Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

Having the struggling Jeff Karstens face off against CC Sabathia isn't exactly a perfect way to end a nine-game losing streak. CC didn't look all that great against the Pirates last week, but it shouldn't take much to shut-down the anemic offense that has the team, as per DK , taking full batting practice before a Sunday afternoon game. Bone Crusher Moss and Nate McLouth are the only left-handed hitters in the lineup today, which means that Chris Gomez is staring at first base, Jack Wilson is batting lead-off, and Jason Michaels is batting cleanup. Which means that John Russell is punting today.

I didn't see any of tonight's game and the score does not make me want to learn about it. What I did see tonight was Brad Eldred, now with Charlotte (the Chi Sox AAA affiliate). If you're curious, he hasn't changed one bit. On the mound is almost-Pirate Jeff Niemann, who struck out ten Knights in his 7+ tonight, though I maintain that two don't count because of this guy. Look at that swing. Those were the golden days.

I feel like if any pitching combination was going to end our eight-game losing streak, it'd be Paul Maholm vs. Jeff Suppan at PNC Park. When you're mired in an eight-game losing streak, you need more than a good pitching match-up, though. More than anything, you need some breaks and luck. We've been short on both lately and it's probably too late because now football's officially here to push us the Pirates into obscurity.

Falling behind 3-0 after three batters is a sure way to alienate a ton of fans from watching the game. That was exactly what Tom Gorzelanny did last night, giving up a Rickie Weeks single, a walk to JJ Hardy, and an opposite field 3-run bomb to Ryan Braun that anyone who's watched Pirate baseball this year could've called. At that point, a pretty disastrous loss seemed like a certainty, but Gorzo buckled down nicely and only gave up two more hits and one more walk though his seven innings. As baby steps go, I think we can certainly count everything after Braun's home run as a fairly nice one for Gorzo. The problem, again, was actually scoring runs to back Gorzo. Dave Bush shut down the offense, which hasn't been hard to do lately, limiting the Pirates only to a Nate McLouth fifth inning home run. We managed seven other hits, but since they didn't lead to any runs they don't really matter. Loss #8 in a row pulls us to within four losses of clinching a non-winning...

The avalanche that is August is going to close out with three games against the Brewers, who are coming off of a bad loss against St. Louis that's making the wild card race interesting. Tom Gorzelanny pitches tonight, which makes for at least one interesting Pirate-related plot-line as we get to pray for baby-steps from him much like we have been from Snell all year. I hope this works out better.

While we're all fretting over the Pedro Alvarez situation, let us take a moment to remember that we now have a GM who was at least smart enough to draft Pedro. From today's PG : Most teams contacted Boras to inquire about Wieters, but not the Pirates, who had the No. 4 overall pick. So, Boras, according to a source in his agency, phoned Dave Littlefield, the general manager at the time, to find out why. The team's response was that it did not view Wieters as a top-five talent, in part because of his throwing. Boras was incredulous that Wieters' throwing -- widely viewed as fine, anyway -- could be prioritized over his switch-hitting, power-hitting abilities, and the conversation soon ended. ... Wow. Of course the "bad arm" thing was Littlefield's cover story for "I'd rather spend $6 million on Jeromy Burnitz than a freaking draft pick," but still. OK. Breath. No more living in the past. Littlefield's gone. The Alvarez situation sucks, but...

DK lays out the options for the September 10th arbitration hearing between the MLBPA and the Commissioner's Office and how it will apply to Pedro Alvarez and the Pirates. It's long, but a very good read. It appears that the verdicts will be either: 1.) The signings hold, 2.) The signings won't hold and the Pirates and Alvarez (as well as anyone else that got an extension) gets to renegotiate, or 3.) Alvarez goes back into the draft. This is really interesting stuff, it just sucks that the Pirates are involved. If you're a BP subscriber, make sure to check out Kevin Goldstein's take on the recent shenanigans. (Sidenote: can we refer to this incident as, "The Pedro Alvarez Shenanigans?" so long as we note that these shenanigans are tragic and sad, not cheeky and fun?) I know there are a lot of comic geeks here, so it's imperative that you guys check out The Dugout's take on Watchmen . The Brewers learned last night what Ian Snell and Oliver Perez a...

