This is one of those Central Time zone games that starts at 7:05 anyways. It's Paul Maholm and Mike Parisi going at it while the Bucs try to get some free tickets (current price for the Astros game: $20) and maybe beat the Cardinals. I'll again be chipping in for FanHouse's liveblog of the Penguins game, if anyone's interested.
Neal Huntington gave a really long interview with the Hardball Times today discussing how he's planning on running the team. Instead of quoting various points (because like I said, it's long), just read the whole thing to get Huntington's take on developing players, trades, rebuilding the organization, Steve Pearce, etc.
I didn't get to see this one, but it looks like it was everything you'd expect from the Pirates and Cardinals:
Tonight the Bucs continue along their midwest tour, heading to New Busch to take on the Cards and the irrepressible Todd Wellemeyer. The Cards have won seven of their last ten, but only made up one game on the Cubs in that span. I know they're close in the standings (1.5 games), but the Cubs already have an air of inevitability and if the Cardinals are looking to take that away, they really need three wins against the Pirates this weekend. Tonight's a good place for them to start; Wellemeyer's looked inexplicably good this year and Duke's battling callus problems that pushed him back a day to go with the fact that his ugly peripherals have been catching up to him in the past couple starts. A series win for the Pirates puts them at just a game below .500 in early June, but three or four losses here is going to push that barrier awfully far away.
Is it time to trade people yet? Not according to Neal Huntington.
"As we've said for months, we are always going to pick up the phone when someone calls. And we are constantly talking internally about how we can improve the club for 2008, as well as going forward."
"If we make that type of trade now, a veteran for prospects, it just means we had an opportunity we couldn't pass up," Huntington said.
So, we're waiting on other teams to make offers to us for Bay, Nady, etc.? And maybe we'll start making offers when the time suits us? As much as it's going to be painful to see these guys traded, we all just watched the Reds. Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. are going to be on the trade market very soon and the longer we wait and the more diluted the market becomes, the less valuable our players are going to be.
First off, I'm rather panicked by the fact that Phil Dumatrait might be the Pirates' ace right now. Consider all of the things that have happened to get us to this point, and the fact that Dumatrait might not suck is kind of a small consolation. He was very good tonight, though, racking up nine strikeouts in seven innings while limiting the Reds to just two hits and a run over seven innings. That was more than enough pitching against Aaron Harang, who threw four innings on Sunday night in relief and only made it through four today with the Pirates putting on the offensive show we've come to expect from them at Great American Ballpark. It was an ugly series besides Dumatrait's revenge trip today, but we did manage to stay out of last place, which is nice.
Phil Dumatrait goes for Zach Duke tonight because of a callus problem. Aaron Harang goes for the Reds. The Pirates need to do something good tonight because this series is ugly.
Buckle up for this one, because if I were ranking failed Pirate pitching prospects in terms of big leauge ability, it would probably go:
Tom Gorzelanny faced eight batters tonight and gave up six runs, culminating in a home run by David Ross. That's about the extent of anyone in Pittsburgh knows about this game as being down 6-0 before the Penguins even drop the puck is an awful way to build up a fan base. Is there anyone out there that doesn't thnk Gorzo is hurt?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Hard to think of two pitchers that have underachieved this year more than Tom Gorzelanny and Bronson Arroyo (other than Ian Snell, of course), so with the two of them facing off at Great American tonight, there's bound to be some runs scored. Once again, I'm just looking for a sign of adequacy from Gorzo. If he can just do that, we should stick in this one tonight. I suppose he'll be pitching a little more carefully to Jay Bruce than Snell did, though.
Checked the PG page this morning and what do I find, but the return of the Stats Geek! O'Neill's column has always been one of my favorite baseball-related reads, so I was a little sad when he went absent at the beginning of this season. He's back today to tell us the reason why the Pirates haven't been historically awful to this point in the season (hint: it's not the infield or the pitching staff). Make sure you check it out if you've got the time this morning.
When this game started, it seemed like it was going to be a short night for both Ian Snell and Johnny Cueto with lots of offense and not a lot of pitching. Somehow both of them escaped huge jams in the first and kind of settled down, Snell more so than Cueto. In fact, Snell cruised between the second and the fifth, settling into a nice groove and not really walking anyone. Unfortunately, that didn't last terribly long and Snell gave up three walks, a sac fly, and a monstrous homer to Adam Dunn in the fifth, then two singles and another walk in the sixth before giving way to Damaso Marte, who was awful. It was actually almost impressive how quickly Snell and Marte turned a 3-0 lead into an 8-3 deficit.
There's not really much of a story beyond those two right there. The Bucs touched up Cueto for 3 runs and picked up 3 more in the ninth and I think they win tonight with a solid pitching outing. They didn't get anything resembling that and so they lost a pretty miserable game. The highlight of the game was honestly Jay Bruce's debut. You don't see guys get on base five times with three hits in their big league debuts every day of the week (or, you know, ever).
Actually, there was one other highlight, but it only existed for people who watched the game on the Cincinnati feed. The most ridiculous commercial for the most ridiculous dating site in history: FarmersOnly.com. I only wish I was kidding.
In addition to the Reds' Jay Bruce making his big league debut tonight, the Pirates are making a nice addition to the lineup with the return of Jack Wilson after he's missed most of this season with a calf injury. Charlie did some quick math and decided that Wilson at short might be worth three wins over Rivas and Bixler over the remainder of the season. Sometimes, you just don't know what you've got 'til it's gone and Wilson's injury was certainly one of those cases.
Anyways, the Pirates are on what is technically a two-game winning streak, but both wins were gift-wrapped by the Cubs. The good news is that both Jack Wilson and Jason Bay live to hit at Great American Ballpark, and I can't think of a better time for Bay to roll into Cincy. With the struggling Johnny Cueto on the mount tonight, I'd guarantee a home run if guarantees were my thing. Ian Snell is going against Cueto tonight. It seemed to me like he made some strides in his last start, so here's hoping that continues tonight against Bruce and the Reds. If he does, I might have to start insulting him again.
As if playing for last place in the NL Central wasn't enough, the Reds' super-duper prospect Jay Bruce is going to be making his big league debut against us in this three-game series. Actually, I'm really excited about this, because I think Bruce is going to be a special player (that would be me and most of Western civilization that thinks that).
There's a huge Q&A on the PG today with Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington about the upcoming draft and it's pretty enlightening. You should really read the whole thing, but here are some key excerpts:
Huntington on the importance of this draft:
And it's not the second pick in the country that's going to be our only focus, either. There's a lot of attention to that pick, but our energy and attention is aimed at all 50 picks and on making sure we have the systems in place to have quality drafts for years to come. We need to have multiple major-leaguers come out of this draft and the same out of the next draft and 2010 and so on.Coonelly on the slotting system:
As I've said before, I do believe in the recommendations the commissioner's office makes to the clubs. And, really, the whole term 'slotting' is not new. What it really means is what a certain space in the draft typically has meant. The whole program was just a way to put all the facts and figures before the club to provide additional information for their decisions.
Having said that, we're going to make our own judgments as to the value of players we select. We're going to take into account the recommendations we receive but, if we value a player above that slot, we'll go over it.
Coonelly on signing a player to a big league contract right out of the draft (aka, on drafting Alvarez):
The preference is to sign any amateur player to a minor-league contract. It gives the club more flexibility. With a player signed to a major-league contract right out of the draft, you have to use an option immediately to get him to the minors. If he has a minor-league contract, you can have him for three years in the minors before having to use an option.
Does that mean I'm saying the Pirates would never consider that? No. We would if there were a unique set of circumstances.
There are a lot of weasel words in what Coonelly says throughout the interview. Over and over again he says stuff like, "Well, we want to take the player that's going to be the best player for us." That's great, but it's also the line of thinking that got Danny Moskos here instead of Wieters or LaPorta.
