Can you taste it?

It's the end of 2006, which is in danger of ending just like it started, on a prolong losing streak by a lifeless baseball team. It would be a fearful kind of symmetry, a long losing streak to start the year, a long losing streak in the middle, and a long losing streak at the end. The Reds no long have anything to play for as Scott Spezio and his bright red ball tickler tripled home three runs, putting the Cards on top of the Brewers 3-2 and the Reds officially out of the NL Central race, while leaving the Astros playoff hopes on some serious life support. Bronson Arroyo and Marty McLeary will take the mound tonight in what is almost a meaningless game. Almost meaningless as both teams are now eliminated and the only thing on the line at the moment is last in the NL Central (we've slipped back into a tie with the Cubs) and the NL batting title, which Freddy can probably wrap up with a couple hits tonight (it may be wrapped up already, though I'm a bit too lazy to do the math). Of course, it's all assuming that the rain holds off.

Payroll

Today's PG Notebook:

"I think payroll is overblown," [McClatchy] said. "If you do the job you're supposed to do with your minor-league system and get the players in place, payroll will become less of an issue... Somebody could look at the amount of money the Toronto Blue Jays spent this offseason and say, well, that should guarantee a playoff spot. Or, quite frankly, the Boston Red Sox. Then, you look at the flip side, and the Florida Marlins, because they spent $15 million, should have the worst record in baseball. Payroll is not indicative, exactly, of how successful you're going to be."

This is one of the truest things McClatchy has said. Teams can win and have won with payrolls similar to the Pirates. Payroll is not the problem. The problem that McClatchy dances around with this quote is that the Pirates' Opening Day payroll this year was somewhere around $47 million. Of that $47 million, Jeromy Burnitz made $6M, Joe Randa made $4M, Sean Casey made somewhere around $6-7M, Roberto Hernandez made close to $3M, etc. Throw in Kip Wells at $4M and you've got close to half of that Opening Day payroll wrapped up in players that did very little to help this team (I know Roberto Hernandez pitched well, but how much better was he than Sharpless or Bayliss would've been?). McClatchy says that payroll becomes less of an issue when you "do the job you're supposed to do with your minor-league system and get the players in place." I don't see any evidence of that in the Pirates organization. Until they do that well, people will continue to make payroll an issue.

Reds 5 Pirates 2

The Pirate offense is really sputtering down the stretch here. If I'm not mistaken, they've only scored 2 runs since the 6th inning of Wednesday's marathon game, which is not good (it's three full games, in fact). These games are flying along, too. Thursday's game took 2:15, last night's game clocked in at 2:31. I'm not saying that Harang is not a good pitcher (because he is), but 9 K's, no walks, and 89 strikes in 125 pitches is probably at least as much of a function as the season being over for the Pirates and the players seeing the end of the tunnel. With the Cards win yesterday, the Reds more or less will join them in that position, as I think the Reds have to win out and the Cards will have to lose out for the Reds to end tied for the division. The one interesting story is still Freddy's race for the NL batting crown, and the Pirates are milking that for all it's worth with their "WE WILL cheer him on" commercials, their "Go Freddy Go!" signs, and the Freddy Sanchez bobblehead they're giving out tonight. Then again, I'm still rooting for him. It's hard not too, no matter how much the Pirates try to exploit it.

One final series

The Bucs close out 2006 with their 5th consecutive series against playoff teams or contenders, as the Reds are still hanging on by the skin of their teeth in the NL Central race. They're 2 and 1/2 back of the Cards and 2 back of the 'Stros. Tonight Harang and Duke take the mound, while everyone hopes that maybe more than 500 people will show up for this one.

Lefties and Righties

I've been meaning to get to writing about this Gene Collier article about the rotation since I saw it sometime around midnight yesterday. His basic premise is that the rotation is too similar with all these pesky lefties around and that's why we tend to lose the last game of most series. Charlie has already tackled the main premise of the article and proven that it's just not true. His research shows that there's not really any statistical basis for Collier's argument. What I was going to write about was something that Charlie vaguely touched on at the beginning of his post, that there's not really any reason to consider Gorzelanny, Duke, and Maholm to be similar.

The easiest thing to look at is their K/9 numbers. In the minors, Gorzelanny's was 8.98, Maholm's was 7.22, and Duke's was 7.25. It's not really fair to compare their pro numbers yet as they're all still getting adjusted and their strikeout numbers will all be down in their first year or so in the bigs. Still, Gorzellany's strikeout numbers in the minors are better than Ian Snell's (K/9 of 8.58), a guy most people consider to be a power pitcher. I don't understand how a guy that averaged a strikeout an inning in the minors with a fastball of 94-96 on good nights is lumped in as being similar to two finesse guys who throw 90-92 mph fastballs on most nights. No one has a rotation made up of a power pitcher, a finesse pitcher, a sinkerballer, a screwballer, and a knuckleballer. Every rotation has a couple similar guys, lots of rotations have four guys that throw from the same side of the mound, it just happens to be a different side than the one that Duke, Maholm, and Gorzo throw from. We're not talking about a rotation of Dave Williams, Mark Redman, Zach Duke, and Paul Maholm here, the only two guys that are similar and Duke and Maholm. I just can't see any logistical problems with a rotation of Duke, Snell, Gorzellany, Maholm, and Random Right-Handed Fifth Starter next year. You can even argue that a rotation full of lefties plays to PNC Park better than a righty-heavy rotation, since more lefties on the mound means more righties at the plate. I still fail to see why this is made an issue as often as it is.

Astros 3 Pirates 0

They finally got today's game in, but probably only because they had to. It really would've been impolite for us to win. I mean, we made them hang around for longer then the length of a typical game (last night excluded), the least we could do is help them with their late playoff aspiriations. The players played like they didn't want to be at the park today. There were only 8 hits today, three by the 'Stros, and the whole thing only took 2:15 once it got started. It was nice to see Gorzellany make a solid start (his first since his return from the DL), but I wouldn't put much stock into what happened today. In a funny note, David Pinto at Baseball Musings said this about the game:

There's no one in the ballpark. It's so quiet you can hear the ball hitting the first baseman's mitt on the broadcast.

I think Pirate fans are ready for this nightmare of a season to finally be over.

One last weekday afternoon game... maybe

The Pirates and Astros are scheduled to play one last game in 2006, but I don't think the game has started yet due to rain. This could be a blessing in disguise for the Astros, or it could be a nightmare. Certainly there is a danger of them coming out flat today after fighting back from a 5 run deficit and playing until midnight last night, so if this thing gets pushed back to, say, Monday, it might be a good thing for them. However, if this thing gets stretched out until some time tonight (which it may) but still gets played, the 'Stros won't get out of Pittsburgh until late tonight and the purpose of a "getaway" game will be defeated. If this one happens, it'll be Gorzellany vs. Oswalt, which is a pretty good matchup to watch.

Astros 7 Pirates 6 (in 15!)

That was, without a doubt, the longest baseball game I've ever attended in person. It seemed a lot longer than it was because the Pirates didn't score at all after the fifth and the Astros only scored twice after the sixth. I think the Pirates did some good things early, but every inning blended together after a while. We swore that Sanchez should've been leading off the inning since Jack Wilson made the third out, on the logic that Duffy had gotten on and stolen a base. We wore close, we'd just kind of confused the 11th and 12th innings. It's much easier to do than you'd think, especially without a scorecard (which would've been useless by then).

Anyways, early on Doumit crushed a no-doubter and the Pirates were hitting the ball all over the park. Chacon looked pretty good through 5 and the Pirates had built a 6-1 lead. Jose Bautista also made a nice little diving catch of a diving quail Berkman hit to him at third. The Astros fans one section over were looking kind of despondent and the guys behind had "made Aubrey Huff their bitch." That was their words, and they were probably right. The best part came when Huff came up and the PA announces, "Now batting for the Astros, Aubrey Huff." There was a short pause, then with perfect comedic timing the guys came through with a "BOO!" I should explain that we were in Section 4, one row behind the handicapped seats down the right field line. The seats were nice. And free, which made them more awesome. Anyways, the Astros fans were glancing over at the out of town scoreboard hoping that the Padres could pull ahead in what was a 1-1 game at that point when the sixth inning started. It was immediately obvious when the sixth started that Chacon had lost it. He walked Taveras (a huge red flag), then gave up a double to Lamb. We were screaming from our seats that Chacon was done, but Tracy apparently needed a Lance Berkman bomb and a beaned Aubrey Huff to prove it for him.

