Littlefield is an Evil Genius posts from this past offseason (namely a post of the same name and the Wilson Conundrum ), that are adapted to the entire organization, not just DL. If you've been around here for a while you've heard all of my long winded ranting on the subject, but if you're a new reader here you might want to check it out. Azibuck's final report from Rochester on the Indy Indians is up. This isn't Pirates related, but I find the medical explanation for why Bengals, Browns, and Ravens fans felt the need to trash talk Big Ben to be hilarious. That Tom Gorzellany guy is really good. At the same link, Kip Wells may be back sooner t...

There's not really much to say about a game like last night's. Liriano was better than advertised, which is pretty damn good when you're advertised as Santana Jr. The thing about it was that Snell matched him almost step-for-step through six. Actually, you could argue pretty convincingly that Snell was better through six. He only struck out 6 to Liriano's 10 (Liriano added 1 more K in the 10th), but he'd also only given up 2 hits, 1 walk, and 0 runs to Liriano's 3, 1, and 2. Snell just hit the wall hard in the 7th, something that happens to young pitchers from time to time. He only threw 96 pitches total, his fastball was still buzzing at 96 mph (by the FSP gun), but clearly he had lost something. You can perhaps fault Tracy for not getting him out of the 7th sooner, but I think you have to let a young guy try and get out of a jam like that, especially with such a low pitch count. After Snell hit the wall, the Bucs were done. Liriano started to falter in the 7th...

Tonight we get a pretty intriguing matchup of young pitchers, Francisco Liriano and Ian Snell. Liriano has been consistently very good since the Twins put him in the rotation while Snell hasn't been anything consistently except inconsistent. Still, if Snell's can continue on his recent hot streak he can get just about anyone out, and the Twins below average lineup (except for Joe Mauer, nothing average about that guy) should be no exception. For some added fun, we get to watch the Twins pitchers bat this weekend and watching AL pitchers bat is usually as fun as watching relief pitchers take cuts.

Dodger Math (which will soon be added to the sidebar) is having a running "Worst GM" bracket . I don't need to tell you what to do. Click on over there and help get Dave Littlefield the reward he so rightly deserves .

Speaking of Kip Wells, he pitched well in Altoona last night and is scheduled for one more rehab start in Indy before returning the Pirates rotation either in LA or at home against his former team, the ChiSox. And speaking of Indy, Azibuck has another report up at the Bucs Dugout , this one on the second Indians/Red Wings game in Rochester. He saw Gorzellany pitch, and was very impressed with him. The whole thing is worth a read if you've got the time. If you're looking to keep up on the Irate Fans, Kraig Koelsch was interviewed on AOL's Sports Bloggers Live yesterday about the whole thing yesterday. We're still trying to spread the word as far and wide as we can, so if anyone out there has any connections they'd like to pass it along to, feel free to do so.

Kip Wells is due back in the rotation before the end of the month after missing most of the first three months of 2006 coming back from a blood clot that had formed in his pitching shoulder. We know that Kip Wells was a rather promising young pitcher in his first two years with the Buccos in 2002 and 2003, and we know that he got considerably less promising in the next two years, 2004 and 2005. Most of us agree that at least some of Kip's woes from last year, by far his worst year, were due to the blood clot because the nature of blood clots is to not just appear out of nowhere. But the questions lie within. How much of his struggles last year were due to the blood clots? Why did he struggle in 2004? Can he come back and be the pitcher he was in 2003 again? Is there any reason at all to hand a spot in the rotation back to him? I'll do my best to answer those questions, though I admittedly do like Kip and may simply be viewing some of these things through rosy glasses. We should...

It's hard to do recaps on games that are only seen via bits of gamecast here and there, so let's just leave my description of today as "disappointed." As in disappointed that Sanchez didn't start, disappointed Casey and Castillo left 10 guys on base, disappointed that Santos and Vogelsong pitched so poorly, disappointed Bay hit into a game ending double play, and just all around disappointed that we lost this series when it seems like we could've swept it.