When I said, "stealing a series from the Cubs," I didn't know the Pirates were going to take it quite as literally as they did during today's game. I mean, there's sneaking out a win and then there's hitting the game-ending pop-up into left field, only to have Alfonso Soriano eschew his sunglasses and let the ball pop out of his glove, resulting in a tied game in the bottom of the ninth.
The weird thing about this game is that that Soriano play wasn't necessarily even the weirdest sequence of events. I mean, in this game, Luis Rivas hit two home runs. Luis Rivas. Hit two home runs. Paul Maholm then imploded with a four-run third, but pitched his way into the eighth anyways because of the 14-inning game last night. That eighth inning looked like the crucial one because it lead to the Cubs' fifth run, which should've been decisive except for Soriano.
Of course, after the Pirates tied it up that really just set the stage for Jason Bay to get his second extra-inning walkoff single in about 16 hours when he clubbed a Jon Lieber pitch into left-field to score Chris Gomez from second. I can't really think of a Pirate I've been happier for than Jason Bay in a long time (and it's not because I've spent so much time sticking up for the guy). He takes a lot of flack that I don't think he deserves, mostly based on his reserved demeanor, he went out and played almost every day last year despite an injury that had to have been killing him, and this year he's back and just knocking the snot out of the ball. His OPS in May is close to 1.100 and he's come up in big situations not just this weekend, but all month.
This season really has been a roller coaster, hasn't it?
Who would've thought after Friday's debacle that the Pirates would actually have a shot at winning this series two days later? Regardless, that is actually the case this afternoon as Paul Maholm and Ted Lilly face off in the rubber match of this series at 1:35. Lilly and Maholm have pretty similar ERAs, but nothing else about their pitching lines is really close beyond that. Lilly's ERA is a little high for the way he's pitched this year while Maholm's is just about spot-on. Maholm's been pretty consistent in May, but not in a good way because he's allowed four runs in just about six innings in each of his past three starts. If he can even himself out some today, the Pirates might have a chance. If not, only the crappy parts of the bullpen are going to be available today after last night's marathon and we might have a repeat of Friday on our hands.
Remember back in 2005 when there were games when it felt like Jason Bay picked the team up on his back and would win games singlehandedly? Tonight kind of felt like one of those nights. With Jason Marquis continuing his baffling (OK, it's not actually baffling) dominance of the Pirates, Bay walloped a homer to left field in the fourth. In the sixth, he scored on Jason Michaels' single. In the fourteenth, he singled in Freddy Sanchez from third base with a rocket into the gap, sealing up the Pirates' second win against the Cubs in 11 tries this year. All in all, he was 4-for-6 with 2 runs scored and three RBIs on a night when the rest of the team accounted for one run and 9 hits in 14 innings. It really seems pretty likely to me that Jason Bay is back.
Of course, in order for Bay's hits to be meaningful, the pitching staff had to come through and besides Tyler Yates, they did a nice job in this one. Dumatrait went into the sixth with his weekly tightrope act and Matt Capps and John Grabow pitched three shutout innings apiece (Capps needing only 32 pitches), meaning that a game that could've nuked the Pirates' bullpen actually only used six guys.
Being a guy that's been to more than his share of Pirates/Cubs games in PNC (and one incredibly hungover breakfast at Eat 'N Park in Robinson) where Cubs' fans have overrun the park, it's really great to see the Pirates sneak this win out in front of a crowd that, from what I could tell on TV, was probably more Chicago fans than Pirate fans. It's not that I have a particular disdain for Cubs' fans, but you gotta protect the house every once in a while. And seriously, who doesn't love a win in a game that goes beyond the 12th inning?
The biggest question for tonight's game is whether or not Mellon Arena, which is showing a hockey game on a scoreboard, will outdraw a real live baseball game at PNC Park. I'm guessing no, going to Mellon Arena to watch TV sounds kind of awful to me, but then, it's the Pirates. Ff you're actually curious about the Pirates, Jason Marquis and Phil Dumatrait are facing off in a matchup that will likely draw more Cubs' fans to PNC than Pirate fans. Marquis is no good but he owns us, Dumatrait's been walking a tight line with peripherals that indicate he's not quite as good as his ERA says he is. That backfired on Zach Duke last night and with the way the Cubs are hitting, it might be Dumatrait's turn tonight. As for me, I'll be contributing to FanHouse's liveblog of the Pens' game because I can't go out and watch it as there's no guarantee anyone in Chapel Hill cares about this game but me. And I know this is a Pirates blog, but screw it, we're going with the Mike Lange YouTube embed for good luck on this one.
There are some nights when it's imminently obvious why the Cubs are a first place team and we're not. Last night was one of those nights. Zach Duke started on the mound and got pummeled. Sean Burnett followed and got pummeled. Marino Salas closed things out and got pummeled. Carlos Zambrano, on the flip side, did not get pummeled and he shut us down over six innings. It was just an all around ugly baseball whomping that we were on the wrong end of last night. I can't really think of any other way to put it.
Do we honestly ever play anyone other than the Cubs? By the end of this series, we're going to have 12 games against them before June 1st, which seems absurd to me. Tonight is a rematch of last Saturday's game, with Zach Duke and Carlos Zambrano taking the mound. It's not a terribly favorable matchup for us, but it did pan out in our favor last week so I suppose there's no real reason why it couldn't again tonight. Zambrano's had some shoulder problems this week, but he says he's fine and he's going tonight. That might make things interesting, but then things are rarely boring when the Big Z is on the mound.
If there's one thing that's really bugged me about the Pirates this year (OK, actually there's like 42 things, but this is #1), it's the way Ian Snell's pitched. He and Gorzo have been equally bad, but I kind of expected it out of Gorzo (mostly because I figured he'd be hurt this year). Snell's ugly start gnaws at me because I can't figure out why he's been so bad and there's no real obvious reason for his dropff. I'm not someone to sit around and let something bug me when I think I can figure out the answer, so I've been digging through Dan Brooks' fantastic PitchFX tool for Snell's starts to see if I can figure out what's different this year. This is the first year that the PitchFX data for every start are available to the public and the numbers I can find from last year are very incomplete. Instead, I'm going to compare the numbers from this year to what I found in the Bill James Handbook 2008 for Snell. He doesn't explicitly say what system he used to chart the pitches, but I'm guessing his Baseball Info Solutions company uses either the same PitchFX system or something similar, because most of the stats he gives are the same or similar to PitchFX.
My initial suspicion, shared by several of you, is that Snell hasn't been throwing as hard this year as in the past. Last year, according to the James, Snell was 6th in the NL with a 92.4 mph heater. Using PitchFX, here's his average fastball speed from each of his starts, in reverse order, with a link to the boxscore from that night:
Comic books and baseball. Has the SI staff been hanging out in the WHYGAVS comments?
Through three innings tonight, I was legitimately terrified that we were going to make Dave Bush look like a good pitcher. To that point he'd held us to one hit that wasn't even really a hit (Nate McLouth's infield roller that someone, I honestly forget who, flubbed) and with Doug Mientkiewicz, Chris Gomez, and Raul Chavez in the lineup, things were looking bleak. That was until Jason Bay smashed a homer to left-center and the floodgates opened up, leading to big hits from Chavez, Gorzelanny, and Gomez, of all people.
Gorzo may have an RBI single and go the win tonight, but he continued his string of not pitching terribly well. He walked four hitters and gave up eight hits in 5+ innings tonight, getting bailed out of the sixth inning by Tyler Yates. I've really run out of things to say about him. He just doesn't look comfortable on the mound right now. I still think he's hurt, but if he really was there's no way the Pirates would keep putting him out on the mound. Right?
Just talked to my brother, who witnessed last night's game with the 8,800 strong that actually showed up to it. That's just sad. Anyways, Dave Bush and Tom Gorzelanny face off tonight in front of what will probably be a similarly small crowd. Generally, I've been writing these gamethreads as game previews, but I've been failing epically at that, as just about every pregame prediction I've made lately has been hopelessly off base. If I were trying that again tonight, I'd say that Gorzo and Bush is a recipe for a high scoring shootout. Instead, I'm just going to state the facts: Dave Bush sucks and we're all praying that Gorzo mirrors Ian Snell and turns things around a bit tonight.