Once it got to 6-5, the rest of the game was filled with that sinking sense that the Pirates were going to blow it. They did in the 9th, as a Bucco closer finally blew a save when Sully allowed a run to make things 6-6. From there on, everything kind of blurs together. I know Duffy made a great catch in center, but I'm not sure when. I think it may have been before the 9th actually. More people were intentionally walked than I'd ever seen before. Garner even walked both Sanchez and Bay to load the bases for Nady, which worked out quite well for him. Jim Tracy, meanwhile, pretended that Lance Berkman was the '01 Barry Bonds and that he was, well, still Jim Tracy. At some point the Astros fans started to become urgent, the Pads/Cards score had gone from 2-1 San Diego to 4-2 St. Louis with that little "F" next to it. When someone asked what happened I responded, "I dunno, it was probably that freaking Poo-holes. He ruins everything." Never have fans from another city (and these people really were from Houston) agreed with me so readily. Some time around the 11th inning, the attendance dwindled dangerously towards the triple digits. This only meant one thing, everyone in the park could hear everyone else. The park was full of disjointed "Fred-dy! Fred-dy!" chants. I was particularly proud of my "JONAH! YOU'VE GOT YOURSELF IN A WHALE OF A SITUATION!" scream that got chuckles from somewhere on the other side of the Astros dugout, a good three or four sections over and will certainly win awards for Cheesiest Joke of the Year and Best Biblical Reference at a Sporting Event. There was a 14th inning stretch. There was an agreement that the Pirates should tell the vendors when this was going to happen so that they could keep selling beer past the 7th (not that anyone wanted to pay $6.75 for more beer, but man, that game needed something). Myself and two friends started a three man wave that finally realized the goal of getting my Irate Fans shirt prominently displayed front and center on the JumboTron. College kids made idiots of themselves everywhere all over the park (because college kids and Astros fans probably made up 90% of the crowd at the conclusion of the game). At some point it occured to me that Shawn Chacon, Shane Youman, and Brian Rodgers had all taken the mound and we still hadn't lost the game (even though we did lose, making it to the 15th in a game that all three of them appeared in is damn impressive). Eventually the dam burst, mostly because it had to. I mean Jonah Bayliss was on for his 3rd inning (the guy was a closer at Indy most of the year, I doubt he pitched three innings very often) and our only other options were Juan Perez and Victor Santos. With Bay and Nady not hitting, Sanchez being avoided, and Duffy and Jack Wilson slumping since the fifth inning (it was long enough that we can call it a slump), we all knew the Pirates were going to lose. We congratulated the Astros fans (because really, I am rooting for them and I think most Pirate fans are) and wished them luck, then left. Still, games like this are why I can't bring myself to go on an all-out boycott of the Nuttings' product. I just like baseball way too damn much.

One more time

I'm heading down to PNC for what will likely be the last time in 2006. Unfortunately due to classes and extra lab work I can't meet up with the Irate Fans, though I'll put my shirt on and try to say hi. Tonight would be the one chance the Bucs have to win in this series (without Oswalt or Pettite pitching), but the Astros have straight up owned Chacon this year. Add that to the fact that the Astros still more or less need to keep winning to stay in this thing and, well, things don't bode well for us tonight.

New Poll

This week's poll question: Which Pirate has surprised you the most this year? Is it Freddy Sanchez and his run at the NL Batting Title? Is it Ronnie Paulino and his steady play all year? Is it Ian Snell, who most certainly would tell us once again that "Snell doesn't do polls,"? Is it Jose Bautista and his 16 homers and an OPS of nearly .800? Is it Matt Capps and his, I dunno, he was in A ball last year and didn't suck too bad this year? Or is it someone else entirely? As usual, feel free to discuss in the comments.

Last week's results:

Will the Pirates break out of the Grand Canyon in 2007?

• Negatory- 64%
• Pository- 36%

I've also been told that sometimes after clicking on the "Vote" pop-ups are happening. I can't really control this, it's all Pollhost trying to make some money, just ignore 'em. I don't really know of any free poll servers that wouldn't use pop-ups though, so it's the best I can do right now. And it seems like the poll questions look prettier if you view them in Firefox as opposed to IE. That's probably because I use Firefox and they look good to me. I'm not changing, so make what you will of that.

Astros 7 Pirates 4

The Astros just needed this one more than the Bucs do. The Pirates can smell the end (two errors, two unearned runs tonight) and the Astros can smell a playoff spot. This is not a good combination for the Pirates this week. Snell kind of got roughed up in his five innings tonight, though three walks didn't help his cause much. There was a nice little moment in the second inning when Jason Bay and Jose Bautista launched home runs and I thought to myself, "Holy shit! Jose Bautista has 16 home runs this year? We should probably find him a position for next year." Beyond that, tonight didn't really offer much else (except for four hits for Freddy Sanchez, which was nice).

The Astros

Houston comes to town tonight having made up something ridiculous like 5 and 1/2 games on St. Louis this week and finding themselves only 2 and 1/2 back with 6 to go (St. Louis has the extra game in hand). That makes this a tough series. I'd love to see the Pirates play well to the end of the year, but I'd also kind of love to see LaRussa and co. choke just about as hard as anyone in history. The Bucs need one win to wrap up both a winning record after the break and a winning record at home, so I'd like to see them get that for mostly arbitrary purposes. Tonight Ian Snell and Andy Pettite take the mound. Snell needs this win for 15, the Astros need this win for the playoffs. Should be interesting.

Stats Geek and State College

The Stats Geek writes today about the Buccos need for power and how addressing that need may make them competitive next year. Charlie responds to the post over at his blog, if I've got some time this afternoon after lab I may look into a couple of the things that Charlie suggests (mostly the run differentials of the Pirates over the time spans that the Stats Geek is looking at). It's also important to remember that just because a division is awful one year doesn't mean that it will be the next. The NL West barely got a team over .500 last year, this year the division may get the Wild Card and the Rockies and Giants were competitive in the race until recently.

The State College Spikes will replace the Williamsport Crosscutters as the Bucs' NY-Penn League affiliate next summer. This was probably inevitable because State College is owned by the same group that owns the Curve and they only had a one year contract with the Cardinals, likely knowing that the Bucs contract with the 'Cutters was up after this year. Since State College is probably about an hour closer than Williamsport to Pittsburgh, this is a move that makes sense (thanks to reader Steve for the tip).

THOSE guys

With 2006 having been over since some time in mid-April, people have understandably been focusing on 2007 for quite some time now. As the Pirates have put up a good record since the All-Star break, people have understandably gotten more and more optimistic about 2007. There's been lots of discussion about the young pitching staff and how good they might be, about the Pirates poor run differential over that time period and what that may mean, and about the abysmal performance. There's a time and a place to discuss that, but it's not now or here. Instead, I want to talk about the one thing that people have been ignoring. It's the biggest obstacle that the Pirates have to winning baseball in 2007. I'm talking about the people that run the team.

Kevin McClatchy has been the public face of the team since 1996, and he always gets lots of blame for everything that goes wrong. Thusly, people are quite excited about what would appear to be the decent prospect of him not returning next year. I don't think this is much to get excited over. From '96 until around 2001, McClatchy did little more than speak for a coporate board of owners whose main goal was to get a stadium built and to get the team out of debt. Once they made progress on that front, Ogden Nutting started buying more and more shares of the team (he's been on the board since McClatchy first bought the team in '96). The Nuttings (Ogden's son Robert is now chairman of the board) own most of the team now (twice as much as McClatchy), but as most of you know, they're notorious recluses (they don't even have Wikipedia pages, likely because they removed them themselves) and they keep McClatchy around to play the role of Baghdad Bob. If McClatchy leaves, it's not a sign of things changing, it's a sign that the Nuttings have decided to stop lying to us. Bad things will keep happening, it's just that people will stop trying to tell us that the sky is still blue.

Since McClatchy has been involved in the team, there's been a pretty obvious way of doing business. The first thing to do is to hire a GM who won't upstage the owners, and who will be a better businessman than baseball man and not draw attention to himself. Next to Cam Bonifay and his southern drawl, no one was going to look stupid. Unfortunately for Cam, Jason Kendall, Kevin Young, Pat Meares, and Derek Bell drew a little bit too much attention from the public, and those moves (which were all bad business moves, not just bad baseball moves) ended up getting Cam canned. On to Dave Littlefield. DL is just cocky enough to come off as stupid. I've said in the past that I don't think Littlefield is stupid, in fact I think the opposite. His contract extension was picked up this offseason, not because he's succeeded at building a good baseball team, but because he's done his job, he's built a team that's a successful business model in the terms of dollars and cents. The GMs, in turn, hire managers that succeed at making them look smart. Gene Lamont, Lloyd McClendon, and Jim Tracy have never thought circles around anyone. The final illusion was on display at Piratefest this February, McClatchy came off as a good guy concerned about baseball and the fans, Littlefield came off as an asshole, and Tracy came off like a moron. This wasn't by accident.

I'm not pretending I'm breaking any ground here. I know most people read the PG story about the Pirates' finances last summer. The point I'm getting at is this: the Pirates have been run with one goal in mind since 1996, to make money. They've become more exagerrated in that goal since Littlefield was hired in 2001. As I've said in the past, they go out of their way to pretend like they're trying to compete when it helps them make money, mostly because it's easier than actually trying to compete. What sounds more like a Littlefield/Nutting move, trying to put together a package of a young pitcher and maybe a guy like Jose Castillo to try and pry Adam LaRoche away from the Braves (as Corey at New Pirates' Generation is continually advocating, which seems like a pretty good idea to me), or paying $6 million for Ryan Klesko to take at-bats away from someone and pull a Burnitz? The problem is that this isn't a Littlefield move, it's a Nutting move. Trading away guys like, say, Maholm and Castillo for someone like LaRoche open the team up to criticism on lots of fronts. Maholm and Castillo may blossom elsewhere, LaRoche may not perform well here. Signing Klesko lets us say "Well, he's always been a good hitter, we figured if we moved him from PetCo to PNC the power would come back. We knew injuries were part of the variable, but it was a risk we had to take." They will ignore the fact that Klesko will take the winter off, try to "play himself into shape" and have a generally negative disposition towards playing in Pittsburgh, they only care about the impression that will be made by signing him.