Two new points to consider. From the PBC : Scott Boras phoned from California to give this quote: "The Pirates violated Major League Baseball rules and have issued a nearly 600-word statement, made their actions look to be my fault. I think it's time for the Pirates and Mr. Coonelly to come clean with the fans of Pittsburgh and let everyone know about their dealings with Mr. Alvarez." This from Baseball America : Several sources have confirmed to Baseball America that MLB extended the signing deadline by as much as 45 minutes to allow Eric Hosmer (another Boras client) to reach a deal with the Royals that included a $6 million bonus. Speculation in baseball circles was that Alvarez—who reached an agreement with the Pirates for a $6 million bonus—and Missouri righthander Aaron Crow—who could not come to terms with the Nationals—received similar extensions, though Baseball America has not been able to confirm that. A bit of a picture is beginning to emerge and I think I ...

It has been rightly pointed out to me that my "Pedro Alvarez will never play for the Pirates" statement below was a pretty bold and quick thing to say given the situation and the amount of things we actually know about this. So let's take some time to sort through this, piece by piece, and see if we can figure out what's going on and what might happen. If my reasoning is off from a legal basis, feel free to let me know. What do we know right now? As far as I can tell, we know two things: The MLBPA has filed a grievance with the commissioner's office regarding the time at which Pedro Alvarez signed his deal with the Pirates, contending that it was after midnight. In light of this grievance, Scott Boras has asked the Pirates to renegotiate the deal they've made with Alvarez, presumably for more money. The Pirates have placed Alvarez on the restricted list and contended that they fairly signed Alvarez, that this grievance jeopardizes the Eric Hosmer deal (suppose...

The MLBPA has contended that Pedro Alvarez agreed to his deal the midnight deadline and filed a grievance. The Pirates have requested for Alvarez to be placed on the restricted list , claiming that he refuses to report and Scott Boras is asking for more money. This is very, very, very bad news. I'm going to go invent swear words. UPDATE: These types of situations are not my forte (if they are, please post in the comments), but here's my gut take on this: I'm almost certain that Coonelly is doing the right thing here, that the MLBPA grievance was filed at the behest of Boras, and that Boras and Alvarez have no case at all. I'm also almost certain that we will never see Pedro Alvarez in a Pirates' uniform. ( edit: So this is probably an overreaction. Maybe. Keep on reading, please) UPDATE AGAIN: DK's post (linked above) clarifies: the union is filing the grievance based on when Alvarez signed, which has lead Boras to ask for a "re-negotiation" of the ter...

One more brutal, awful, terrible game against the Cubs. At least it's on a 12:35 when I have other things to do. Blech.

Dear Ian, I used to think you were awesome because you took every single bad thing that ever happened to you personally. You never made excuses when you sucked, but you didn't really suck very often because you were driven by every single perceived slight to prove people wrong. Then I opened up today's paper and read this : "They're not the best team in baseball for no reason. They adjust to you. I was throwing some good pitches, but they weren't swinging. But there's no excuse for giving away a three-run lead." I think I'm going to cry. I'm done sticking up for you, I'm done making excuses for you, I'm done making fun of you, I'm just done. When you get home, your stuff will be in a bag on the stoop. Get out. If you ever get yourself back together, call me. If not, have a nice life attempting to approximate Kip Wells' career arc. -Pat

Giving up 9 runs and losing? That sucks. A four inning start from Snell with four walks, two strikeouts and five earned runs? That sucks. Blowing a 3-0 and 8-7 lead? That sucks. Seven runs from Craig Hansen and Sean Burnett in an innng? That sucks. Seven RBIs fro Geovany Soto? That sucks. What I'm trying to say is that this loss was a major bummer. Really. I can't even think of how to qualify it beyond, "that sucks." I'm not even going to try.

Carlos Zambrano and Ian Snell. Snell looked dominant last time out, but it wasn't against the Cubs. The Cubs are clicking on so many cylinders that Fukudome killed us last night. Nyjer Morgan starts again in center. Doug Mientkiewicz is starting at third base. **SCREAMS** I told you I'd do it .

Pedro Alvarez and Scott Boras are playing hard to get . Who would've guessed? Nothing to worry about here. He's still a Pirate. Charlie's sick of Nyjer Morgan being treated and talked about like a prospect. Tecmo from PSAMP scores the Bob Smizik interview . They talk about blogs and the Rocco DeMaro incident, among other things. One thought for you this morning: I understand it's hard to watch our best players get traded away and the new guys struggle, but Andy LaRoche has played 18 games as a Pirate and made 67 plate appearances. Writing a player or a trade off as a failure after such a small sample size, especially when the trade was made looking towards the future, is just foolish. And if Doug Mientkiewicz starts getting at-bats at third base, I'm going to scream.