Out of curiosity, was there something strange about the wind last night in Pittsburgh? There were several balls that I thought were launched last night that turned into harmless flyouts, and my brother thought the same thing from his seats at PNC. Mike Cameron was certainly having his share of trouble in center, as well. Is there something going on that we should know about?
Good news is rare for Pirate fans, but I think we've found some. Here's Doumit talking about his thumb injury:
"Mark my words," Doumit said. "I will be back sooner than anyone thinks."
Dr. Mark Baratz, the Pirates' hand specialist, has cleared Doumit to take dry swings, but the team's preference yesterday was to wait another day or so to be cautious. As a result, Doumit was limited to throwing, which he does with his right hand.
Still, the clearance itself comes roughly two weeks earlier than expected, and another examination today could bring more positive news, that being that the small, horizontal fracture in the tip of the thumb has not spread or affected the nearby joint.
Doumit's absence is most obvious in a game like last night's, where the Pirates racked up 11 hits, including 4 for extra bases, and only managed one run. We can certainly use his bat a soon as he's ready.
This is going down as the official WHYGAVS Night thread. Once it gets pushed down on the page, I'm going to add a link to it at the top of the sidebar. Let's run through the details:
I don't know what it was about this game, but I swear that the Pirates were launching fly balls to the warning track all night off of Ben Sheets. It's true that Sheets did give up more fly balls than grounders, but I swear that like six of the eleven fly outs he induced seemed like hard hit balls that could've been doubles if the landed somewhere else. Of course, they didn't so that doesn't matter, but at least it didn't seem like we were flailing around without a clue tonight at the plate. Kind of seems odd to say in a game that we only scored one run, so maybe you should pretend like I didn't say anything.
It did seem like Snell had a little bit of his fire back tonight. He was scowling at Jeff Andrews during a mound visit and got six strikeouts in his six innings, which is a bit more like the Snell we're used to. He also got hit pretty hard and not really by lefties. That's not much like the old Snell. Still, he's dropped off so far from the last two years that it's not likely to all suddenly come back. I'll take a baby step in the right direction because it's at least something in the right direction and that's not something we've seen a lot of this year.
With the win the Brewers slide back in front of us in the NL Central standings after our fourth loss in five games. This team was just on fire with eight wins in ten, right?
It's never a good thing when a game inspires the type of article that last night's loss spawned in the PG.
"I don't know what it was," manager John Russell said. "We just couldn't get anything going at all."Just awesome to hear stuff like that from the manager.
May is slowly winding down into June, and that means that it's almost draft time. Generally, draft season is one to be feared in Pittsburgh, but I'm really intrigued by what Huntington and Coonelly's staff are going to do with their first draft. Early signs are quite good, as the PG today says they're picking between Pedro Alvarez and Tim Beckham.
Alvarez, 20, has rebounded from missing a month to a broken hand to play in Vanderbilt's past 32 games and bat .338 with seven home runs and 25 RBIs. He would be ready for the majors much sooner out of the two. He is represented by super-agent Scott Boras and will seek a signing bonus in excess of $7 million.
Beckham, 18, is a senior at Griffin High School and is seen by many as the draft's most talented player, blessed with power, speed and agility in the mold of the modern star shortstop. He is batting .500 with five home runs and 13 RBIs. He is committed to the University of Southern California, so he has not yet hired an agent.
Will the Pirates really draft a Boras client or an incredibly talented high school kid that might not sign? I hope so, but I'm kind of loath to get my hopes up.
I don't know know it was about last night's game, but it certainly felt like the same old Pirates. With a struggling young pitcher on the mound, the Bucs struck out a ton and couldn't make any headway. Meanwhile, the Brewers piled the runs up on Paul Maholm and the bullpen, slowly draining the life out of a game that seemed like it was within reach at one point. Our only runs came on a Jason Bay homer off of Eric Gagne, which probably shouldn't count at this point because Gagne's been so freaking bad. I know it's only one game and we're just a couple days removed from playing pretty well, but when the Bucs play a game like they did last night, that same old familiar sinking feeling starts creeping in. It's almost June, isn't it?
I don't know if there's a team in baseball in a worse tailspin than the Brewers are right now. They've lost five in a row, their rotation is in shambles after Yovani Gallardo's injury, their bullpen is mostly a mess, and players are openly criticizing each other in the media. A sweep at the hands of the lowly Pirates may very well be Ned Yost's last stand. Today they're sending Manny Parra out to the hill. He's a decent prospect, but he's been really bad so far this year. He'll face off agains Paul Maholm, who always benefits from the giant left-field at PNC Park. Ready to be tantalizingly close to .500 again?
I'm not sure if it's the fist-pump, the "white guy trying to dance" look on his face, his ears jutting out from under his cap, or the fact that his cap seems to be about 2 sizes to big for his head, but I don't think the PG could have chosen a dorkier picture of Matt Capps to run with the article about how he's one of the few guys in the NL Central that doesn't suck at closing. (Photo by Matt Freed at the PG)
Charlie and I discussed the state of the Pirates in a mini-roundtable type article that's now posted at Baseball Digest Daily. In bouncing our ideas off of each other, I think we were able to give a unique view on a couple topics, so it's definitely worth it to check it out.
Rather than recap two games that I didn't watch, but were nothing terribly special from what I could decipher (besides the Nate McLouth stuff, that is), I'm instead going to use this post to address some issues that I've been meaning to talk about for a while but haven't really had a chance or an opening to do so until now.
Currently, the Pirates are two games under .500. They only lost by one run today, which means that with a fortuitous bounce or two, this team could very well be sitting at 22-22 today. That's an entirely unexpected turn of events for the Pirates and it's one that clearly has some people excited about the team. I'm certainly happy about this because I hate watching crappy baseball and I like it when the Pirates win. If I didn't like it when the Pirates win, this blog most certainly wouldn't exist.
That being said, I'm not all that concerned with the Pirates' record at any point in the month of May. What I am concerned about is what their performance means in the context of the whole season. That's how I think. I'm not a journalist by trade; I spend most of my time in a lab. Each baseball game is a singular event in itself, but it's also a piece of a giant puzzle that's the season. After digesting the game and the result, that's how I try to look at things. When we win, my thoughts are, "Great, we won, what does that mean." This is why I don't get excited about Zach Duke when he throws six shutout innings, but puts eleven guys on base and only strikes out one batter. A game can have a fluky final result, but seasons rarely do. Sure, sometimes Pete Vuckovich wins 18 games and a Cy Young Award without having a great season, but that's far from common. More often, the guys that have good starts that aren't supported by their peripherals come crashing back to earth.
I'm not writing this as an indictment of fans that are excited about the Pirates and their almost mediocre start to this season. I'm writing this because I take a lot of crap for being negative about this team and I think it happens because people don't always realize that I'm generally writing with a bigger picture in mind. Four years ago, I was at the double-header where Rob Mackowiak put on one of the greatest single-day individual performances in the history of the team. After his heroics, the Pirates were .500 and I was excited. I was 19 years old and I was convinced that the team I had just watched was going to be the team that finally broke the Pirates slide. When that team fell apart in short order after that May series against the Cubs, I was legitimately heart-broken. Part of me knew I was stupid to get my hopes up, but I was mostly upset that I had let a team full of bad players fool me into thinking they were different. If I'd taken time to actually look at what had happened up to that Memorial Day weekend series, I would've known that their record at that point was a flash in the pan and the other shoe was coming.