The problem with the Pirates starts at the top. You can't fix the problem in the middle, because it's a trickle down effect from the top. As long as the owners aren't committed to winning, it will be reflected on the field. Every year the Pirates go through a period where it looks like they don't want to be on the baseball field. Some years (like last year) it's the second half, some (like this year) it's the first half. It seems like everyone that signs a long term deal with the team gets incredibly lethargic at some point afterwards. Maybe Jack Wilson didn't play good defense this year because he bulked up too much, or maybe it was because he realized he'd just signed his life away to play losing baseball. By the time Jason Kendall left Pittsburgh, he hated the Pirates and everything associated with the organization. Ever since Reggie Sanders and Kenny Lofton, every free agent we sign takes the same approach that Burnitz and Randa have, play themselves into shape in the offseason and spend tons of time on the DL/bench in order to collect a paycheck. Only Raul Mondesi has managed to not get away with it. The Nuttings are not going to let 72 games change their business model because it's one that's been working for much longer than that, and that's something that no Pirate fan should forget this offseason.

Two links

Two things to share on this morning of a Steelers' hangover off-day.

First up, DL revealed to DK yesterday that the entire coaching staff is coming back for 2007. I actually don't have as much of a problem with this as I probably would've in June. I'll get more in depth on that once the season ends, especially Tracy and Colborn, but how can you not love a first base coach named T-Bone? How can you argue with two guys named Cox and Kuntz? Does anyone really know what a bullpen coach does? Of course, Jeff Manto may or may not be bat-shit crazy and I would like to see a different hitting coach, but beggars can't be choosers.

Also (via Bucs Dugout), Wilbur Miller has updated his Pirate Player Profiles with all of the recent draft picks and reorganized most of the site. If you're anything like me, you could probably spend the entire afternoon clicking around, reading about the abject failure of this team to build any semblance of a minor league system.


Since it's an off-day, we'll get the offseason talk started with a longer post sometime later tonight.

Padres 2 Pirates 1

You'd think scoring one run in the first inning, then not scoring again for 8 innings, and losing 2-1 would be rare. You'd probably be right, but that wouldn't help explain the Pirates' performances the last two days in San Diego. Both games opened up with Chris Duffy getting on base and scoring in the first inning, then the Pirates not scoring at all while the Padres chalked up 2 runs somewhere between the 4th and 7th innings to take the lead and set the stage for a historic Trevor Hoffman save. Hoffman set the record tonight with save #479. Perhaps in tribute I will listen to "Hell's Bells" and drink beer while trying not to think about any type of football, except maybe Duquesne footbal, which is rarely thought about by anyone.

Also, I'm sorry for making fun of Marty McLeary, he was very acceptable today. Juan Perez, however, continued to let everyone know why he was on the waiver wire by giving up a home run, beaning someone, and getting taken out of the game in the sixth. I think he weighs 120 pounds, but I will need to investigate more. Also, being shut down by two men named Cla(y) like we were today is just plain embarassing. Going 2-4 on this road trip isn't entirely unexpected, but it is a little disappointing since we won our first two in LA. The real question is, if it's only a little disappointing, does that make it a relative success in terms of the way the Pirates do things?

Sunday afternoon

The Bucs and Padres close out their season series with the Pirates' last road game of 2006 (which can only be a good thing). The Padres have a chance to stretch their NL West lead and they'll send Clay Hensley to the mound. Hensley will be the second Clay to pitch for the Padres this weekend, though he's got the more normal spelling (opposed to Cla Meredith). The Pirates seem to be amenable to the Padres stretching that lead, as they'll send Marty McLeary to the mound. Bay is back in the lineup after missing last night with a stomach thing and Freddy will get the day off. Trevor Hoffman will go for the all-time save record if the Padres can manage to not be ahead by more than three in the ninth inning (which I wouldn't count on). Most of Pittsburgh is probably way too deep into a drunken Steelers depression to care about this one.

Padres 2 Pirates 1

We got two hits early last night to jump out to a 1-0, but we only got four hits after that and didn't score any more runs, meaning that we still lost to Peavy and the Padres. Peavy was just as good as Chris Young was two nights ago, striking out 11 against 1 walk and only allowing 6 hits and 1 run over his 8 innings. Duke's surface line seems good, 6 and 1/3 with 2 runs on 1 hit, but his 5 walks last night were kind of alarming. As I've noted on several occasions, Duke does his best work when he keeps his walks to a minimum. Doing a Chacon/Youman impression is not a good outing for Duke.

We also allowed Trevor Hoffman to come in for his record tying 477th save. This seems appropriate, as I mentioned yesterday we tortured Lee Smith's soul during the early '90s. It seems like every time Smith came in for a save, Bonds was waiting for him to ruin his night. This is probably an apocryphal memory for me, Retrosheet tells me Bonds was 4-for-11 against Smith with 2 homers and Van Slyke was only 2-for-30 against the big guy. Still, career-wise Smith was 1-4 against the Pirates with a with a 5.90 ERA and only 10 saves in 31 appearences (and 21 games finished) against the Bucs. Retrosheet doesn't have blown saves as a stat on their "splits" pages, but we can assume that without the early 90s Buccos, Hoffman would not be tied with Lee Smith yet, and without the early 00s Buccos, Hoffman wouldn't have 477 yet. The universe works in mysterious ways.

Let's get some hits

Interesting pitching matchup tonight with Duke and Peavy on the mound. Duke has been very good since the All-Star Break and nothing short of fantastic in his last three starts (23 innings, 2 earned runs, 2 wins) and Peavy has also been excellent since August 1st or so, with the only exception being one start in Colorado and his start in the Dodger's memorable homer barrage on Monday night. As has been the storyline in the last couple weeks, this game is much more important to the team the Pirates are playing than it is to the Pirates themselves. This doesn't seem to stop the Bucs from ruining clinching parties, division leads, or no-hitters. I'd sure love to see another great start from Duke tonight, and I'd also like to see some hits from the black and gold before the ninth inning, if we can at all make something like that happen. Again, I'm at home dogsitting, so I'll be able to catch most of this one.

Correction: What I meant to say was that I'm at home dogsitting and I would be able to catch most of this one, if it were on TV, which it is not. Instead, Kansas and South Florida are gracing FSP tonight. Yipee.

More on last night

Charlie, author of the Bucs Dugout, is living in San Diego, thus he was able to attend his first Pirates' game of the year last night. As you've probably realized, it was quite a night to be there.

Dejan's recap in the PG is full of fun facts about just how historical last night could've actually been, had Joe Randa not ruined things for Young.

There's also the typical wire recap, Deadspin's got one line on it (but it's a good line that I fully agree with), and of course there's always Padres blogs.

Last night after the game ended I said that the game had a chance to be a microcosm of the last 14 years and instead just turned out to be another boring loss. While that's true on some levels, I think it's also actually quite representative of the Pirates' plight. We were bad, but not quite bad enough to get noticed. Kind of like, say, having 14 consecutive losing seasons but only one of them being a 100 loss season.

Before I forget, Charlie also had a good summary up yesterday of why it matters that the Pirates have been outscored by their opponents since the break, record notwithstanding. As he says:

...the point is that you shouldn't trust a half-season's worth of games if
there's no compelling reason to do so, and you especially shouldn't trust it if
there's an extremely compelling reason not to do so. This is true of single
players, and it's just as true of a franchise that has a pretty lengthy recent
history of shooting itself in the foot over and over again.

Padres 6 Pirates 2

Stupid Joe Randa.

The Pirates were about to be avalanched in irony with the best possible reminder of the management's ineptitude, getting no-hit by a man they traded for absolutely nothing. It would've been a reminder to everyone why it's foolish to get excited about this team. A team that is run by a guy that once traded Chris Young for Matt Herges (while building a team around pitching), then cut Herges before he threw one pitch, has some serious obstacles to overcome before winning baseball can even be a possibility. Joe Randa hitting into a double play to end it would've been an amazing cap on everything. Now, this becomes a game that no one will remember, just another faceless late night loss on the West Coast in a season with so many losses. We couldn't even muster enough of a comeback to get Hoffman into the game for his record tying save, a fitting way for Lee Smith to lose his spot as the Save King, at the hand of the team that was the bane of his career. Keep in mind that I was not rooting for the Pirates to lose. Losing became inevitable when Gorzellany wasn't sharp and Tracy trotted out Littlefield's comical B-squad of relievers. If Gorzo had pitched a great game and Randa's homer had come in a 1-0 game, I'd be ecstatic. But this game had a chance to be a microcosm for the last 14 years, now it's nothing. Randa's homer only indirectly served to further the agenda of the bastards that run this charade of a baseball team. Somewhere, probably in a dark room, Littlefield is telling the Nutting family, "See, I told you he was worth the money!"

On to San Diego

The Bucs play the Padres at Petco tonight as they try to continue their "Let's Go Phillies" tour of both east and west. Chris Young and Tom Gorzellany face off in this one, with Gorzo looking to build on his last start, which saw him pitch 4 decent innings against the Mets. I don't know exactly what his pitch count will be tonight, but I don't expect him to go much past the fifth. Most Pirate fans know about Young by now as the guy we traded away for one spring of Matt Herges, who we then cut. Young would look awfully nice in this rotation right now, especially since as Charlie points out, our pitching-rich franchise is currently featuring a rotation with Shawn Chacon, Shane Youman, and Marty McLeary all involved. I'm at home dogsitting, so I should be able to catch most of this one, unless it's really boring or something.

Friday Links

BBTF has a fantastic breakdown of Oliver Perez and his mechanics (thanks to reader Trey Beamon for the tip). Unfortunately, things are not stacking up well for the team that traded Ollie away (that would be us).