This whole game was kind of like a series of snowballs being pushed down a mountain. Jeff Karstens started off well enough by setting down three hitters in a row after Alfonso Soriano's lead-off single. In the second, he let in a run on a sac fly. In the third, he gave up four runs. At that point, he batted, then was removed from the game in the fourth. Jason Davis came in to prepare the second snowball for its run down the mountain. He put down the Cubs 1-2-3 in the fourth, then gave up a five-spot in the fifth and things were over from there. Not much else to say about this one. I'm not going to harp on Karstens getting progressively worse with each outing since his near-no-no. Plus, the Cubs are really freaking good. Jason Davis, however, has me a bit worried. He looked pretty good in his early outings from the pen and in the rotation, but his peripherals were pretty bad. Recently, he's just looked pretty bad. Time for Evan Meek and Ross Ohlendorf? Oh, and we got this gu...

The reeling Pirates continue the awesome scheduling draw of NL Central leaders as they play the Cubs at PNC tonight after their weekend sweep at the hand of the Brewers. Jeff Karstens and Ted Lilly take the mound tonight as the Pirates try to do things like "score runs" and "win."

Watching the team flounder around since the trade deadline has certainly been frustrating, even if you like the trades the team made. How do you quantify how frustrating things have been? Even John Russell is admitting it : "It gets frustrating, no doubt," he said. "But we as a staff can't get lost in the frustration. We knew what we were getting into." So did general manager Neal Huntington . "The general manager wants to win, I know that," Russell said. "And we're going to do it. It's going to be fun in Pittsburgh for a long time. We have to have that vision. And we have to stay with the process." John Russell saying, "It gets frustrating," is like a less stoic person saying, "I am so g$#@)%) m$%*$#$#^* pissed that I want to shoot something."

There are a lot of things about this game that are pretty nagging The third straight loss to the Brewers stings. Scoring 3 runs off of 16 hits, even if 15 were singles, is pretty lame. Not scoring with the bases loaded and nobody out in the top of the 12th just flat out sucks. Missing a chance to ding CC with his first NL loss is pretty lame. The ejections were certainly annoying. Still, as a science nerd I think that the thing that bugs me the most is this quote from Nate McLouth : Speaking of McLouth, who's been KO'd by a stomach virus, he had a pinch-hit single that tied the game in the ninth inning. Did that make him feel better? "No,'' McLouth said. "There are no antibiotics in my bat.'' Anyone who's taken a biology class knows that if there were antibiotics in Nate's bat, he'd still feel like crap because he has a virus, not a bacteria-based illness.

As I mentioned a couple of times here, I made the trek out to Durham last night to watch the Indianapolis Indians in the first game of their four-game set against the Bulls. I would've liked to see Ohlendorf pitch, but I think the rest of the series will be televised and hopefully I can catch him when he makes his start. Getting to see David Price pitch for the Rays was a nice consolation, even if he wasn't that impressive ( FanHouse post ). Anyways, I took a some pictures and have some anecdotes to share, so let's get to it. The aforementioned Price. As you can see, I watched him warm up and it's easy to see the potential, even though he didn't pitch all that well last night. Yep. That's Chris Duffy. Still doing what he does: slapping singles, running fast, and not doing much of anything else. This is not a very good shot of Cutch, but it does give you an idea of just how small he is. He's not just small, he's actually almost Ecksteinian. Still, he'...

CC Sabathia has dominated the National League since his arrival in July, but this is the Pirates' first look at him. They'll counter will Paul Maholm to hopefully shut down the Brewers' powerful bats enough to keep the Pirates in the game. I have a bunch of pictures from Durham last night that I'll hopefully have posted some time this afternoon.

Despite the game not being televised in Pittsburgh tonight, Tom Gorzelanny is in fact making his return to the Pirates rotation. It's hard to ask for him to have pitched better in AAA than he did with Indianapolis (33 strikouts, 4 walks, 28 hits, 2.06 ERA in 36 inning and 7 starts), so hopefully he's worked out whatever issues he had earlier in the year and can give us a strong finish. He goes against Jeff Suppan tonight and if you're dialing the radio in (or flipping on the TV if you're out of town) this is one of those funny 7 PM starts in the Central Time Zone. I'm heading to Durham tonight to watch Indianapolis as they roll into town against the Bulls. I had hoped to see Dan McCutchen, but he turned in a nice start last night against Charlotte. Instead, I guess I'll have to settle for David Price starting for the Bulls and get my first look at Andrew McCutchen in person.