What do we have with this particular Pirate team? They're a team that's much better on offense than the 2007 version because they replaced two offensive black holes with Nate McLouth and Ryan Doumit, and Jason Bay is actually hitting the ball. Unfortunately, they're getting no offense from shortstop, second base, third base, or first base. When the guys at those positions come around, the guys that are on fire now are going to cool off because their performances are generally unsustainable. The rotation is awful. Tom Gorzelanny isn't going to magically click back into 2007 form and neither is Ian Snell. Paul Maholm has always been an inconsistent pitcher that shows tantalizing flashes of competence that are spread few and way to far between. Zach Duke has a nice record and a decent ERA, but there's not one other thing he's done during the season to suggest that either is sustainable for any amount of time. Phil Dumatrait's been a nice surprise, but it's an awful sign that he's our second best starter right now and it's going to take more than a handful of starts to convince me that this is going to last, especially given his control problems. Just like the rotation, even if Gorzo and Snell start to come around, Duke and Dumatrait are likely to tail off severely.
I'm sorry to be so negative, but, as Rob Neyer used to say, I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. When I think something is good, I'm going to tell you that it's good (for example: Nate McLouth is awesome and while he may not slug .600 or hit 40 home runs this year, his awesomeness is not likely to go away ... I believe this to the point that when Charlie and I were working on a soon-to-be-published piece, I didn't even do a double-take when we found ourselves comparing him to Brian Giles) and when I think something is bad, I'm going to tell you it's bad. Right now I'm seeing a team with a decent record that might hang around .500 for a while due to their schedule, but in the end is going to be exposed for the bad baseball team that they are. I'm sorry if reading that ruins your day, but it's what I'm fairly certain is going to happen. I hope I'm wrong.
Finally a matchup I like in this series (keep in mind that this is being written on Friday night). Phil Dumatrait's been not bad since his inclusion in the rotation two weeks ago and Jason Marquis just isn't very good. Of course, this game starts 40 minutes before the Pens/Flyers game, so it might as well be happening in a vacuum.
The Pirates are 0-7 against the Cubs this year and I wish I could tell you this was going to be the game where it all ended, but I don't have a great feeling about this one. Zach Duke's 1.61 WHIP doesn't nearly synch up with his 4.04 ERA this year and while I know people think I'm too hard on Duke, he's been walking a thin line and just begging to get lit up in one of these starts. He's going against Carlos Zambrano, who's been very good through the early going this year, rolling up a 6-1 record with a 2.03 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP. There's really nothing to like about this matchup once you factor in the Cubs' success against the Bucs this year.
I'm going to be out of town from tonight until Sunday afternoon, so there's not going to be any recaps or posts until sometime Sunday night besides the gamethreads that I've future dated for Saturday and Sunday's games. Hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll be back on Sunday.
It's not often that I'm going to sit back and tell you that one player won or lost a game for the Pirates. There's so many factors in baseball that affect the outcome of each game that it's almost always impossible to pin a win or loss on one player and one player alone. Still, doesn't it feel like today's loss belongs on Tom Gorzelanny's shoulders? He gave up three homers and six runs to the first ten batters he faced today, putting the Pirates in a 6-0 hole that they were never going to dig out of. I mean, they tried with three runs in the seventh including the ever so rare Dougie Bombs bomb, but it was too little too late. I didn't get to see the game today, but I'm guessing the first two innings were right out of the Matt Morris playbook. I even called Soriano's second homer without being able to see the first. There's either something seriously wrong with him or the entire new coaching staff should be fired for screwing him up.
In what's an annual tradition, two NL Central teams are playing each other this weekend while the rest of the league takes part in interleague play because while 30 is a nice round number of teams to have in your sports league, it doesn't mesh with have super-special interleague play that only happens twice a year. That means that the two leagues have to be different sizes and since the NL Central is the only division with six teams, they're always involved in these non-interleague games. Sometimes it's the Pirates or Reds against someone from another division, but it's almost always the Pirates or Reds. Today the Bucs go to Wrigley for a Friday afternoon game. I can't really think of a worse place for the Pirates to go right now with the hot streak they're on. The Cubs are 17-7 at home this year and the Pirates always seem to play poorly on the north side of Chicago.
Tom Gorzelanny is taking the hill tonight against Sean Gallagher at 2:20 Eastern today. Neither pitcher has been very good this year, but Gallagher hasn't made all that many starts, either. The Pirates have won eight of their last ten, but only made up one game on the Cubs, who've won seven of their last 10. In fact, the Pirates are still tied for next to last in the Central despite their 20-21 record, which just goes to show you that counting on a division to suck for more than a year or two in a row is not bright. These things are cyclic and the Central looks primed for an up year after a couple downers. Or the bottom will fall out on the Pirates, Cardinals, and Astros and the Cubs will run away with the division in July. Either or, really.
There are a lot of people that read blogs like this one or others that are similar and ask the smartass question, "So you think you could manage this team?" It's true that a lot of times I criticize whoever is unfortunate enough to be managing the Pirates at the given moment, but it doesn't really mean that I want their job. Take the following sequence of events from today's game for example:
We've got a 1:15 start today as the Bucs and Cards look to bounce on out of St. Louis nice and early today. Ian Snell and Joel Piniero take the mound and I swear if we make Piniero look good again, I'm going to be sick to my stomach.
Ian Snell insult:
Ian, you'd walk Randall Simon with the way you're pitching right now.
The Scene: Jim Hendry's office- Monday, May 12th, 2008. Hendry is perusing 2008 NL Central Champions t-shirt designs when suddenly his door flies open.
Dave Littlefield: Jim! Jim! I need to talk to you!
Jim Hendry: Dave, didn't the guards tell you to stay out? You know I only hired you as a thanks for Aramis Ramirez.
DL: No, you gave me Bobby Hill for that.
They laugh in unison.
DL: But seriously, you hired me as assistant general manager ...
JH: Assistant TO the general manager. Wait, no, you're a scout.
DL: Right, assistant general manager. Anyways, it is my duty to inform you of a wonderful thing that's just happened.
JH: (intrigued) What's that?
DL: Jim Edmonds has been cut! He's a free agent!
JH: That's funny ... my veteranosity meter didn't go off. He flicks the small spinning glass top on his desk. This thing's supposed to whistle whenever there's been a shift in the veteranosity levels. But Dave, do we need Edmonds? I mean, Reed Johnson's killing the ball and Felix Pie's a pretty good young player. And let's not forget that Edmonds is ancient, can't hit, and runs routes in the outfield like that kid that gets shoved in right field because he sucks and his mom makes him play. I mean, this seems like an awful idea. There can't possibly be one benefit to signing Jim Edmonds, can there?
DL: Slaps Hendry in the face. YOU'RE JIM HENDRY!!! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?
PETCO Park is a pitcher's park: FACT.
Wrigley Field is a hitter's park: FACT.
Jim Edmonds will hit better here because Jason Kendall did last year. It's science. Moving on ...
Jim Edmonds has won a World Series: FACT.
Jim Edmonds is gritty and dirty and hustle-y: FACT.
Jim Edmonds played for Tony La Russa, the greatest genius manager of all-time: FACT.
That loser Reed Johnson played for super-geek Ricciardi in Toronto: FACT.
Felix Pie is a prospect and nothing good ever comes from prospects, ever: FACT.
We must sign Jim Edmonds right now: FACT.
JH: Holy crap, you're right. See, people wondered why I wanted you in the front office, but this, this is why we need you, Dave.
DL: I'll call his agent and offer him $172 million for the remainder of the season.
JH: Why did Tony La Russa just e-mail me a picture of his ass with the caption, "Who's the NL Central champs now, bitch?"
Baseball is a wonderful game. It's full of strategies and numbers and stats and any combination of them can be used to illustrate just what happened on the field to get a good understanding of why what happened happened. Sometimes, you only need one stat to convey how a game went. Tonight's loss to the Cardinals is a good example:
C. Izturis ss 5 0 3 1
You don't know to know anything beyond the fact that Cesar Izturis had three hits and we had four to deduce that we lost tonight.