As usual, there's some good stuff in Dejan's Q&A today. On the subject of trading Mike Gonzalez or Salomon Torres he says it would seem unlikely for either to go because they probably would not bring the "Lefty McThump" return that the Pirates are looking for this offseason, though he makes it clear that no one has been designated as "untouchable" which is very comforting, because no one on this team should be. He also closes the Q&A with this line:

You are all insane for hanging with this team long enough to still be
paying attention.

In our defense, being insane is the only way we ended up Pirate fans in the first place.

Paul Maholm will also miss his Sunday start, which will be taken by Marty McLeary. Set your TiVos accordingly.

Jeffrey Loria should be outlawed from owning a baseball team. Reports say that likely NL Manager of the Year Joe Girardi has a "zero" percent chance of returning to the Marlins in 2007. That's really a shame. Loria has now tanked two franchises and somehow has a World Series ring to show for it. Life is not fair.

Dodgers 5 Pirates 2

I didn't see this one, but I can tell you that when Shane Youman is the offensive star of the game, things probably won't go well. In all seriousness, I figured that we would be lucky win win 2 games at all during this roadtrip, so this loss seemed more or less inevitable. I don't think anyone expected the Pirates to sweep the two best blue teams in the National League back to back, especially when Shane Youman and Shawn Chacon were making back to back starts. The best news of the night is that Freddy Sanchez went 2-for-4 raising his average to .347 and giving him a 9 point lead on Miguel Cabrera, who was again on the bench last night.

Keep on truckin'

There's only one explanation for what's been happening: the Pittsburgh Pirates are huuuuge Philadelphia Phillie fans. Normally, I'd be hesitant about helping out our cross state rivals (and I'd never say this about the Eagles or Flyers), but you know what, screw it. I want to see as much Ryan Howard as possible. Let's go Bucs.

Tonight Shane Youman (perhaps PB Youman since he's a mirror image of BP Chacon, the only real question is does he tilt his hat the other direction? This needs investigated...) takes the hill against Chad Billingsley. Billingsley did not pitch well in his last start and has a huge WHIP of 1.59 in his 15 starts this year. The Dodgers need this one bad, but the Pirates are playing like they need it too.

Argh

I had a post 90% finished about some stuff that I think is really important to keep in mind for next year, then Firefox crashed and for some reason Blogger hadn't auto-saved my draft like it usually does (and is supposed to). Because I think it's an important post, I'm going to have to painstakingly recreate it, at which point I probably won't post it until Monday, as readership drops on Fridays and weekends. None of this is specifically your problem, but it's just a heads up because I do realize that the amount of opinion posts and non-link, recap, or gamethread based posts has dropped of late. It's mostly because the end of the season is a boring time from the standpoint of writing about a next-to-last place team. It's too early to start into the season in review and offseason outlook stuff, but it's also too late in the season to get terribly excited about anything the Pirates end up doing. All I'm getting at here is that the I'm going to start more into the offseason mindset starting next week, and then we can get into the season review stuff after that. So be patient just a little while longer. But until then, links!

Andrew, author of Dodger Math, which was always one of my favorite non-Pirate blogs, moved over to True Blue LA on SBN a while back and I never bothered to update my links. Now would appear to be an appropriate time to do so.

Another one of those Pirate blogs that I've meant to link for a while and never did, A New Pirates Generation, formerly an MLBlog, now housed at Blogspot.

More trouble may be a-brewing between the Duffster and team management over winterball (they want him to play, he doesn't want to). Both deny that this is a big deal, but I'm a little wary given the happenings earlier in the season.

McClatchy rumors continue to swirl. I had intended to include this link in the above mentioned post and I know it's a couple days old (so many of you have seen it), but I'll throw it out there for anyone that hasn't.

Check out the Elias Says box in the ESPN recap of last night's game. Perhaps Tracy was right when he said that Torres gets better when he pitches more. But remember, folks, Mike Gonzalez is untouchable.

Pirates 6 Dodgers 4

It would be a shame to waste 7 hits from Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson, a laser homer from Jose Bautista, and another non-awful start from Shawn Chacon, but the Pirates nearly did that tonight, nearly giving everyone brave (read: stupid) enough to stay up for this one a heart attack in the process.

Things started out innoncently enough with Freddy killing the ball all over the park and Bautista ripping a homer straight over center on such a straight beam that it could likely cut diamonds if they were put in the ball's trajectory to give the Bucs a 3-0 after the top of the fifth. A Bautista error in the bottom lead to 2 more LA runs and put them right back in the game, though. After the Bucs picked up three in the seventh, aided by a Dodger error, and hits by Duffy, Wilson, and Sanchez as well as an RBI double by Weapon X, the Dodgers came right back with two and they almost had more as Chacon ran out of gas and John Grabow couldn't get the one guy out he needed to. Matt Capps thankfully came in and put out the fire in the seventh by getting Nomar to pop up. In the eighth, Tracy proved that all of his talk about "not caring" whehter or not they beat up on the Dodgers and hurt their playoff chances is complete and utter bullshit by bringing Torres into the game with a runner on first and two outs. Sully got James Loney to fly out to end the 8th, but that choice may have very nearly cost us the game in the 9th. Torres clearly struggled in the ninth by giving up a single, hitting a batter, and throwing a wild pitch after recording an out. Then, in true roller coaster fashion he took three straight hitters to full counts. He struck out Matt Kemp, walked Nomar (on a very, very close pitch), and struck out Jeff Kent to seal up the win.

As much as I try to temper the hope that this recent hot streak inevitibly brings, I still can't shake the feeling that a game like tonight is one that the June Pirates just don't win and that the team we're seeing right now is different than the one that lost 14 in a row to the Twins, Royals, and co.

Can the ride continue?

As John Franco (we can only hope it's that John Franco) put it in a recent comment thread: The Pirates just don't seem to want anyone to make the playoffs. A win tonight clinches the LA series, something I never thought would happen in a million years. Our work is certainly cut out for us tonight, however, as BP Chacon will face off against Greg Maddux. Maddux has been phenominal since he arrived in LA (4-2, 3.07 ERA) while Chacon has been mediocre at best since arriving in Pittsburgh at the same time. Chacon is in fact coming off of his two longest starts of the year in black and gold and it seems that Jim Colborn is doing some decent work getting him turned around. The Bucs will also be facing a different Dodger team than last night. The team they played yesterday was still in shock from their amazing win the night before, the team they're playing tonight is embarassed that they lost their spot in first place by losing to the Pirates. Still, the young Buccos certainly seem to be relishing their role as spoilers. It should be another fun one tonight.

New poll

It's Wednesday, which means it's time for a new poll. Inspired by all of the recent talk, the question is easy, .500 or no? Sure, it's early too say anything for sure, but we're not talking science here, it's a blog for chrissake. As usual, feel free to discuss your opinion in the comments. Don't feel like you have to agree with me on this one, I'm not here to browbeat people into agreeing with me.

Last week's results where overwhelming:
Given the right offer, would you trade one of the Pirates four young starters (Duke, Snell, Maholm, Gorzellany)?

• Yes 91% (116 votes)
• No 9% (12 votes)
  

Links

I missed this yesterday, but there was an interesting Stats Geek chat to go along with his column. The talk continued on with the young pitchers and I found this passage the Geek dug up to be interesting:

Crunching some numbers from Baseball Prospectus, using their Value Over Replacement Player system, Duke is rated the 29th best starter among the 64 with at least 100 innings in the NL, and all but the Washington Nationals have at least one better pitcher. But Snell and Maholm are ranked 34th and 35th and Gorzelanny, who doesn't have the innings, has been better than all three so far. So it's deceptively good staff by being more or less average across the board. A lot of teams have two pitchers better, but the Pirates are deeper at three and four. If they could add a fifth pitcher, they might do something in this weak division next year.

That goes along with an earlier comment from the chat:

Many in the blogosphere think the Pirates are still pretty far from even a .500 team. I disagree.

Guilty as charged. I won't go all into this again, but having Duke, Snell, and Maholm 29, 34, and 35 in the NL in VORP is surprsing, I wouldn't have put any of them that high this year. I certainly do think they're going to be better next year (my questions lie in how good they can be and of course the offense) and apparently, they've been a little better than I've given them credit for.

I also missed Dejan's good story about the young pitchers yesterday. A lot of the focus is on improving their stamina next year, and if they cut their walks down like they have in the second half they'll have no problem with that. Maholm's recent shoulder problems aside (which don't seem to be major), I've been impressed with the durability that Snell, Duke, and Maholm have showed and yes, I've also been impressed with how Tracy and co. have handled them this year.
This quote also jumped out at me:

"For our starters to go from 180 innings to 210 innings next season shouldn't be a problem," Tracy said. "I don't think Duke has any problem now.

"His delivery is so clean. It's a delivery that's just very conducive to a very long tenure as a major-league pitcher. There's just not a whole lot that can go wrong with it."

The reason it jumped out at me is because there was much clamoring among Pirate fans that Colborn had ruined Duke by trying to iron out some "inconsistencies" in his delivery this spring, and it appears that he may be settling in to it now, with the changes having been made for the better.

Even Deadspin is noticing the Pirates good play of late:

Pittsburgh did to LA what they had done to the Mets last week: inexplicably cease to suck.

And finally, the PG has up a much more complete obituary for Syd Thrift.