It seems pretty rare to me for a giant flurry of roster moves to come this close to September 1st, but I guess circumstances dictate it. So far Doug Mientkiewicz has replaced Steve Pearce in his return from the bereavement list. I know the team is explaining it by saying they want Nyjer to play center with McLouth out, but I don't really care. Pearce should play over Michaels in the outfield every day of the week at this stage in their careers. It's a curious move because it really flies in the face of what Huntington's been doing the past couple weeks. Huntington clearly doesn't think highly of Pearce at all. Beyond that move, ¡Romulo! was sent down earlier today to make room for Matt Capps' return from the disabled list tonight, but someone else has to go down for Tom Gorzelanny to make his start tonight. My gut feeling is that the second demotee is going to be Jason Davis, but he hasn't really pitched terribly besides his last start and Huntington seems to l...

When Denny Bautista pitches for the Pirates and mows people down, have you ever watched him and wondered why the Tigers gave him away for next to nothing? He imploded last night and combined with Sean Burnett for a sixth run seventh inning that turned what was a close game into a blowout. On the other hand, Brandon Moss homered. That was nice.

I was right with my guess about Tom Gorzelanny yesterday, except that he's starting tomorrow night and not today. That pushes the rotation back a slot and ruins the Paul Maholm/CC Sabathia pitching matchup that was awesomely looming on Sunday. Doug Mientkiewicz is also off the bereavement list and back with the team, who sent Steve Pearce to AAA to make room. I get that the team isn't high on Pearce and that he's struggled a bit this year, but keeping Mientkiewicz, Rivas, and Michaels all on the roster when none of them have any reason to be playing ahead of the 25-year-old Pearce just kind of baffles me. None of those guys have a future with the Pirates. Pearce may not either, but he might , and that should be enough to get him at-bats at the end of this lost season. Anyways, tonight's game is Zach Duke and Dave Bush at 8:05. The Brewers have already won more games than the Pirates likely will for the rest of the year.

Today I'm happy to bring you the second part of my interview with WPGB's Rocco DeMaro (if you missed part 1, you can find it here ). Today we discuss the future of the Pirates, his show, and some of the players. Enjoy. WHYGAVS: What do you think of the last three weeks for Huntington, Coonelly, and company? At this point, opinion seems to be kind of split as to whether or not the trades got the ball rolling in the right direction and whether the $9 million spent on draft picks is a sign that the ownership has turned over a new leaf. RD: Well, in a general sense, I don't see how the new management group's first year on the job can be considered anything but an unqualified success. I mean, after the previous administration, Lindsay Lohan and that orange monster from the Bugs Bunny cartoons could have probably taken over and fared better than Kevin and Dave did. The bar was set...um...low. We won't know for a while whether or not Andy LaRoche, Brandon Moss, Bryan M...

It is my pleasure to bring to you today the first interview in WHYGAVS history that did not take place with my dad or in my head. Over the past two days I've had an e-mail conversation with the host of WPGB's Extra Innings show. The result is a long, funny, and honest conversation on a wide range of topics including the Pirates, his show, and yes, THAT article . It's incredibly long, so I've broken it into two parts, with the second running tomorrow morning. Enjoy. WHYGAVS: You're known as the radio host that likes to Rick-Roll your listeners, but you've recently had some pretty big scoops. You called Robbie Grossman's eventual signing back in July when most people thought it looked doubtful and had the news on Quinton Miller the night of August 14th, several hours before the news appeared in any of the papers. I know you can't name names, but can you tell us anything about that? Or just the general transition from pure talk show host to breaking some ...

Apparently the Blue Jays have acquired Jose Bautista from us for a player to be named later. I don't know a whole lot about it, but it seems like the organization must be pretty frustrated with him. He is a fairly useful utility player, despite his disappointing tenure as a Pirate, and we finally have the players in place to use him as such. Apparently, Neal Huntington disagrees. Updated to add idle speculation: With the day for call-ups approaching, is it possible this move was made to clear a roster spot? The answer is: I don't know. But it's something to think about. Via MLB Trade Rumors

With the Indianapolis Indians coming to Durham from this Saturday through next Tuesday, I went on their site earlier this morning to check the pitching schedule and try and figure out which game I want to see. Tom Gorzelanny was listed as tonight's starter, which made sense checking the rotation in that it's been four games (and four days) since Gorzo last started. I went back this afternoon and now Mike Thompson , who's worked mostly as a reliever lately, is listed as starting tonight against Charlotte. Is Zach Duke going to make his scheduled start tomorrow night? Suddenly, I'm not so sure I'd count on it.