The Pirates have won seven of their last eight games. That's a really bizarre statement to think about, given the way this season started, but it's completely true. They've lost Ryan Doumit in the wake of this streak, so tonight's all-star lineup will feature Ronny Paulino and Luis Rivas, who is apparently still alive. They'll be backing Paul Maholm on the mound, and hopefully he'll bring his A game since he's been pretty hit or miss all year. His opponent is Todd Wellemeyer who, like team he plays for, is off to a surprising and likely unsustainable start. The pertinent question right now is whether or not his carriage turns into a pumpkin starting tonight, or whether it happens somewhere further down the road. Personally, I'm rooting for tonight.
The Pirates have promoted Raul Chavez to take Ryan Doumit's place on the roster while he recovers from his thumb injury. No one's really sure about the extent of the injury, as far as I can tell, since Doumit's going to be evaluated at AGH today. Rotoworld says he's out for anywhere between ten days and three weeks, but I can't source that statement at the moment (generally, they pull their news from newspapers, websites, etc.) so you might not want to hold that as gospel just yet (EDIT: it's in the PG story as an early guess from JR based on initial x-rays with more definitive diagnosis coming). Hopefully, they're right. A thumb injury can be brutal for catcher, but if he just has a fracture in the tip of it than maybe it's not as bad as it could be. Honestly, any time you lose a guy that's hitting the way he's been is too long, but hopefully this isn't a serious injury.
It's very early to be excited about the Pirates surprising run of recent success, but I will say this: tonight's game was a game that they lose a lot and it was really nice to see them pull a win out of this one. They had an early lead, but watched it slip away when Phil Dumatrait ran out of gas and gave up a home run to Troy Glaus, then they fought back to take another lead, only to watch it disappear when Albert Pujols homered, then they loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth, and something funny happened. Ryan Ludwick swung at the first pitch, even though Marino Salas was working in his big league debut with the bases loaded, the game on the line, and three walks allowed in the inning (even though one was intentional and one was close). He popped that ball up into right field, Nady hauled it in, and the Pirates scored four runs in the top of the tenth and won. Huh. Didn't see that one coming.
In reality it shouldn't be that surprising that the Pirates won, mostly because they got a good start and good bullpen work and that leads to teams being in games. The big star at the plate was none other than Ronny Ballgame himself, playing in the stead of the injured Ryan Doumit, who doubled in they tying run in the seventh after Glaus's homer and knocked in the go ahead run in the tenth. It'd be nice if he'd start hitting, too because Doumit's injury is a fractured thumb and he's out indefinitely. I've honestly never seen a guy get injured in so many different seemingly freak ways. I really am starting to wonder if he's made out of glass and beef jerky, held together by spiderwebs (two spiderweb references in two posts ... weird, and yet both 100% necessary).
As a side note, the guy we roughed up for four runs in the tenth inning was none other than Ron Villone, our opening day starter in 2002. I know what you're thinking and in what order you're thinking those thoughts, so let me try and deal with them for you:
After a rather successful homestand, the Bucs are moving on the road to St. Louis to take on the surprising Cardinals tonight. According to Dayn Perry and PECOTA (BP subscription required), most of the Cardinals are playing way over their heads and will be coming back to earth any day now. Somehow, Phil Dumatrait doesn't strike the type of guy that hitters come back to earth against, though I'll admit that his early returns as a starter are significantly less horrifying than I expected them to be.
The Cards' counter Phil with Kyle Lohse, the guy who couldn't find a team until like three weeks before the season began. He got off to a decent start this year, but has really gotten bombed the last couple times out. Generally, the Pirates are the team that pitchers like him right the ship against, but if our early season offensive surge continues that might not hold true. Said surge kind of feels like finding an awesome spider web in a tornado to me; really awesome and unexpected, but liable to go away literally at any second.
Anyways, if you're planning on watching the other Pittsburgh sporting event going on tonight, I'll be liveblogging it at FanHouse and will post a link here when it goes live. (UPDATE: It's on!)
Replacing JVB on the roster tonight will be reliever Marino Salas, who's one of the two guys we acquired in the Salomon Torres trade over the winter. He was kind of an unknown when we traded for him given his age and level last year (he dominated AA at the age of 26, which is way too old for AA), but he's been lights out in Indy thus far (0.77 ERA, WHIP of just over 1.00, 20 strikeouts in 23 and 1/3 innings). It's obvious Huntington likes the guy because not only did he trade for him, but he gave him the call over Jesse Chavez, who's arguably been better in Indy than Salas has this year. Of course, all that probably means is that Franquellis Osoria is on notice. Or maybe I'm confusing what I wish would happen with what I think is going to happen again.
Well, that was quick. After this afternoon's shelling, Van Benschoten's back on his way down to AAA to get in more work as a starter and an undetermined reliever who will almost certainly be named Jesse Chavez or Marino Salas will be taking his place on the roster. As I just said in the post below, I think the Pirates are making a mistake by keeping Van Benschoten in the rotation because I just don't see anything there, but they're apparently determined to try and get him to stick there. He'll probably put up decent-to-good numbers, but we've seen again and again that he just doesn't have it in him to get through the lineup twice in the bigs. Keeping him in the rotation anywhere is wasting people's time.
When you think of magicians, who do you think of? Houdini, David Copperfield, David Blaine, that guy that gave away all the secrets on TV, GOB, Huge Jackman, Christian Bale, Edward Norton, they all probably make the list. After the first game today, Zach Duke should probably make the list. Check this line: 6 innings pitched, 5 hits, 5 walks, and a runner reached by error, but no runs, earned or otherwise. That's ELEVEN base runners in six innings, but not one of them scored. That's some impressive escapism right there. The Bucs were able to combine a three-run double by Freddy Sanchez and a two-run homer by Adam LaRoche with Duke's magic act to take down a relatively easy 5-0 win the opener of today's doubleheader.
With the .500 mark on the line in the second half of the doubleheader, John Van Benschoten took the mound for his first start of 2008. The results ended up being fairly predictable, although I'll admit that I was actually mildly (mildly) either encouraged or intrigued by JVB's outing. I know that sounds crazy, but bear with me. Much of Van Benschoten's troubles are based in his control, but he was actually very good in the control column through three today. To that point in the game, he'd struck out four and walked none. Even his final line showed 50 strikes in 77 pitches. Now, granted, once the Braves got their order up a second time and he'd thrown some pitches, they pounded the crap out of him. That doesn't bother me because I'd already mostly given up on Van Benschoten as a starter. Still, his stuff is considerably better than a guy like Burnett's and I think if he can reign his control in, it might play to a switch to the pen. Of course, that's not much of a comfort when he's not in the pen and he, in fact, started tonight, got shelled, and ended the Pirates' unlikely six game winning streak one game short of pulling back to .500.
Looks like Zach Duke and John Van Benschoten vs. Jair Jurrjens and Tim Hudson. If double headers do anything, they expose lack of depth. Look for Jason Michaels, Chris Gomez, and Luis Rivas to have their fingerprints all over these two games. If we win both we'll be standing at .500 on May 12th. If we don't win both ... I won't be surprised.
Zach Duke and Jair Jurrjens take the mound at 1:35 today as the Pirates look for their second straight sweep and sixth straight win to pull them to one game under .500. This sweep would be considerably more encouraging given that the Braves don't suck this year.
There's two things to keep in mind for this game. The first is that today is Mother's Day, so call your mom and don't be surprised when pink bats dot the field today. The second is that if you're one of the people that wonders why I always harp on Zach Duke's strikeout rate, a long post is below explaining it. And yes, Jason Michaels is starting for X in right today and I'm starting to think that we might have a problem.
UPDATE: This is a goofy wraparound four game series, so no sweep no matter what we do today. And also, we've got a rain delay.
Another Update: Strike that, this one's rained out. Doubleheader tomorrow.
Today Zach Duke and Jair Jurjjens take the mound with the Pirates looking for their sixth straight win and second straight sweep, this time over a team much better than the lowly Giants. With Duke on the mound, this is as good a time as any to take some space and explain why I'm so worried about his ghastly low strikeout rates this year.