Pirates 10 Dodgers 6

Ian Snell gave up a home run to Rafael Furcal on the first pitch tonight and I figured we were in for a long night. I was rather mistaken, as instead the Pirates offense proceeded to get to Kuo in the fifth, which lead to Grady Little bringing in Elmer Dessens with the bases loaded to face Ronnie Paulino and Jose Bautista. The Paulino part when all right, but the Bautista part didn't, and Jose lifted a homer just barely out of the reach of Marlon Anderson in left field, who went head first over the fence and nearly caught a ball that landed at least 2 and maybe three rows deep. From there the Dodgers got sloppy and gave the Bucs three unearned runs in the 8th for a 10-3 lead, which Matt Capps nearly gave back in the bottom of the inning.

Beyond the Marte and Capps debacle (5 runs in 2 innings) it was a great night for the Bucs. Snell recovered from the first pitch homer to only give up four more hits and no more runs over six innings to pick up win #14 on the season. Freddy got two hits to keep his average at .342, and Weapon X absolutely crushed a homer, picked up another hit, and scored four times to help him towards breaking out of the slump he's been in. Bautista added another RBI to make it a five ribbie night for him. While we're at it, Milwaukee got thumped 12-2 by the Cards, allowing the Pirates to pull within four games of them for fourth place.

West Coast Swing

The Bucs and Dodgers face off in LA tonight, with Ian Snell and Hong-Chih Kuo taking the mound. The Dodgers are in the thick of the NL West/Wild Card race being 1/2 game up on the Padres in the West (with the Pads having 1.5 on the Phillies in the Wild Card race). They got that lead in most improbable fashion, as I'm sure you know by know. Down by four in the bottom of the 9th last night, the Dodgers hit four consecutive solo homers to tie the game up, then got a walkoff from Nomar Garciaparra to win in the bottom of the 10th. That's just plain crazy.

RIP Syd Thrift

Syd Thrift, the architect of the only three good Pirate teams I've ever seen in my life as well as the man that executed the trade that brought the namesake of this blog to Pittsburgh, has died at the age of 77. He never matched the success he had here in Pittsburgh anywhere else, but Larry Doherty, Ted Simmons, Cam Bonifay, and Dave Littlefield have all miserably failed to live up to the job that Syd did in the 80s.

Looking ahead

Today the Stats Geek and the Bucs Dugout both tackle the task of trying to figure out just what our 33-27 record since the All-Star Break means. I talked briefly about it at the end of August, and the conclusions are still the same. The Pirates offense has been downright awful since the break and they've still been outscored by 30 runs in games since then. The pitching has been better and the four young guys may get better next year, but the offense isn't good enough for that to mean anything. In fact, without any upgrades it will likely get worse. The 2007 Freddy is much more likely to be around his second half .766 OPS next year than the .850 number he has on the season. There's very little in Ronnie Paulino's minor league record to suggest that he'll bat .320 again (and it's always dangerous to hedge your bets on anyone who has a large part of their OBP tied up in batting average), guys like Castillo and Doumit provide more questions than answers and if the Pirates expect anything from Jack Wilson beyond what he's given them this year, they're foolish. Even with the addition of the Stats Geek's "Lefty McThump" (a heftily overpaid Luis Gonzalez is still my bet, yes he's been good this year, but yes he'll be 40 next year) I don't know how good this offense can be. As Charlie says, it would be foolish to treat this team like a .500 team in the offseason when making personnel moves. The Geek points out that they were 9-25 in one run games in the first half (aka incredibly unlucky) while they're 14-3 in the same situation since the break (aka incredibly lucky). That puts the "true 2006 Pittsburgh Pirates," if you will, right where they are now, a team that's about 20 games under .500. Certainly 33 wins in 60 games is fantastic when it took 90 to win their first 30, but all that does is kind of make 2006 the mirror image of 2005. Same front office, similar players, same final results, same outlook.

Can the Pirates catch the Brewers?

It's really a rhetorical question. The Brewers are 4.5 up on us with 12 to go (13 for them). Assuming they lose the game in hand they have on us, at the very least we'd have to go 8-4 against their 4-9 to make up the difference. With six games out west against the Padres and Dodgers, who MUST win these games to stay in the pennant race, us winning 8 of our last 12 seems kind of unlikely. The Brewers (who have had an strangely similar season the Buccos, they're 10 over at home and 25 under on the road) get St. Louis and San Fran at home for 7 games before going on the road to finish up in Chicago and St. Louis. They've been bad of late, but the only team they play with anything left to play for will be the Giants (St. Louis pretty much has the Central locked up) and they get them at home. I just don't see them losing 9 of those games, not with the Derrick Lee-less Cubs involved. The real question is whether or not our almost catching them in the standings renders the two teams as being on equal footing, as opposed to last year when it seemed like the Brewers were ready to take a big leap ahead. Dave Littlefield says he wants to spend the money to get better but no one will take it. Sounds like more of the same excuses to me.

More Deadspin

More on Pittsburgh Deadspin night from legendary commenter Sarcastro. Also, there are pictures.

The Duquesne incident

Since most of you know that I go to Duquesne and most of you are probably wondering just what happened here this weekend, I'll direct you towards the school newspaper, the Duquesne Duke, which done an amazing job of covering this thing. They cranked out a special edition for today and managed to have two witnesses to the whole thing at the scene. Most of the AP stuff coming out about the shootings are based on their accounts. The main story from today's edition is here, and you can find PDFs of the entire paper from today right at the top of this page, under the September 18th special edition header.

Pirates 3 Mets 0

The sweep is complete. Zach Duke was the star today, throwing up 8 zeroes in a row, making the 2 runs the Bucs scored in the first inning more than enough to keep the Mets from clinching for the third day in a row. Perhaps most importantly, Duke made his third really good start in a row, giving all of us Bucco fans flashes back to his fantastic rookie year last year. The win was also our 63rd of the year, meaning that somehow this baseball team that was swept by the Royals in June won't lose 100 games this year. Freddy Sanchez and Chris Duffy provided a good bit of today's offense with Duffy getting two hits and scoring twice and Freddy getting two hits (to regain the lead in the batting race) and knocking Duffy in both times. Today's win also assured the Pirates will finish .500 at home this year. They're now 41-34 at PNC, which is a pretty stunning fact, all things considered.

One last time

The Bucs try to break out the brooms at PNC today against the best team in the National League (recordwise). The Mets magic number is still at 1 with some 15 odd games to play and logic dictates that either they will win or the Phillies will lose at some point, but I'd still rather that the Mets take their celebration somewhere else. John Maine and Zach Duke will face off today, with the interesting stories being whether Duke can churn out another good start (he went 8 strong in his last one), whether Duffy can keep his 10 game hitting streak going, and of course Freddy and the batting race (he and Cabrera enter today tied at .340). Carlos Maldonado is catching for the Bucs, giving Ronnie Paulino a much needed day off and causing people to wonder just why we're keeping 'Berto Cota around if he's never going to see the light of day.

Pirates 3 Mets 2

Update: Welcome, Deadspin readers. More on the game is here and pictures are here.

Ohhhh, Deadspin.

Prior to the start of the game, my friend and I were walking down Federal Street trying to find the bar designated as the meeting place. Being a poor college student who can't afford the likes of Hi-Tops, Firewaters, etc. regularly we didn't really know what we were looking for. Then we saw the 222 Bar, shitty as can be with a cracked plastic sign. We knew we were at the right place. Once we get in and figured out who the Deadspinners were, things started slowly, as we were a group of people who only know each other by internet handles. As expected, however, the beer starting flowing, a picture of Will on a popsicle stick was unveiled, and at 7:05 we decided we should probably have one more round before heading over to the ballpark (though we all acknowledged that by doing so, we were risking seeing the Tom Gorzellany injury that seemed inevitable but never came).

As we made our way up Federal Street to actual go into the game (and get our Jack Wilson Road Uniform Bobbleheads, of course!) we saw fireworks in centerfield and assumed that it could only mean a Jason Bay home run. We were right. We were also not surprised to find that it only tied the game. Without tickets near each other, we claimed a trashcan for ourselves with a very obstructed view of the game (we could see one of the baseline scoreboards). We piled up our bobbleheads, wondered if we could list them on Ebay from the park, and of course drank beer and dug into a giant pile of chili-cheese fries. Finally in the fourth inning we claimed a spot on the rotunda. From there we could ridicule stupid jerseys in the bleachers, serenade Jason Bay with an off-key version of O Canada! and take part in lots of other general jackassery, like everyone revealing all at the same time that they were certain that Shane Youman was a white guy until we saw a picture of him (Pirate fans know their overaged, semi-prospects, what can I say, I was as guilty as everyone else).

The game itself was more or less an after thought (what would you expect), but it was a helluva game. Gorzellany and Youman combined to give the Pirates a very good start, combining for 7 innings and only giving up 2 runs and 6 hits (though they did walk 3 and strikeout only 3, 2 of each for Gorzo, one of each for Youman). Somehow Marte came in and didn't blow it, and Capps finished things off. For 7 innings the offense was mostly the Jason Bay show, with his solo homer in the second and his double in the fifth that lead to Doumit singling in the second run(in an unrelated note, games like this are what kill me when people complaining about Bay's "clutchness"... he struck out in the bottom of the ninth, but the only reason that mattered at all was what he did earlier in the game) providing all of our scoring before the ninth. Still, Joe Randa and Ronnie Paulino managed to pull off the walkoff win in the ninth with a walk and a laser of a double towards the notch off of Aaron Heilman, which ensured that the Pirates would be the only team celebrating on the field at PNC for at least one more day.

