Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

From late in 2005, the year I started this blog, through the end of 2007 all I ever really wanted was for the Pirates to throw up their hands, say, "This team sucks and our minor league system is really bad. The only way we're ever going to be relevant again is by tearing apart the team, giving up on a couple of years, and rebuilding this thing from the ground up." In 2008, the Pirates actually did that. Given that tearing apart the team and throwing up the white flag on two months of a season is what I've been hoping they'd do, it's hard to be distressed about the way 2008 ended. My dad is fond of comparing buildig a baseball team to solving a Rubik's Cube. You don't solve one side at a time, you have to work on each of the faces simultaneously. Sometimes you have a face solved and have to break it up in order to keep things moving in the right direction. Do I know Huntington is going to turn the Pirates around after a year on the job? No. He's st...

Well, that didn't take long. The Pirates canned pitching coach Jeff Andrews this morning after his first year on the job. The pitching staff was undeniably awful this year, but I'm not sure Andrews deserves all the blame. The team will likely cite Gorzelanny and Snell's poor seasons as the reason they're firing Andrews, but the truth is that if those two pitched the way they did in 2007, the pitching staff would've looked a lot like it did in 2007, and that's still not very good at all. That's not Andrews' fault, though. That's because the pitchers here aren't very good. UPDATE: Lou Frazier was also fired. Can I get a "Where Have You Gone, T-Bone Shelby?" Hopefully Frazier takes Windmill Beasley out with him. I mean, if I was firing a base coach, that's who I would've canned.

Let's starting the off-season off with a poll. How did the Pirates fare this year in relation to your pre-season expectations? Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but if you remember my piece in The Hardball Times Season Preview, I wrote this back in December (it was published in March): Barring a late fire sale before the season, the 2008 Pirates will be a lot like the 2007 Pirates: flashes of potential and some exciting baseball eventually outweighed by their lack of talent and a final result of 67-72 wins. So, I'm picking the third result. Keep your preseason expectations in mind, not what you expected in early June or anything like that.

And, it's over. The Pirates managed to go out in 2008 just the way they came in, with a win. That they only sandwiched 65 other wins in the intervening 160 is the problem here. This last win came with a mammoth home run by Adam LaRoche that the Padre's announcers said may have been the first ball to reach the upper deck in Petco's right field. Steve Pearce added a home run behind him to give him three in the final week of the season. I've been advocating sample size vigiliance with Andy LaRoche, so I won't brag about Pearce's homers. Instead, just remind how badly lost Pearce looked at times during the year and contrast that with how he looked in the last week and remember that young players do eventually tend to stop being overwhelmed. At least we got to close the season with a fun little scorer's nuance. Ross Ohlendorf struggled with his control again and couldn't make it through five innings, which means he didn't qualify for the win. At that poin...

I'm putting this game thread up early because there are a bunch of ex-Buccos involved in the pennant race today. Oliver Perez pitches against the Marlins today as the Mets need to win to ensure at least a tie-breaker against the Brewers tomorrow. Brian Bullington pitches for the Indians against the White Sox today as the White Sox need to win to ensure that they play their make-up game on Monday against the Tigers, with a win there causing a tie-breaker against the Twins on Tuesday (got that?). Meanwhile Jason Kendall, Dale Sveum, and Salomon Torres need a win against the Cubs for the same reason Ollie and the Mets need one over the Marlins. If the Twins win against the Royals today, the White Sox need to win to get that makeup tomorrow. If they lose, the White Sox can win today and tomorrow without ever having to play the team that swept them earlier this week. So it's going to be a great day for baseball. Also, the Pirates and Padres wrap up their seasons at 4 with Ross Ohlen...

Jimmy Barthmaier and Chris Young tonight at 10. The Pirates need to win out to match last year's win total. The Padres need to win a game to avoid 100 losses. The drama level here is not nearly as high as in the Brewers or Mets games from this afternoon, but I guess we'll settle for it. Except that you can't actually watch the game unless you're out of town.

Bucs win! Bucs win! Snell has come around a lot in the past month or so. Mildly encouraging. I know reading things like this can be terrifying because it paints the picture of Morgan as a starting corner outfielder, which is a nightmare of Tim Burton-esque proportions. After being promoted from Class AAA Indianapolis Aug. 19, Morgan batted .347 -- 41 for 118 -- with 11 doubles and 20 runs. He reached base safely in 25 of 27 starts. Because of that, he is being considered for starting duty next year. "He did some really good things," manager John Russell said. "He was exciting. He really added a dimension to our offense. His missing three games is not going to affect our evaluation." Consider, though, that Michael Bourn was the key piece for the Phillies in the Brade Lidge trade. And that it's John Russell making these statements, not the front office. And what I'm saying is that I won't be surprised to see Morgan somewhere other than Pittsburgh ne...

The Pirates close the season out against a bad Padres team in San Diego, meaning they're playing late at night, on the weekend, not on TV in Pittsburgh, against things like presidential debates and college football. Tonight Ian Snell and Josh Geer go at it in relative anonymity.