The reason for my concern over Duke's strikeout rates is two-fold. First off, the Pirates' defense is bad. Their defensive efficiency, a raw measure of balls put into play that they turn into outs, is .680, second worst in the league. There's a drop-down menu to allow you to look at the efficiency ratings from the past and the Pirates are always towards the bottom of the league with a rating somewhere between .675 and .680. So we know that the Pirates are terrible at turning batted balls into outs. The more balls Duke allows in play, the more hits and runs he's going to allow. That's just how it goes with the Pirates.
The main reason, however, is that for Duke, strikeout rate seems to be an indicator of how well he's pitching. In general, it's accepted that pitchers don't have a lot to do with the outcome of a play once the ball leaves the bat, assuming it stays in the park. Defensive positioning, defensive ability, etc., all play a role on hits made off of even the best pitches. There are, however, some exceptions. Sinker-ballers, for example, usually have low strikeout rates but can have good years because of the huge numbers of ground balls they induce. On the other hand, a really bad pitcher that gives up a ton of hard hit balls is going to have a higher percentage of balls put into play turned into hits. In Duke's first season with the Pirates, he struck out 6.16 batters per 9 innings and batters hit .303 against him on balls they put in play (that's to say at-bats that ended in something other than a walk, strikeout, or home run). Given the Pirates bad defense, .303 is probably about what should be expected, since .290 is generally the accepted average. In 2006, Duke's strikeouts fell to 4.9/9 and his BABIP(batting average on balls in play) against rose to .336. So not only was he striking out fewer hitters, more of the balls opponents put in play were going for hits. In 2007, his K/9 plummeted to 3.4 and his BABIP against rocketed to .374. You can see that in his career, Duke's strikeouts and how hard the opponents are hitting the ball against him are inversely proportional. That's why I use strikeouts as a shorthand for how well he's pitching: because in his career the numbers have generally indicated that when he's pitching well, he's striking batters out and when he's not pitching well, he's not striking batters out. This year he's striking out 2.7/9. That's why I'm not encouraged by his decent start.
First off, Jason Michaels was 3/4 last night and that's good for him and I was happy that he didn't completely suck in his first game in black and gold. But that doesn't make it OK for the Pirates to bench McLouth every time they face a lefty. Nate's not mashing lefties the same way he is righties, but a .291/.371/.491 line is perfectly acceptable and in fact, it's probably in line with what most of us expect out of him for the full season. I'll buy that he needed a night off last night, but he doesn't need regular nights off and if this happens again relatively soon, it'll be something worth getting pissed over.
That said, even with the Pirates, a win's a win and we've now rolled up five of them in a row. Gorzelanny had a pretty decent outing last night, going seven and a third with four Ks and two walks with his two earned runs allowed but none after Teixeira's homer in the first, and Bay and Michaels provided a nice chunk of offense, with five hits and four of our five runs scored between them. Bay hit his seventh homer in the fourth to put the Pirates up for good, and even Ronny Ballgame knocked in three runs.
The win puts us at 17-19, which means that that good old false hope is swelling up in a lot of people right now. Interestingly enough, out Pythagorean win/loss is also 17-19, due to the fact that we've actually scored a decent amount of runs this year. That means that the numbers say that despite our long, ugly stretches of baseball, our record actually decently describes the way we've played so far. Raise your hand if you saw that one coming.
Currently, the Pirates have what I think can best be described as an unlikely 4 game winning streak. Four games means that there's been a win in the starts by everyone in the rotation except the guy going tonight: Tom Gorzelanny. He's got an ERA of almost 7 and he missed his last start with back problems. I suspect he's got bigger problems then that, but if he does, no one's fessing up to it. He'll take the mound against Chuck James tonight. James is not very good, but he's not supposed to be very good either. Still, he is the type of pitcher the Pirates should be able to keep this streak alive against. Of course, that requires an outing from Gorzelanny that's something less than an all-out disaster. Will we get it? I wouldn't count on it.
If you're curious, 7 innings of two-hit ball doesn't count as a good outing when you walk six people in my book. Snell's still rather obviously got something wrong with him and maybe if I have some time later, I'll sit down and see if I can't being to sort out just what it is using his pitch FX or something.
Still, even with Snell having almost no control, the Braves certainly couldn't hit him last night and that let the Pirates stay close, even with Tom Glavine finally having a good outing against someone this year (you just had to know it would be us, it's always us). Still, Freddy Sanchez knocked in all three of the Pirates' runs with a two-run double in the seventh (which also saw Bixler thrown out at the plate ... did anyone see this play? was it typicaly Beasley/Mientkiewicz baserunning?) and a game-winning single in the bottom of the ninth.
Somehow, the Pirates are 16-19 and on a four-game winning streak. I'm not sure I get it.
With all this Andy Van Slyke and Barry Bonds talk the last week, it's fitting that the Braves are rolling into PNC tonight. Tom Glavine will again attempt to stave off retirement and get his first win again Ian Snell, who's been awful in 2008. There's some kind of hockey game on, though, tonight and I think this game may as well be played in a vacuum.
The Ian Snell Insult of the Night:
Ian. You suck. Get your sh!t together, man. No one wants to see you like this.
Cope: the motherflippen' Rhymenocerous
What a wonderful way to kill a Friday afternoon. Honestly, words don't do this thing justice
Hat-tip: Bugs and Cranks
Should the Pirates sign Barry Bonds? That was the question posed to me by 'Duk at Big League Stew. The answer, of course, is no, but you'll have to click on through to BLS for the full text of it.
Anyways, big thanks to 'Duk for giving me the chance to write the piece and to Big League Stew in general, since they've been rather good to me in the past two weeks.
In what had to be record timing, the Pirates demoted Nyjer Morgan almost immediately after their win over the Giants this afternoon. That wasn't a surprising move as it's one that's been discussed for a week or so now. The surprising part is that the Pirates plucked Jason Michaels off of waivers to replace Morgan on the Major League roster.
I can already see people making a big deal about this, but I don't really see the big deal. Yeah, it's true that Michaels sucks. But who would you rather see in this place? Kevin Thompson? The career AAA guy who's off to a hot start this year? The Pirates know that Nady, Bay, and McLouth are their three best hitters. The team is clearly high on Morgan because they're moving him to AAA to get some at-bats. I don't really share their optimism on Morgan, but this is the right move if they really think he might develop more. My point, though, is that despite being high on Morgan, he's got three starts this year. John Russell (or someone) likes Luis Rivas, but he's mostly disappeared from the field since his awful start. Dougie the Eyechart is friends with Russell, but he doesn't hit and he doesn't play. Jason Michaels is on the team to fill a roster spot as a replacement-type player, to pinch-hit and play twice a month when someone needs a day off. Unless you count Thompson, who I doubt is better than Michaels, the Pirates don't have someone to do that in AAA, because everyone else that's there is someone they want to play. If Nady gets traded and Michaels starts over Pearce, it's a move to get upset over. Until there, I don't really see any reason to worry about this.
Currently the Pirates have two of the top six players in the league, as measured by total win shares. This is, to say the least, a rather unexpected development. Even more unexpected is that Jason Bay and Adam LaRoche are exactly neither of those two players (who are Nate McLouth and Xavier Nady, of course). That's even more surprising, as most people would've likely qualified Bay and LaRoche as the Pirates' two best hitters. What made today's win especially nice was that it came on the back of two big hits by Bay and LaRoche in the seventh inning, helping the Pirates to turn a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 win.