Another return

Tonight we get another return, though Tom Gorzellany's is much less anticipated than Pedro Martinez's was last night. Actually, Gorzo's return tonight kind of scares me. Francisco Liriano just had his season ended after trying to come back from some elbow discomfort and Jonathon Papelbon has been shut down for the year rather than risking further injury upon return. Still, Gorzellany's MRI came back negative, so I suppose I shouldn't be too scared. He's also on a very tight leash tonight of about 60 pitches, to be followed out of the pen by Shane Youman. They'll face El Duque, who very well may be older than both of them combined. His 80 mph fastball has bedaffled the Pirates all year, both with the Mets and D-Backs, so this game may be the Mets best shot at clinching on the field at PNC (well, him or Tom Glavine tomorrow, so we'll say the odds are even). I'll be there as part of the Deadspin Pittsburgh Night, so if you see a bunch of rowdy drunks on the rotunda, stop by and say hello.

The future

Ladies and gentlemen, the left-handed, formerly good, incredibly overpaid right fielder for your 2007 Pittsburgh Pirates, Luis Gonzalez.

Pirates 5 Mets 3

I didn't see any of last night's game because I was at Penn Brewery's Oktoberfest (certainly a much better way to spend an evening than watching the Pirates). Still, it's nice to see 3 ribbies for Bay, a good start for Maholm, and us beating up Pedro on his rehab start. If we could manage to keep the Mets from celebrating on our field this weekend, it would be nice to see.

Added intrigue

The Pirates get to break out the late-season doldrums by getting to face Pedro Martinez in his first start in about a month tonight. Paul Maholm will take the mound for the Pirates to try and not only beat Pedro, but keep the Mets from celebrating winning the NL East title on the field at PNC (their magic number is 1). Apparently Pedro hasn't made any rehab starts, so the Mets are probably considering this to be his rehab start (though I know there's not really any teams for him to rehab with at this point) which is kind of insulting, I guess. It's always fun to watch Pedro pitch, though I would assume most people have something better to do on Friday night.

Minor League Recap

Dejan has a great recap of the minor league season in today's Post Gazette. I don't follow the minors or chronicle them on this site maybe as much as I should, so this is really a rather informative article for people like me. Everyone knows about Walker and McCutchen, who may both open next year at Altoona (McCutchen is still kind of a question mark I guess because of his age, but he's certainly performed there this year). It's also very obvious that the organization thinks very highly of Brad Lincoln, despite his season ending injury, as Brian Graham places him on a level with Walker and McCutchen. Next year is the year we'll start to find more out about Lincoln, but it seems to me that they think he's going to climb pretty quickly.

There's also a ton of stuff about middle infielders (of course) as Brent Lillibridge and Brian Bixler have kind of made themselves into prospects this year (they really weren't when the year started) and of course lots of middle relievers thrown into the mix. As Dejan notes, there is a major power outage in the minors, and Walker and McCutchen may well be our best power prospects, which is kind of a problem. The whole thing is definitely worth a read if you've got the time.

Lots of links

Time for a big ol' collection of things I find interesting:

Tom Gorzellany will start on Saturday. I don't know how the Francisco Liriano situation changes this, and I know that tests showed no ligament damage to Gorzy's arm, but this makes me very nervous.

Ian Snell may have a message for me:

His strong performance against the Brewers seemingly erased any doubt as to whether he had enough left in the tank to pitch effectively the rest of the way.

"People think you don't read what they (write), but you do," said Snell. "They can just shut their mouths. I can still throw 95 or 96."

Take shit from bloggers? Snell doesn't do that. Ian seems to pitch better when he's angry, perhaps I should make it a point to insult him before every start (PS- Ian, on the slim chance that you are reading, please don't kill me, I just didn't want to see you get hurt for next year).

From Dejan's recap of yesterday's double header:

"This was the best I've done at commanding my fastball," Chacon said. "Jim Colborn and I have done a lot of things to make my delivery more consistent, and it feels like that's paying off."

As much as I pile on BP, he was a decent pitcher with the Rockies in '03 and a good starter with the Yankees last year. Were we to deal one of our other four starters this offseason, BP might make a decent fifth starter, especially if he bounces back from his knee surgery in good shape (even if that happens, it does NOT make him equal value for Craig Wilson, or even close). He may also remain a disaster which, given my experience with the Pirates, is still what I fully expect.

Jack Wilson is now going to lose all the weight he gained in the offseason so that he can play defense again. This is kind of like one of those story problems about the fish swimming into the current, where if the fish swims too slowly it conserves energy against the current, but wastes it by swimming too long and if it swims too fast it doesn't swim for a long time but it burns up all of it's energy against the current. Maybe we can propose a mathematical model in my "Topics in Math" class to determine Jack Wilson's ideal playing weight, which will leave him better than Mario Mendoza at the plate and closer to his old self in the field.

At OnlyBucs Wilbur Miller has an excellent essay up about the plight of the Pirates in Latin America. Plight is not the right word at all, it makes it sound like the Pirates inability to have success signing players there isn't their own fault. As he points out, competing with the big signing bonuses that the big market teams are now dishing out in Latin America is something the Pirates can actually do, but refuse to.

Charlie laments that one of the few times the Pirates appear in an SI article, the article is written by a moron. Fire Joe Morgan has fun lampooning said moron. Also via Bucs Dugout, this is hilarious.

Mondesi's House talks with Spike Slawson of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.

Pirates 6 Brewers 3 and Brewers 2 Pirates 1

Today was the tale of two pitchers, Ian Snell and Ben Sheets. Snell dominated the first game today (as apk suggests in the comments, he probably took it personally that Duke beat him by one single vote in the last poll) with 10 strikeouts in 7 innings to pick up his 13th win of the year. The offense was sparked by the top of the order, with Duffy scoring twice (with two hits), Freddy driving in two with three hits, Bay scoring twice, and Ronnie Paulino driving in 3 runs from the 5 slot.

With the series win wrapped up, Tracy went to his punchless lineup (aka the one without Jason Bay) to back Shawn Chacon, and a predictable outcome ensued, the Pirates lost. In a pleasant surprise, however, we didn't lose because of Shawn Chacon. Chacon turned in what had to be his finest outing of the season, going seven strong innings and allowing only 5 hits and 2 runs (both solo homers). For the second straight start, he struck out more than he walked (!) and threw an impressive 68 out of 104 pitches for strikes. Perhaps Colby is having a positive effect on Chacon, or perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle of his first few bad starts and his recent two good ones. Nothing Chacon could've done would've topped Ben Sheets today, though. Sheets put down the first 18 Pirates he faced and though he lost his perfect game to a Chris Duffy single in the bottom of the seventh had still faced only 21 batters through 7 (Duffy was picked off). Ryan Doumit managed to avoid the shutout by hitting a solo homer in the eighth, but that was all the Bucs would get (in terms of hits, runs, baserunners, etc.). Sheets ended up matching Snell's K total from earlier in the afternoon and saving the Brewers from the sweep.

In other interesting notes, Freddy used his 3-for-7 day (Tracy is obviously not letting the batting title interfere with his managing, I was shocked to see Freddy playing against Sheets in the second game, in which he went 0-for-3) to retain a one thousandth of a point lead over Cabrera in the batting race (.340 to .339, Freddy was as high as .343 after the first game). Duffy has his average up to .240, which doesn't really mean a lot but is impressive given his awful start. Snell has 159 strike outs on the year. Assuming he makes all his scheduled starts from here on out, he's got three more. That puts 200 out of reach, but he's probably going to get pretty close (he's only struck out less than five in a start twice since mid-July and 7 of his last 11 he's K'd six or more), which is a lot more than anyone could've expected from him before the year started. You'll also notice that from here on out, the posts are going to be labled, thanks to one of the upgrades Blogger is providing. As much as I'd like to, I don't have the time to go back and label all 1700+ posts I've done since last April, but I'll label everything from here on out, which should make browsing a little easier I suppose.

New Poll

Based on this post yesterday, there's a new poll up. As usual, feel free to vote and discuss in the comments.

The results of the last poll (which young pitcher do you find most promising) were:

• Zach Duke 34% (59 votes)
• Ian Snell 34% (58 vote)
• Tom Gorzellany 28%
• Paul Maholm 2%
• Other 1%

I was surprised to see Duke get such a high number of votes, but then again he is the only member of the staff to consistently look like an ace at the highest level. The Snell votes are obvious, he's been our best pitcher this year. I personally voted for Gorzellany, I thought his stuff looked just plain nasty in the three or four starts he made while healthy in Pittsburgh after he settled down.

Double dip

The Pirates and Brewers will face off twice today, once at 12:35 and once at shortly after the first one ends. The first game features Ian Snell and Pirate-hater Chris Capuano, the second one will be Ben Sheets and Shawn Chacon. So what I'm saying is, if the Pirates are going to win the series, they're going to have to win the first game. Today will be the first day in a new baseball world. Unfortunately for the Brewers and Pirates, it's not one in which they're good, it's simply one in which the Braves are bad for the first time since I was in kindergarten. I don't even want to try and wrap my mind around the fact that the Braves have won every division title during our 14 year slide and yet won less World Series than the Marlins, who didn't even come into existence until after the Braves third division championship. The more I think about it, the more everyone should hate the Marlins.