You might not realize this, but the Astros are involved in a playoff push. While the Pirates and Reds have spent the last month trying to restock for the future, Ed Wade has added LaTroy Hawkins and Randy Wolf in his unlikely push to catch Milwaukee for the wild card, further depleting the shambles that were once known as a minor league system. Today, he's come up with another coup; he's claimed Jose Castillo off of waivers . "We just felt that at this point with (Ty) Wigginton playing a lot of outfield and (Kazuo) Matsui down — if we had a chance to get this guy he'd give us another experienced infielder — and it gives (Cecil Cooper) a lot more flexibility," general manager Ed Wade. [...] Wade remembered the raves Castillo would get from former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Chuck Tanner, who was scouting out of the Pittsburgh area when Castillo played for the Pirates from 2004 through 2007. "When you look at it, he's 27 and he could do more than just ser...

To summarize: Jason Davis was not very good. He was more Van Benschotian than anything with his 9-hit, 8-run, 3-walk in 3 and 2/3 innings line. This game was so boring that I switched away from it to watch Usain Bolt run the 200 meter dash in the Olympics despite the fact that I knew he won and set the world record and had already watched the video of it on the internet this afternoon . That's pretty bad. But hey, Ryan Doumit homered!

Looks like Brandon Moss is back in the lineup tonight, which is good news given that when he went down over the weekend, Greg Brown sounded ready to organize a funeral for him right then and there. Nyjer Morgan and Jason Michaels get the start over Steve Pearce tonight against Todd Wellemeyer, while Jason Davis is getting another start and presumably pitching for a spot in the rotation with Ross Ohelndorf and Tom Gorzelanny knocking down the door in Indianapolis. Davis has looked good in a couple starts so far, but the peripherals aren't fantastic and his track record is pretty bad. Still, given the way things have gone this year and the other guys in the rotation (Zach Duke), it'd be awfully hard to pull him given the results from his first two starts.

Seems like a pretty popular topic for debate all over the place recently is the slumping of Ryan Doumit and Nate McLouth. Since they're two of three best hitters left on the team (yes, I'm including Adam LaRoche), their slumping has a lot to do with the recent dearth of offense we've seen from the Pirates. They needed to step up in the absence of Bay and Nady and they really haven't. We all knew the schedule in August was going to be brutal and we've certainly faced a tough stretch of pitchers, but I think that the answer is a little easier. Ryan Doumit 2006: 235 total plate appearances, 21 total games caught Ryan Doumit 2007: 258 total plate appearances, 41 total games caught Ryan Doumit 2008: 354 total plate appearances, 81 total games caught Nate McLouth 2006: 297 plate appearances Nate McLouth 2007: 382 plate appearances Nate McLouth 2008: 549 plate appearances If you spend two seasons as a bit player, suddenly playing every day is something that's going to ...

What I wrote prior to the game: Snell's last start was pretty bad and I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that he needs the winter to find whatever it was that worked for him last year and isn't working this year. What Ian Snell did today: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K For one night at least, Snell was fantastically dominant again as he kept the Cardinals flailing all night by putting his fastball where he wanted it and ramping it up to 96 at times, according to the TV gun. Braden Looper held the Pirates in check for most of the game until the Pirates scored some ugly runs in the ninth on some bad baseball by the Cardinals, but Snell was definitely the story in this one tonight. I'll take any sign that I can get that Snell's dominant stretch between the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007 wasn't an illusion.

The Pirates role in to St. Louis for the typical 8 PM Central Time Zone start. Ian Snell and Braden Looper get the starts in a rematch of last year's home opener at PNC. Snell's last start was pretty bad and I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that he needs the winter to find whatever it was that worked for him last year and isn't working this year. Nyjer Morgan is up with the Pirates and starting in center and batting leadoff. Hooray awful memories!

Before the gamethread goes up tonight, I think we need one of those "Baseball players are people, too," posts. Nyjer Morgan is with the team in St. Louis tonight because Doug Mientkiewicz is in Pittsburgh with his recovering wife, who had a pacemaker installed in her heart yesterday. She's doing well, which is great news. Hopefully her recovery will be a quick one. The rest of the team is in St. Louis where they got the news of John Challis's death this afternoon. That's sobering news for anybody who listened to the inspirational teen talk in the past few months, but it's hit the Pirate clubhouse pretty hard. As you may remember, Challis visited with the team in June and met everyone in the clubhouse before one of the Yankees games. Adam LaRoche developed a pretty close connection with Challis, keeping in touch with him well after the visit. He had this to say : "It's depressing, man. It makes you realize how short life is and how unfair it can be. I...

The new poll question is "Now that the signing deadline has passed, what do you think of the draft?" Vote in the sidebar, talk in the comments, if you like. Neal Huntington's grades from the trade deadline are: A- 20% (114 votes) B- 56% (308) C- 12% (71) D- 3% (20) F- 6% (35) Even Jerry Crasnick knows that WHYGAVS readers like the trades.