It's really hard to get excited over a sweep against the Giants, but it's always nice to see the Pirates pull out a win in a game that feels lost. Matt Cain was really good through six today, but Bruce Bochy probably stuck with him an inning too long and the Pirates actually managed to take advantage of that. The soon to be demoted Nyjer Morgan reached on a bunt single, Freddy hit a ground rule double, McLouth hit a sac fly, Bay picked up his third hit of the day and doubled Freddy in. After a pitching change and a couple more batters, LaRoche singled Bay in and gave the Pirates the lead, which the bullpen did a nice job of holding on to. The win brings the Pirates to a not-embarrassing 15-19 record on the year, which is pretty surprising given the way most of this season has gone. We'll see if I feel the same way on Sunday after the Braves roll through town.
Crap! Afternoon game! Curse you, getaway day! Paul Maholm and Matt Cain take the mound in minutes. Cain is young, hard throwing, and awfully hit or miss with the strike zone. Maholm's been either really good or really bad this year. Literally, anything could happen in this game and as long as Barry Bonds isn't involved, it won't surprise me.
The Pirate notebook in the PG this morning is full of all kinds of bad things:
First things first: tonight was Phil Dumatrait's first win after a rather long journey to get there. I'm happy for him (shameless FanHouse link).
All in all, it's nice to see the Pirates struggling pitching staff take advantage of the Giants awful offense. Dumatrait and the pen were very good tonight, limiting the Giants to just five hits before Matt Capps came in to do his Jose Mesa impression and give up three straight hits before getting a flyout and giving us the familiar site of Jose Castillo bouncing into a double play. Yates and Marte (especially Marte, who struck out 3 hitters on 13 pitches) did a nice job of getting the ball from Dumatrait to him, though.
What was rather disappointing was the offense against Zito. I didn't see anything that made me think he's regained any of what he lost, but besides Xavier Nady's home run in the fourth we didn't really get to him at all tonight, despite Bob Walk and Greg Brown discussing at length the fact that if his velocity was gone he might be screwed forever. Of course Walk and Brown also made really lame superhero jokes about Xavier Nady that were nowhere near nerdy enough for my taste and may have gotten in an actual fight in the booth over the AFLAC trivia question (Brown claimed they were joking around, though I'm not certain, the answer to the question was Bob Miller). On the bright side, we now have a better record than the Giants and would be in third place in the NL West, if we were actually located in the west.
After "demoting Barry Zito to the bullpen" last week, the Giants are putting him back in the rotation against the Pirates tonight without him ever actually having pitched in relief. That's gotta feel like a slap in the face to the Pirates, because Zito has been downright awful this year. Imagine Matt Morris as younger, left-handed, and with $100 million more due to him and you've got the early 2008 Barry Zito. In fact, until we trade McCutchen for Zito, the phrase "it could always be worse" will always apply to the Pirates.
Going against Zito will be the much cheaper and certainly no worse Phil Dumatrait. Most of his peripherals make me nervous he's due for a breakdown, but if the Giants couldn't figure out Zach Duke last night then there's hope for Dumatrait tonight. Unless, of course, the Giants get adjusted to soft-tossing lefties and figure out how to hit these guys. In that case, we're screwed because that's pretty much all we've got. Personally, I'm kinda rooting for a 13-11 shootout tonight. At least it'll be interesting.
Adam LaRoche, May 6th, 2006: .207/.318/.467, 5 HR, 31 Ks
Adam LaRoche, May 6th, 2007: .167/.271/.284, 3 HR, 33 Ks
Adam LaRoche, May 6th, 2008: .206/.289/.333, 3 HR, 33Ks
I've said this again and again, but LaRoche didn't break out until almost June last year. It's early May and he's nearly got his OPS to .700, which was a number he battled with until June 30th last year (first topping it on June 6th). In his past nine games, he's hitting .355/.444/.613 with two of his three homers and two of his four doubles. It certainly seems possible that the LaRoche breakout we've been waiting for is just about here.
It's incredibly frustrating to watch LaRoche flail around at the plate in April, but it's really something we're just going to have to accept for as long as he's our first baseman. If all of his off-season work only served to help him break out of his slump on April 26th (the beginning of that nine game stretch I mentioned above) as opposed to mid-May, then it paid off at least a little bit.
I'm no hitting coach, but I think LaRoche's early season problems all lie in that big swing of his. It's like a work of art to watch it when he's killing the ball, but bigger swings are always harder to adjust when a hitter is struggling. I think he has a very hard time getting his timing down because of it early in the season, once the real games start. I get that there's spring training to do that, but you only have to watch one spring game to know that things just flow differently in the spring than they do in the season. I don't imagine any hitting coach is going to try and strip him of his defining characteristic, and I don't know if he'd be the same hitter with a shorter swing, but if he doesn't change his swing at least a little bit, I don't think he's ever going to hit early in the year.
I meant to write this up earlier, when the game was fresh in my mind, but between finishing up my last final of the semester and churning out a 1,000 word Pens/Flyers preview for FanHouse, this recap kind of got lost in the mix, and I apologize for that (mostly because this was actually a game with some positive signs coming out of it).
Nate McLouth is insanely on fire right now. I don't think he'll slug .600 or hit 40 homers this year, but it's just hard to envision him cooling off right now. He ripped two more homers tonight to give him nine on the year, as well as 28 RBIs. At this rate he'll set career highs in just about every key category by June 1st. He must like reading his name in the paper.
Also, and this is worth noting: ADAM LAROCHE'S BATTING AVERAGE IS OVER THE MENDOZA LINE. In fact, he finished Sunday at .202, but his homer tonight is proof that perhaps his average did not see it's shadow and there won't be six more weeks of slump. We can only hope. Once he gets going, it's going to be like these five weeks never happened. Well, except in the standings. They happened there.
I thought Zach Duke looked decent through seven tonight, but it's beyond me why Russell put him on the mound for the eighth. Doing that ensured that ran up another fairly high pitch count (104) early in the year for a guy with arm trouble last year. Still, Duke was certainly not great tonight. The Giants offense really sucks and he again struggled to fool hitters, matching his walks and strikeouts at 3. I suppose everything has to start somewhere and Duke definitely looks better now than he did during last year's debacle. Baby steps.
Oh, and Sean Burnett re-debuted tonight, and promptly served up a three-run jack to Jose Castillo. THAT Jose Castillo. Umm ... first night jitters? I hope so. At least he didn't cost us the game or anything.
The Giants roll into PNC tonight with a 14-18 record, which isn't great but certainly is better than what most people expected from them this year. They'll send Jonathan Sanchez out to the mound tonight and he's one of the reasons for their less than awful start this year. We'll send out Zach Duke, who's starting tonight because Tom Gorzelanny's being skipped this time through the rotation. Dejan indicated that he thought Duke threw well last time out, but sooner or later the results need to back things like that up. And seriously, if he can't get the Giants out ... who can he get out?
I don't usually post stuff like this, but the Pirates are kind of boring lately and this video is hilarious.
The kid is at a minor league game, but anyone that's been to a Pirate game in the last 15 years knows exactly why he's tossing that (allegedly empty) bottle back.
Good read in the PG today about Nate McLouth's early breakout this year. I particularly enjoyed this passage about Nate as a four year-old playing wiffleball with his dad:
"Nate would take pitches," the elder McLouth said. "Honestly, if he didn't like what I threw, he wouldn't even budge."
This might best explain why nobody, not Nate McLouth's family, not his high school coach, not any of his professional instructors, including those currently with the Pirates, can lay claim to that patient, sweet-swinging style that has made him one of the more compelling story lines early in this Major League Baseball season.
As Pirates hitting coach Don Long put it, "That approach he has, that's not something you teach."
This is why I don't have terribly high hopes for guys to have sudden breakouts with the Pirates this year. In most of their cases, their problem is their approach and approach is something that's not easy to teach, especially in players old enough to make the big leagues. On the other hand, McLouth's approach is great and that's why I haven't given up hope that this hot start isn't just a flash in the pan.