Fixing the Bucs

Two things have my wheels churning about the offseason a little bit, Dejan's online chat yesterday and the Bucs Dugout relaying of Ken Rosenthal's suggestion that the Pirates trade for Nick Johnson.

The first thing that struck me about Dejan's chat was one of the same things that Charlie noticed in his post about it yesterday, that the Pirates aren't willing to trade Mike Gonzalez because his ceiling is so high, but they are willing to trade Jose Castillo for that very reason. It is true that I've said in the past that trading Castillo wouldn't be a bad idea, I do think it's something the Pirates should look into, but not even considering trading Gonzalez is typical Pirates. Gonzalez is older, he plays a position that is traditionally more easily filled than Castillo's (especially on this most current incarnation of the Pirates, which is chock full of relievers), and he's having a great year that pretty much will have maximized his value. Not only that, but he's likely to backslide a little next year (his walks and WHIP are rather high), and he's been injured at least once in each of the past three seasons. With a long list of guys that can replace him (Torres has done fine in a couple stints as big league closer, Capps has the look of a guy that can close down the road, Sharpless and Bayliss have both been very good closers in the minors), Gonzo is probably the definition of a guy the Pirates should be looking to trade (don't get me wrong, I like Gonzalez a lot, I'm trying to look at this as a GM rather than a fan).

That brings us to Rosenthal's suggestion. His basic thought is that between Maholm, Duke, Gorzellany, Marte, Grabow, and Gonzalez we should be able to find two guys that the Nats would take for Johnson. He also suggests trading an infielder to open a spot up for Freddy Sanchez. I would assume that by that he means Castillo, though I don't know where Jose would play for the Nats (with Zimmerman at third and Vidro at second he would have to play short, which is a scary thought). At first this made sense to me, but with a closer look, it's probably a ridiculous suggestion. If the deal were to get done, it would probably have to be Castillo and Gonzalez for Johnson. Even thought they should, I doubt the Pirates would consider that (see above). Add in the previously mentioned fact that Castillo won't have a position there, and that with Castillo and Gonzo both arbitration eligible that they may end up being paid more money than Johnson's $5.5 million/year over the next three years, and I can't see this happening. But the question that it raised for me was more along the lines of whether or not it would be wise to deal a starter (meaning Duke, Snell, Maholm, Gorzellany). As Charlie points out in his post, the Pirates are no longer a pitching-rich organization (at least in terms of starting pitching). The Pirates want us to believe that Maholm, Duke, Snell, and Gorzellany and evolving into some type of Glavine, Smoltz, Maddux, and Avery (or even some type of Beckett, Burnett, and Penny, or hell, even something similar to the young guys the Marlins have now). The gut reaction of many from their streak of recent good play is to think that maybe something like that could happen. I've never entirely believed that, and the Stats Geek uses his space today to provide ample evidence that it's much more likely that we end up with a stable of four league average pitchers than it is that we end up with four aces. Duke's good finish over an extended period last year and Gorzellany's short time in the majors bode better for them, but obviously nothing is a given. Jeremy Bonderman might be a good example of a guy that was brought up, allowed to struggle with a bad team, and eventually turned into a good pitcher, but the problem is that four years into his career he's still younger than Gorzellany, Maholm, and Snell (and only slightly older than Duke). But does this make them tradeable if the offer is right? I still don't know. A quick glance of potential free agent pitchers isn't exactly encouraging, somehow I see Jason Marquis being the guy that this front office goes after (I could explain, but it would make this even longer than it already is, I'll save that for another day, I promise). Who would we have to get in a trade to make a rotation of Duke, Snell, Gorzellany, Marquis, and Chacon an acceptable thing? Nick Johnson? Babe Ruth? Superman? Jesus? Or is the difference between a healthy Chacon and Maholm really not that much? Keep in mind that if that's the decision we make, what could we really get for Maholm in a trade? These are all vital questions that I do not trust the Pirates' front office with this offseason (though I think I might have an idea for a new poll tomorrow).

Pirates 4 Brewers 3

I had a post typed up like 2 hours ago, but the Duquesne internet ate it whole. Let me summarize, Duke- very good. Duffy and Wilson- also good. Freddy falling behind in the batting race- bad.

This is more like it

Finally, the Pirates and Brewers games are worthless again. Dale Davis and Zach Duke face off at PNC tonight. The Brewers are a terrible road team, the Pirates are a fairly good home team. Duke has pitched fairly well lately, but hasn't won a game since his complete game against the Cards way back when I was on vacation. Duke doesn't have particularly good career numbers against the Brewers, but he has been improved since the All-Star Break (his post break ERA is down a full run from his pre break ERA and his WHIP is down from 1.57 to 1.41 since), so hopefully he can pull things together toinght.

Even more Irate

The Irate Fans are gathering again, this time on Wednesday, September 27th for the game against the Astros. They have a small amount of tickets to give out, beyond that you're on your own. If you're interested, head on over to the Irate Fans page and check out all the details.

Reds 4 Pirates 2

Maybe I should finally get together a recap of a game that finished like 8 hours ago. Shane Youman wasn't really as bad as I expected, and he pitched 5 shutout innings before the Reds got to him in the sixth. He put up a very Chacon-like line of 1 K and 4 BBs in his 5 and 1/3rd innings, but I suppose we can forgive it since it's his debut and all. I mean, I'd rather watch him walk 4 and strikeout 1 than Chacon or Santos, so what the hell, go for it. None of it really mattered because we were absolutely shut down by Bronson Arroyo over 8 innings. He limited us to 4 hits, 7 Ks and only 2 runs over his 8 innings. Mostly it was probably a good thing that this one wasn't on TV as if it was I would've sat around swearing at the TV while watching Arroyo dominate us.

Debut

27 year old non-prospect Shane Youman will take the mound for his Major League debut this afternoon at 1:15 against Bronson Arroyo. I've said a couple times that I'd like to see the Reds win the Wild Card (however unlikely that may be), but I hope we stomp the shit out of Bronson Arroyo today. The whole ex-Pirate thing aside, he just really gets on my nerves. Along with Youman, Carlos Maldando will get his first major league start behind the plate today, after singling in his first pinch hit at bat the other day. This one isn't on TV, which could alternately be a bad thing or a great thing for Youman in his debut. As usual, I hope the guy the best but certainly do not have my hopes up.

Snell

There is an awful lot being made of the comments made by Ian Snell after his start in the 9-1 shellacking by the Reds on Thursday. Essentially, Snell said that the fact that Jim Colborn came out to the mound to talk to him at all really pissed him off. He seemed especially pissed because the three homers he gave up in that start were "joke" home runs (they probably since it's Great American and they were hit by Ryan Freel and Javier Valentin). Today, Jim Tracy declined to comment on Snell's comments, which I think is a good thing. Should Snell have said what he said? Probably not in public like that. But the truth is, part of what makes Snell a promising pitcher is because of how competitive he can get. Early in the year he got off to a terrible start, then made up some reason to be pissed off at the Phillies and delievered a gem. Last offseason he backed out of both the Arizona Fall League, criticized the Pirates a whole bunch, and became their top starter this year. Hold his tongue? Snell doesn't do that.

Pirates 7 Reds 4

There were lots of good things happening last night. First off, the Pirates won and padded their fifth place lead to 1.5 games. Maholm gave the Buccos a strong start, Doumit homered for the second straight night, Bay homered and knocked in two more runs to give him 101 on the year (though knocking 100 two years in a row as a right handed batter doesn't put him in nearly as elite company as hitting 30 bombs from the right side two years in a row, instead of joining Ralph Kiner as the last Bucco to do it, this time Jay Bay joins Kevin Young), Paulino came up with a key RBI single in the eighth, and the Bucs knocked the Reds back to third in the central. The Bucs are now 3 over since the break, 27 under overall, and 30 under on the road. Damn those road games.

Strange time for a game

Paul Maholm and Aaron Harang take the mound today for an oddly timed 6:10 game, if there's anyone out there not watching college football. Then again, you couldn't watch this one either because Duquesne and Robert Morris are playing on FSP tonight. Me? I'm going to go back to thinking things like "I've never seen a team come into a big game less prepared or more terribly coached than Penn State today," and "Wait, Derrick Williams used to be fast and able to catch footballs, what happened?"

Saturday links

Since I imagine that most people are more concerned with college football this afternoon, we'll keep this brief.

As pointed out by apk in the comments thread directly below, Chris Duffy hasn't sucked that much in the last month. His power is still terribly lacking, but the stolen bases can help cover for that. Impressively, he's cut down on the strikeouts quite a bit with Nady as the only Pirate with 100 ABs in the last month striking out less (though that's a mostly strikeout prone group he's compared to there). I don't think Duffster has earned the job for next year yet, but he's probably at least earned the right to compete for it in the spring. I still don't think he's a leadoff hitter, though.

Also, today's PG Notebook reports on a sad turn of events with Pirate broadcasting, as the Pirates and KDKA will end their 51 year relationshipi and Clear Channel's 104.7 WPGB will take over as the flagship for next season. After the Cards moved on from KMOX last year, you could see this coming from a mile a way. With the big stations like KDKA and KMOX moving away from baseball, this has to be a huge victory for satellite radio.

Also in the notebook today there is mention of Shane Youman and how he's getting ready for his debut on Sunday, and the comeback's of Mike Gonzalez and Gorzellany. Meyer's notebook makes it seem like both will be back before the end of the year. While it's good to know that neither has a catastrophic problem with their arm, I hope we aren't rushing them back to make an appearence or two just to prove that point, because that would be stupid.