While perusing DK's morning links today, I happened upon this post at Bucs Trade Winds making the argument that Pedro Alvarez was a PR move by the Pirates. It struck me that this is a pretty popular sentiment among the fans, specifically this part right here: Nutting is a shrewd businessman. He knows his product isn't going to sell in it's current form. He knows nearly every fan blames him and his family for the trials this franchise has endured since their ownership group took control in the 90's. A mere $6 million investment has put blinders on a majority of the fan base, for at least the short term. One small investment has restored his public image. Now, far be it from me to criticize anybody for being cynical or negative about the Pirates. At various points in the life of this blog I've been called "Captain Negative," "Way to cynical for a 23-year-old," "Eeyore," and a number of similar other things. A friend of mine at Duquesne u...

At one point this afternoon, I imagine that a lot of you were in the same boat that I was: sitting at work with the game on the radio wondering just how long it would be before this team ever scored a run again. After being shut out by Johan Santana yesterday, we were being shut down by a wildly erratic John Maine and the Mets' subpar bullpen this afternoon until Adam LaRoche sent a bomb to the top of the grandstand in right field and tied the game up at 2. At that point, the weird set of circumstantial happenings that often surrounds baseball games started to take over. Steve Pearce hasn't hit much of anything in Pittsburgh or Indianapolis this year, yet when faced with the second hugely clutch situation against the Mets for the second time on the second straight Monday afternoon, he delivered his second huge hit; this time it was a bases loaded single to give the Pirates a 3-2 lead. When Jack Wilson doubled in two more runs, it was apparent that Sean Burnett would pick up his...

For the second straight Monday the Pirates and Mets are playing a 12:35 game, with this one at PNC. Paul Maholm will attempt to engage John Maine in a pitcher's duel in order for the Pirates to have a chance and the Pirates offense will attempt to score runs in order to prevent Paul Maholm from going insane. Steve Pearce and Jason Michaels get the starts at the corner outfield slots today with Moss down with his ankle injury, but DK thinks he'll be back by the weekend and not need the DL, which is good news.

I was going to write up a post for the people still unconvinced by Huntington's first year about why I like what he's done, but Wilbur Miller's already done the job nicely at Only Bucs. WHYGAVS reader and former Air Force DJ Samy Fineman is in the finals for MLB.com's "Rookie Reporter" contest. The contest starts in a week and you can vote for him here . I've been keeping an eye on all the players we traded for the in the past couple weeks, but I'm particularly interested in Jose Tabata because he's certainly the wild card of the eight. He's hitting .359/.390/.513 in Altoona so far. It's only nine games, of course, but it's certainly encouraging given all of the negative things we heard about him at the time of the trade.

The match-up of one of the better pitchers in the last ten years against a young team full of players trying to establish themselves in the Major Leageus is really a bad recipe. Unsurprisingly, Johan Santana tossed a three-hitter at the Pirates today with relative ease and only the LaRoche brothers standing in the way of a no-no for him at PNC Park today. Jeff Karstens acquitted himself decently but unspectacularly in a start that I think will resemble his Pirate career much more than the first two starts he made in black and gold. Games (and actually, series) like these are necessary lumps that the Pirates are going to be taking for the rest of this year and probably next year as the rebuilding process continues. There was one other side plot to this game that I thought was interesting. If you still needed evidence that the new management is not high on Steve Pearce, today's game should've been plenty to make that clear. With the dominant lefty Santana on the mound, Russell ch...

In his fourth start for the Pirates, after starting against Edinson Volquez and Randy Johnson, Jeff Karstens gets another fun draw in the form of Johan Santana and the New York Mets. Do not let Santana's average-looking record and the wails of the pundits fool you, he's been very good this year and the Mets simply aren't scoring runs for him while their bullpen has blown an obscene amount of leads for him (think Kip Wells in 2003 before his implosion). He's not the same pitcher that won the two Cy Young Awards with the Twins, but he's still one of the best pitchers in the National League. Anyways, this one's certainly worth paying attention to, if only to watch Santana and to see how Jeff Karstens fairs while teams continue to adjust to him in the National League.

Now that the draft deadline has passed and Pedro Alvarez is officially inked, there comes the realization that there's still forty games left to play this year. Forty? Geez, that seems like a lot. Tonight it's Pedro Martinez against Zach Duke with Nate leading off, back to back LaRoches, and Steve Pearce in the outfield.