So I'm sitting here working on a test because I am completely unable to go to sleep when a playoff hockey game is on (Sharks and Stars are nearing their fourth OT), when it dawns on me that I have completely neglected to post about the Olivo Astacio incident on WHYGAVS. As you likely know, the breach of team policy that he was cut for was swinging a bat at a teammate, which makes Oliver Perez's landry cart abuse look downright pedestrian when it comes to clubhouse tantrums. The player he took a cut at hasn't been named, but he wasn't hurt in the incident. That fact was summed up perfectly in a comment left by a friend of mine on my FanHouse post about the incident:
Only someone in the pirates' system could attack someone with a bat and manage to not injure him.Amen to that, Rando. I fully expect Astacio to wind up turning into the next Mo Rivera. Of course, since he's a reliever that can't find the strike zone and has a history of violent outbursts, it seems much more likey that his career is over.
It's officially time to shift at least some of the Tom Gorzelanny worry on to Ian Snell. I know Gorzo's got a tangible injury that's causing him to miss a start right now, but Snell's been downright awful in his past few starts, especially if you look past runs at at peripherals. After his six-inning, ten-hit, four-run, two-walk, two-strikeout start today, his ERA is over 5.00, his WHIP is 1.65, he's only striking out 5.5 hitters/9 innings, and his K/BB ratio is only 1.56. This is nowhere near the Ian Snell that we've been used to seeing over the better part of the last two seasons. I mean, he gave up a home run to Aaron Boone today! Aaron fricking Boone! Who knew he was even still in baseball?
In keeping with my digging desperately for silver linings in these crappy games, Adam LaRoche hit a homer and a double today giving me a vague hope that he might break out of his early season slump earlier than June this year. As bad as he's been this year, please recall that he didn't actually break the Mendoza line for good until May 27th last year and his OPS didn't get above .700 for good until June 30th. If he starts hitting now, this is an improvement over last year. Man, that's a depressing statement.
Losing 3 out of 4 to the Nationals just makes for an depressing weekend. I don't really know what else to say. We're 30 games into the season and I feel like on maybe two nights we've had the pitching, offense, and defense all click like a major league team, which makes them really hard to watch. Of course, the good news is that most people just won't watch them today since the Penguins are one at two and the Pens' games have been watched by more people than American Idol.
Ian Snell Insult:
Hey, Ian! Partial ranking of Pittsburgh's most watched shows:
I have no idea what the breaking point was here, but the Pirates just designated Evan Meek for assignment, which means that he goes on waivers and if he clears, the Rays get him back. Of course, the short blurb says that the Pirates want to keep Meek, meaning they're discussing a trade with the Rays to keep him here. I have no idea who or what would be involved, but I'm guessing well traveled minor leaguer Cash Considerations would be all the Pirates are looking to give up for Meek.
Meanwhile, Meek being gone means that Sean Burnett finally got the call to Pittsburgh and John Van Benschoten stays with the big club. I see what Huntington's doing here and it's hard to argue with it. Now is the time to figure out if either of these guys is going to be any kind of useful for the Pirates (if JVB stays in the pen, I think he might be) and it was pretty clear from the get-go that keeping Meek was only eating a roster spot up, even if he has a lot of potential. It's very depressing to think that our top picks in 2000 and 2001 might turn out to only be relievers, so don't think about that.
This game had to be one of the weirdest sights in baseball history as both teams wore Homestead Grays uniforms in a Negro League tribute game. The Nats wore red and white home unis and the Pirates wore the black and gray Grays' uniforms we're all used to seeing, but it's still kind of disarming to see "Grays" across the front for both teams.
In keeping with the bizarro dress code, Christian Guzman drove in six runs and Jose Bautista hit his third homer in two games. The Pirates managed to dig themselves out of an early 5-1 hole, but not a later 9-5 hole after they tied things up. Maholm and Osoria both got bombed and as usual, that put us in a hole that was just a little to deep to dig out of.
Anyways, this game came right on the heels of last night's blowout win, which saw a decent debut (or to be more accurate ... not disastrous) from Dumatrait in the rotation and a two homer game from Bautista, who's suddenly remembered how to hit the ball. I remain blacked out in Chapel Hill, though I've been listening to bits and pieces of the games online, at least as much as I can stand to listen to the Pirates and Nats on the radio.
Geez, random afternoon games throw me off. We've already started against the Nats today and we're losing 2-1 and Paul Maholm has given up a home run to Christian Guzman, which is just plain poor form. I'll write a double recap for this one and last night later today.
Even though Matt Morris has been gone for a couple of days now, we're officially kicking off the post-Morris era tonight when Phil Dumatrait makes his first start. I hope you're not expecting a huge improvement, because I don't think Dumatrait's the one to bring it. His early-season ERA out of the pen is quite nice, but nothing else about his peripherals are and if a move to the rotation's going to do anything, it's going to accentuate those weaknesses. This is a stopgap solution at the absolute best. Of course, if you pencil in Brad Lincoln as the next potential major league starter in the organization, it's a much larger gap than any of us would like it to be.
I saw this yesterday, but forgot to post about it. The Pirates released Olivo Astacio, who was one of the off-season surprise adds to the 40-man when Huntington was on his crazed, "I love relievers with high strikeout counts!" binge. The key text, from the PG:
The Pirates today unconditionally released pitching prospect Olivo Astacio for what they described as a "significant violation of organizational policy."Absolutely no word as to what that significant violation may be, but if it were a failed steroid test we'd probably have heard about it already. The wording of the statement makes me think we're going to find out he's in some kind of trouble with the law, but that's just idle speculation on my part and you shouldn't take it as any more than that.
You know what really sucks? Actually getting a solid start from someone who isn't Ian Snell and seeing it go to waste. Zach Duke again didn't fool many people tonight (only one strikeout in seven innings), but he did limit the Nationals to five hits over seven innings, which is about as good as it gets for him, and no runs after the second inning. The Pirates got rare homers from Freddy Sanchez and Ryan Doumit (his homer rare because it came from the right side of the plate ... at least I think it was, I'm blacked out of Nats' games in Chapel Hill because MLB has a terribly archaic blackout policy) to keep things tied, but John Grabow chose a poor night to give up his first run of the season. It's hard to fault him since he's been so good, so instead we'll place this one on the offense. Two runs? Three hits? Against the Nationals? Honestly, if it's not one thing with this team, it's definitely another.
As an aside. games like this one make me appreciate just how hard it can be to be a big league manager. Duke racked up some serious pitch counts earlier this year, but only had 85 through seven innings and got through the seventh relatively easily. Russell chose to replace him with Grabow, but it couldn't have been a matchup reason because they're both lefites. The top of the order was up, but none of those guys had a ton of success against Duke earlier in the game. I'm not saying it was the wrong call to pull Duke for Grabow, because I don't necessarily think it was, but man, it certainly wasn't an easy one to make.
One of the more depressing aspects of having a brutally awful rotation is going into a series against the equally poor Nationals and having to pray that this four-gamer isn't mortally embarrassing for us as Pirate fans. Tonight the constantly struggling Zukester faces off against the other O. Perez (O is for Odalis this time), which kind of makes me wonder how many teams in history have played Oliver Perez on one day and Odalis the next. I'm guessing not terribly many, but then I don't really have any evidence at all to back that kind of statement up. We'll call it a gut feeling.
It's official: Andy Van Slyke knows.
A big thanks to David Brown, who actually contacted me and solicited me for some questions (which he used) before he did the interview.
(If you were directed here by the interview, by all means click around a bit and check things out especially if you're a Pirate fan or you enjoy schadenfreude.)
UPDATE: This is so incredibly, mind-bendingly cool that I can't even put it into words. The interview is really awesome and you have to read the whole thing. It's a real reminder to me, personally, about what it was that drew me to those Pirate teams in the early '90s as a little kid.
Matt Morris retires.
The Pirates don't over or under preform, they just preform (thanks, Lois).
Roger Clemens manages to somehow render me speechless again.
When are we gonna get a prospect like Max Scherzer?
Worst GM Semis.
Jose Castillo homered last night. Get out the non-perishables and head for the hills.
The Dugout just makes your life better (in reference, of course, to this saga).
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