Cincy 9 Pirates 1

Now that was a beating. Ian Snell is continuing to run out of gas right before our eyes. Last night he went six and walked three with only 5 Ks, giving up 4 runs on all homers, with two coming to Javier Valentin. Then, the nightmarish 7th inning happened with Adam Dunn greeting Brian Rogers and Juan Perez showing us why it's never a good idea to be excited about 27 year old middle relievers. Josh Sharpless eventually put the fire out, but by then it was 9-1. Even more disturbing than the giving up 9 runs was the scoring of one against Kyle freaking Lohse. Lohse struck out 6 guys in his 7 innings and our only homer came on a Doumit homer (which tied the game at 1 and was nice to see). Last night also brought us the Major League debut of Carlos Maldanado, who singled in his first ever at-bat. Yipee?

Cincy

Ian Snell and Kyle Lohse face off tonight in Cincy in what will likely be the second most interesting Pittsburgh/Cincinnati sports matchup to most Pittsburghers in the Queen City tonight. The wheels have completely fallen off of the Reds playoff bandwagon in the past couple weeks, but they can probably get back into the thick of the Wild Card race with a sweep this weekend, but not much else can help them. The Pirates will meanwhile attempt to remain in fifth place for longer than they did last time they were there.

Two Links

The Bucs Dugout continues along with the current Rob Rossi and Florida Marlins memes, wondering what exactly drives Rossi to write some of the things he does and why no comparisons to the Marlins are really all that valid at this point. All I'm going to say is that I've never seen Ed Eagle and Rob Rossi in the same room, and I'll leave it at that.

Friday is Dejan's Q&A Day, so check it out. There is some particularly interesting stuff on how the infield situation will be handled next year.

Jose Castillo is the most obvious choice as odd man out, and he undoubtedly has frustrated management no end. Just seeing again his raging inconsistency on this road trip provides a reminder. To be sure, there are those in the organization who would welcome moving him, taking Freddy Sanchez to second base and using Bautista at third. (Or someone else at third and Bautista in right field, but that is another conversation for another day.)

At the same time, there are those who think it would border on insanity to move Castillo, given his potential and the chance he could blossom elsewhere.

Be sure that no decision has been made in this regard and that a tug-of-war is likely at the organizational meetings that follow the season.

This is probably a topic for a later day, but my suggestion would be this: before they do anything with Jose Castillo, they should try as hard as possible to trade Jack Wilson for something of value. Freddy can obviously play short as a regular and Jack is the weakest bat out of Castillo, Bautista, and Freddy. Freddy may not match his output from this year again, but he's certainly more capable of having a year like Jack had in 2004 than Jack is ever again. If they can't move Jack for anything valuable (which I will grant, is likely) and they get an offer they can't refuse for Castillo, then maybe they should start to think about it. It seems like common sense, but we all know how well the Pirates and common sense get along.

Football

This isn't a football blog or anything, but there is a game tonight so I thought I'd share the Steelers Preview that I wrote for the Duquesne Duke today and provide an open thread if anyone wants to talk about the game. Because I have a feeling there are some Steeler fans out there.

Pirates 7 Cubs 5

As previously mentioned, I saw none of this game. I hope you'll understand that that fact causes me to doubt its existence. Consider that all of the following supposedly took place:

• Chris Duffy hit not one, not three, but two homers.
  
• BP Chacon hit an RBI double
  
• Scott Moore and Carlos Marmol both hit homers (career at-bats before today: 24 combined with only 5 career hits between the two of them).
• Get ready for this one, BP Chacon, 5 Ks, 2 walks. Also, six innings pitched, the longest start of his Pirate career. So it's not quite an Oliver Perez shutout, but it's better than what we've seen from BP so far.
  
• Did I mention Chris Duffy and two home runs? That's so amazing that I just accidentally typed "Christ" Duffy. Before today he had 1 career homer in 352 ABs. Today he had 2 in four.
  

We got another strong bullpen outing today, with Juan Perez making his first appearence a successful 1/3 of an inning, and he, Sharpless, Marte, Bayliss, and Torres combined to hold the Cubbies to 2 hits in the last three innings. We once again find ourselves in 5th place which would be last place in every division (and out of existence in the AL West), but dammit, it's not last place in the NL Central and that's all that counts (you know, if you have really low expectations or something).

The finale to end all finales

The Bucs and Cubs will play for the last time this year at 2:20 this afternoon with the fitting pitching matchup being Sean Marshall and Shawn Chacon. Again, the coveted 5th place slot in the NL Central is on the line. It's probably on WGN if you don't have anything better to do, but I hope for your sake that you do. I will be in the chemistry student torture known as "Integrated Lab" all afternoon so I'll miss this one, but I can't really say I'm sorry.

We don't even do good things right

As all of you know by now, the Marlins Anibal Sanchez threw the first no-hitter since May of 2004 last night. He upped the Marlins record to 70-69 (you'll recall they're the first team in history to go above .500 in a season in which they were also 20 games below) and kept them within 2.5 games of the Padres in the NL Wildcard race.

What you may not know is that Henry Cabrera and Olivo Astacio of the Williamsport Crosscutters (the Pirates' absolutely godawful New York Penn League affiliate) no-hit the Batavia Muckdogs last night. The reason it's so depressing? Birthdays.

Anibal Sanchez 2/27/84
Henry Cabrera 12/17/83
Olivo Astacio 7/28/84

This is why it's impossible to be excited about anything the Pirates do. For more on the Marlins run at the playoffs and how it applies to the Buccos , head over to Bucs Dugout (who also tipped me off to the Cutters' no-no).

Weapon X

Back to the post about Weapon X that was briefly posted yesterday (all of the stats I quote are before yesterday's games, so sue me). The purpose is to try and quantify what Nady has done since arrival based on something more than "When he hit ball bat go boom." Instead, I figured it might be good to compare him to Ryan Shealy, the guy of nearly the same age (Nady is about 9 months older than Shealy) that we chose X over.

Again using the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database (you can tell this is becoming one of my favorite tools) we get the stats for Shealy and Nady following the trade deadline. Both are hitting quite well since their respective trades. Shealy is hitting .311/.364/.447 (OPS of .811) and Nady is hitting .342/.406/.450 (OPS of .856). Shealy has walked a little more than Nady, but not much more. He's outhomered him (which is probably to be expected given the dimensions at PNC), but Nady made up for the gap in SLG with tons of doubles. Nady has also struck out considerably less (18 times in 120 ABs as compared to 37 times in 132). For fun (and to spite Jeff Manto), using the Baseball Reference formula for Runs Created (which is, admittedly, one of the simpler formulas for the stat) Nady is at 20.51 and Shealy is at 23.07 since the trade. That gives them almost identical RC27's (how many runs a team full of all Xavier Nady's or all Ryan Shealy's would score in a game) of 6.92 and 6.84 respectively (Nady's is higher because of fewer at-bats). So given the market at the time and making the assumption that Littlefield felt he had to choose one, it's hard to say he made a mistake by picking Nady over Shealy at this point.

Of course, the place it's easy to say that Littlefield screwed up is in what he gave up for Nady, especially since it's possible he could've had Shealy for Grabow. Shockingly, I'm not talking about Roberto Hernandez, I'm talking about Oliver Perez. In case you missed it, Ollie tossed a complete game five-hit shutout last night against the Braves with 6 Ks and only 1 walk. He tossed 75 of his 107 pitches for strikes. Mets fans are undeniably, very, incredibly excited. They certainly should be, Ollie hasn't been that dominant in a long time. It seems that Rick Peterson has already done some work taming his crazy motion. If that's the case, this certainly might be a step towards the unemployment line for DL. Still, if Ollie were still a Pirate, I'd be using this very same space to caution you that one start does not a comeback make and that the Braves are not very good, and that the planets align every once in a while and sometimes even Ollie finds the strike zone. I'm not knocking the Mets fans for being excited because they should be and because it's a lot easier to be excited about Perez when you're a million games up in your division and your future success doesn't hinge on him getting his shit together. But if Perez keeps pitching like he did last night, Nady is going to need more than an .856 OPS an a 6.92 RC27.

Cubs 7 Pirates 2

It's hard to be upset about losing this one because we did nothing to win it in the first place. I mean, I assumed that we were going to win after Rich Hill hit Jack Wilson with a throw to first base and Ronny Cedeno made his millionth error of the season trying to throw Jack Wilson out at the plate because that's how the Bucs/Cubs games have gone lately. Instead, Dave Littlefield's worst nightmare came through tonight. His precious bullpen absolutely melted down. Actually, that isn't entirely accurate. Jose Castillo didn't cover first on a bunt, Matt Capps tripped while covering a bunt, Freddy Sanchez dropped an easy grounder, and Ronnie Paulino halfheartedly shrugged as if to say "Eh, who cares" after failing to throw a Cub out at second. That and Capps' predilection towards throwing strikes lead to a grooved pitch that Derek Lee hit into the bleachers with the bases loaded.

Zach Duke pitched very effectively tonight, going seven innings and only allowing 6 hits and one unearned run. Not surprisingly, his effective started was marked by zero walks to go with his three strikeouts. Rich Hill was even better, though, striking out 11 in his 7 and 1/3. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, he struck out 9 of the Pirates in his last start on August 6th. In his other recent starts he K'd 6,2,6,3,2,6,1,2, and 4. That's why we're back in last place with no one to blame but ourselves.