Today brings yet another afternoon series finale so that the Pirates can get away to, umm, well they're staying here and the Cards are only going home, so it's an afternoon game for no reason in particular. The Bucs will try and do the unthinkable today, win a series at home against the Cardinals. They send Victor Santos to the mound to face Mark Mulder and in all likelihood, Santos is pitching for his spot in the rotation despite his recent hot streak (Tracy repeatedly has said that Kip Wells will be in the rotation when he returns). Tracy clearly does not care how much this game may mean to the team or to the fans to see the Bucs win a series against the Cards at home, as he's starting Joe Randa at third today, despite lavishing praise on Freddy Sanchez in the paper today. You'd have to be blind to not see the impact that the CWilson/Sanchez/Castillo trio had on the game last night, but Tracy has apparently decided to ignore it anyways. I'll admit, it takes ball...

Tonight was a good win for lots of purely abstract reasons. Duke clearly didn't have it tonight, but he managed to keep it together long enough to keep his team in the game, something Sidney Ponson couldn't do. Duke also made up for his deficiency on the mound tonight with 2 hits and 3 RBIs, which gives him something like 5 RBIs in his last four starts. I've gotta say, I love it when pitchers hit, it's like a special bonus that the other team can't get. The offense was keyed tonight by the absence of Joe Randa. Without him in the lineup, Craig was flipped up from 7 to 5 and Jose Castillo was allowed to play, inserted in the 7 slot. The CWilson/Sanchez/Castillo threesome acted as a second top of the order tonight, with Craig and Freddy scoring three runs apiece and Castillo driving in four (including a three run homer). Of course, it would be brilliant to actually see those guys at the top of the lineup, but I suppose I can settle for them all batting together. The n...

I have to run out for a bit and I'm going to miss the beginning of this one, so I'll put the gamethread up now. Tonight we get the remade Sidney Ponson (you may remember him as "Fat Sidney" from Baltimore last year) who has sadly for the Cards been one of their better starters this year. Still, Sid hasn't gone more than 6 and 2/3rds of an inning in any start this year, so he really hasn't been that great this year. I'll stand by everything I said yesterday about the Cards lineup for at least one more day though, the guys they have to play right now just aren't as great as the Cards teams of the past two years have been. Duke has pitched well lately winning two of his last three starts and watching the bullpen blow a lead in the other start. Again, I think this is a winnable game for the Buccos, and one that they have to win if they want anyone to believe they're a different team than the one that we opened the year with. Will they win? I suppose we...

Azibuck, whom I'm sure most of you recognize from the comments, was at the Rochester Red Wings/Indianapolis Indians game yesterday and took in Sean Burnett's most recent start. His full and very detailed recap of the game is posted up at the Bucs Dugout and it's certainly worth your time to check it out. It sounds like Burnett is slowly finding his way out of the woods, which is about right on the timescale for Tommy John surgery (it usually takes about a year to recover and 1 and a half to 2 years to get back to full strength if I have my time table right for this one). Sounds like he still needs to find a little bit of velocity and stamina, but everything else seems to be progressing for him. He also reports on a handful of other Indy players, including Bayliss, Boeve, and Davis.

Some observations from my perch up in 331 tonight: They let me into the game with my Irate Fans shirt. And people tend to notice it a lot less when you aren't in a group full of guys wearing the same shirt. Which just means I need to get my friends some shirts. Somehow between beer and All-Star ballots (I think my friends and I took a full stand's worth) I missed the starting lineups. Which made it that much more incredibly shocking to see Joe Randa batting fifth and playing third base. Jose Castillo hasn't won a player of the week award in two full weeks, what has HE done for us lately. Note to Jim Tracy: just because Joe Randa is #5 doesn't mean he has to start at position 5 (third) and bat 5th in the lineup. Just so you know. Freddy six and Craig Wilson seven, now there's brilliance from Tracy. They have homes for people as certifiably insane as him. I did my duty as an Irate Fan to cost the owners as much money as possible by screaming the answer of the "Kn...