You could have probably guessed this from the tone of the posting last night, but I'm pretty excited by the events of the last week or so. There's a number of reasons why and I think that the reasons to be excited run a lot deeper than most people realize, so I'm going to try and lay them out here in a coherent and non-giddy fashion. Wish me luck. Pedro Alvarez is a very impressive young talent. By now you've probably seen the YouTube highlight reel and it's impressive. The kid has a left-handed power swing that I can only describe as "textbook." His stock was hurt a bit by his hand injury, but by all accounts it shouldn't be a long-term issue. He strikes me as the kind of talent that's not available in the draft every year and the kind of talent that the Pirates haven't had in their minor league system in years. Taken entirely on his own, the fact that Pedro Alvarez is a Pirate is something that's completely worth being excited about. Be...

This swing is now property of the Pittsburgh Pirates (sent by Emma):

Dejan says that there's no news to report and that none of Boras's clients have done anything yet, which is how Boras operates. Rocco DeMaro on 104.7 says a deal is done and he supposedly had the Grossman and Miller news before anyone else. I'll be keeping an eye on it and posting updates as they come in. And no, I'm still not worried that he's not going to sign. 11:03- Dejan says there's absolutely not a deal yet . But he uses the word "yet." 11:24- I've been almost positive from the start that Alvarez is going to sign and I still feel that way, but is this waiting killing anyone else? 11:46- Important to note that the midnight deadline is going to be like the trade deadline. If the deal happens close to midnight, we're going to be the last people to know. There's no news until someone can either confirm that he did or didn't sign. 12:07- This is getting pretty intense. Still no word, if you're new to the game. 12:15- With Dejan...

It's a funny dichotomy set up tonight by the dual dramas of the impending signing deadline and Collective Soul (who apparently still exists). There will be 35,000+ people in PNC Park tonight and there's a good chance that while they may watch the game and cheer for the Pirates, 20,000 of them have no idea that the most important event in the Pirate universe will not be taking place on the field, but rather in the offices as Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly negotiate with Scott Boras and Pedro Alvarez. On the field, taking the back seat to both Collective Soul (still can't believe I'm typing that) and Pedro Alvarez will be Jason Davis in his second and maybe one of his last starts for the Bucs, while Mike Pelfrey toes the rubber for the Mets. If I'm around, I'll post updates on the Alvarez situation as they happen. I probably won't be around all night, though, and if that looks like the case then head to the PBC blog as DK will be on the case until the clo...

I'm actually going to be pretty busy at work today, but if/when people sign this afternoon, I'll post the links up to the news and try to give some quick analysis as fast as I can. I doubt the big news will be coming until some time late this evening , but I think that's pretty hard to gauge given how little we all know about the negotiations to this point. Drew Gagnon - Looks like the high upside pitching prospect we took in the tenth round is going to school, according to the Trib . There's a quote from Huntington there that makes it seem pretty definitive that he's going to attend Long Beach State and not sign with the Pirates. It's disappointing, but the nature of the baseball draft is that not everyone can be signed. Hat-tip to anon in the comments for passing this along last night. 3:06 PM - DK's following along at his blog . Things sound ugly on the Scheppers' front, which I'm OK with since Dejan mentions shoulder surgery and makes it sound li...

Jeff Passan has an interesting article up over at Yahoo! about the relationship between Frank Coonelly and Scott Boras and how he thinks Coonelly's old job as the slotting system watchdog is affecting the Pedro Alvarez situation. If you haven't taken the time to read it yet, you should probably head over there and do so before you read the rest of this post. Coonelly's a hard guy to get a read on, and this article doesn't change that. He didn't talk to Passan at all for it, so everything that's said about him is either in someone else's words or strongly implied by Passan. I've joked that Coonelly's ship is run tighter than a papal conclave, but I'm no longer certain that I'm joking when I say that. If the man doesn't want us to know something, we won't know it. That being said, there's one question that Passan asks early in the article that is very easily answered: What’s more important: The sanctity of something he helped build...

Sometimes, it's exceptionally obvious that two terrible baseball teams are battling things out on the diamond. I think tonight was one of those nights. Johnny Cueto didn't strike me as all that impressive tonight, but he had our hitters lunging at sliders that were way out of the zone all night long and K'd seven flailing Pirates in five innings. Ian Snell, meanwhile, looked just about as bad as he has since coming off of the DL, but the Reds only managed 2 runs out of the 11 guys he put on base in his six innings. It was really a pretty ugly game for such a low-scoring affair. The first night of the great LaRoche experiment was pretty ugly, as well. With the bases loaded and no outs in a 2-1 game in the seventh, Adam gave PNC park one of his typical April strikeouts against Bill Bray, then Andy hit into a double play against Gary Majewski. I seriously think I heard Gene Collier cackle all the way down here in Chapel Hill.

If Ian Snell's planning on getting back on track at all before the season ends, tonight against the Reds would be a good time to start it. We've documented the Reds' struggles already, but there's a nice chance tonight as the Pirates have had some luck against Reds' starter Johnny Cueto this year and they're getting Adam LaRoche back from the disabled list to hopefully provide a spark. That means that our modern Big Poison/Little Poison will be in effect tonight and might even bat back-to-back, depending on what JR wants to do with the lineup. There'll be a full crowd there tonight, but it's going to be there for REO Speedwagon and not the Pirates. That's right, REO Speedwagon apparently still exists. Where's Donny Iris?

You may have seen the news today that the Pirates were not planning on offering Pedro Alvarez a major league contract. With the way the signings were going, it looked like they could probably ink Pedro for a $6-$7 million bonus sometime tomorrow . Yeah, that's not happening. The fifth overall pick, college catcher Buster Posey, signed on the dotted line with the Giants today for a big league deal and a $7.5 million contract. Obviously I don't know the particulars, but I'd be shocked if Boras and Alvarez even consider signing for anything less than what Posey signed for. TANGENTIAL UPDATE: Grossman signs . This is awesome news. More: You can read more about him here , but Baseball America had him as a top 50 prospect this year and he's a very high ceiling guy for a sixth round pick because he dropped pretty sharply for signability reasons. In the first link, DK speculates that he's going to cost somewhere close to a million dollars to sign, which tells you just how ...

Some surprising news after the game last night; Jose Bautista is going to be demoted to AAA to make room for Adam LaRoche to come off of the disabled list. There are several points in the PG's story about this that make you stop and pause for a second. One is the part where Bautista opines that he hasn't gotten a fair chance to prove he can play. Another is here Neal Huntington doesn't say that Bautista is definitely getting a September call-up. As the year wears on, it gets easier and easier to tell the players that the previous administration was fond of that he doesn't have the time of day for. The part of the story that made me pause the most? Jose Bautista's agent is named Bean Stringfellow. Seriously. And while we're on the news kick: Justin Wilson signed before the game last night. Of all of our high picks, he seems like the least impressive to me. Still, he's the 29th pick to sign with two days left until the deadline. Signing 30+ guys from a deep ...

When Paul Maholm gave up a home run to Corey Patterson in the third inning, I was a bit worried that we were in for some kind of horrifically weird night. Instead, tonight's game was pretty much what was expected. Maholm cruised through eight easy innings, allowing only Patterson's homer and one to Jay Bruce (who's got "future Pirate-killer written all over him). Josh Fogg mostly worked quickly and got outs except in the fourth, when the Pirates hung a four-spot up on him with a homer from Jason Michaels (can we please start calling him HBK and stop calling him J-Mike? Please?) and a two-run double from Ryan Doumit (which hit a fan leaning over the railing in front of the seats that I will always call "my seats" no matter where I live). Brandon Moss added a long home run to center field in the eighth to seal up a pretty painless and quck Pirate win. On a bit of a random tangent, as Moss was at the plate I was closing up a particularly bizarre Wikipedia binge...

Looks like Adam LaRoche is going to spend one more day in Hickory before rejoining the team. Since he's been smoking the ball on his rehab assignment, I wonder if the Pirates aren't taking an extra day to trade and trade someone (probably Obi-Wan) to make the roster room for LaRoche. I guess he's only been in Hickory for two games, but it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with him. As for the actual game tonight, Josh Fogg is facing off against Paul Maholm. He's been doing his Josh Fogg thing much more poorly this year than in the past, with an ERA of almost 8.00 in almost 60 innings. He's spent some time hurt, though, so I suppose that's affected him a bit. He's been alternating good and bad starts for about three weeks and he's coming off of a good one, but he's also been pretty dominant at home this year and the Reds aren't mounting much of a lineup against him. If Fogg hits a groove, this might be a quick game.

Today, Charlie and I tackle the eight players acquired at the trade deadline by the Pirates. We're not concerned with whether or not the trades were good trades, because that's been discussed ad nauseum to this point. Instead, we're focusing on the eight new players that the Pirates acquired and what we're expecting from them down the road. Check out the full conversation at Bucs Dugout and if you're looking for the first crossover, check the label below.

The Dodgers are having Joe Beimel Bobblehead Night tonight. That is not a typo. Joe Beimel, the awful lefty that pitched for the Pirates from 2001-2003. Joe Beimel, the only Duquesne Duke to play in in the major leagues since 1970. And not only does he have a bobblehead night, but there's a tribute video made of him on YouTube called, "The Legend of Joe Beimel." I'm not even close to kidding. I'm actually kind of speechless. Just see for yourself: Via Big League Stew