There is one comparison that's been made all over the place this week, starting in the Q&A and slowly growing like an ugly monster, that might actually drive me insane. I understand that Andy LaRoche has been disappointing and terrible and all other such things and if you choose to take the small sample size of this year at face value and ignore his minor league numbers, that's your prerogative. But please, please, please stop comparing him to Chad Hermansen. Hermansen was a guy with a lot of power that struck out a ton in the minors and showed almost no on-base skill in the upper level of the minors. It didn't take a genius to see that his power numbers might not translate to the big leagues because of this, and they didn't. Just because Cam Bonifay and Peter Gammons loved Hermansen for his minor league power doesn't mean he was ever nearly the prospect they thought he was. I'll admit that hindsight's 20/20 here. I was excited about Hermansen, but in my...

When you watch enough baseball, things slow during the game. I don't mean that the games get longer, I mean that you recognize little things that would be imperceptible to other people. Take, for example, the pitch thrown by Jesse Chavez to Ryan Braun that Braun walloped for a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the tenth. As the ball left Chavez's hand and travelled to the plate, I could see the pitch was a fastball and immediately knew that Braun would crush the ball and end the game. I don't even know if it's actually POSSIBLE to diagnose a pitch like that, but that's what I'm fairly certain happened in the tenth tonight. Of course, anyone who thought that Chavez was getting out of that inning belongs at Arkham, so maybe that line of thinking influenced me. Anyways, anecdotal prognostications aside, tonight was a really interesting game. In fact, I think it's fair to say that it was about as interesting as Pirate games get in late August. Yovani Gallardo...

The Pirates' personal House of Horrors this year has changed from the usually venues of Wrigley Field or PNC Park whenever the Cardinals are in town and shifted to Miller Park, where they haven't won. Thankfully, tonight is our last game there this year. Unfortunately, there's only three other games left in the season. Yovani Gallardo is going to be making a short start tonight on a strict pitch limit just about a week shy of the five month anniversary of when he blew his kneee out. The Brewers have called on him because everyone else in their rotation either sucks or is hurt and they can't pitch CC every night, though Dale Sveum would undoubtedly be trying to if he could. He'll be facing Zach Duke who ... ah, who cares? The Office is on tonight.

Yesterday, Pedro Alvarez finally put his signature on a contract that made him an official member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He seems to have an idea that there are some people in Pittsburgh upset at him for this, and he had this to say: "I'm so happy this day has come," Alvarez said in a conference call with reporters from PNC Park last night. "I just want to play baseball." [...] "I just want the fans of Pittsburgh to judge me as the professional player that I am now," Alvarez replied to a question on that subject. "I will work my hardest to be the best player I can be, to be a leader on and off the field in the community. It's a big day for me and my family. When I was a little kid, we dreamed of this. And the fact that it's a reality now ... all I can say is, starting today, I will be the best player I can be." If you have a chance, I'd recommend reading all of Dejan's article. And if you're one of the people mad at hi...

On one hand last night, there was CC Sabathia. He's been known to wear down in the past (see: 2007 ALCS) and was pitching on short rest for the second time in as many starts last night. He looked tired in his two starts before last night. And he destroyed the Pirates with 11 strikeouts in seven innings. On the other hand is Paul Maholm, who also looked tired in his last start and has clearly started to lose his control on the strikezone. And yet, he was sent out to the mound to throw 95 pitches yesterday, resulting in six walks for the second start in a row and four runs on only two hits. Maybe he would've looked better if he got to pitch against the Pirates.

That thing I said about CC Sabathia starting on short rest yesterday was wrong, but only because I misread the article. He's actually on short rest tonight against Paul Maholm. The Brewers need to keep winning to keep pace with the Mets at this point, so they must be happy to see a lineup that has Jason Michaels batting cleanup.

Pedro Alvarez is in Pittsburgh today , presumably to meet with the Pirates and sign his contract. The grievance still needs to be resolved, but testimony's been called off and it all seems to be a matter of procedure. Yesterday, Dejan made a point that I think is worth keeping in mind: All I will share on this topic is this, and you are free to do with it as you will: There never once has been a peep, not from either side, that the player did not want to join the Pirates. There never has been anyone who suggested that the dispute was specific to the team or its poor standing or the city, as opposed to the nature of what happened with the deadline, the agreement and all that. The past is the past. Let's move on.

Baseball is a funny sport. I really want the Brewers to make the playoffs because I like Dale Sveum and Jason Kendall and CC Sabathia and want to see the Mets fall apart again, especially with their ludicrous extension of Omar Minaya today. On the other hand, Prince Fielder is a fat, annoying turd and seeing him hit a walk-off home run tonight was particularly painful, even if it was incredibly inevitable. I realize that "incredibly inevitable" seems like a strange choice of words, but as soon as Ryan Braun singled up the middle, I knew how this game was ending. At least there were highlights from this game tonight. Jeff Karstens put together his first nice start in a while, going six innings and striking out six, while holding the Brewers to three runs. Seeing him pitch well against a team in a must-win situation is good to see. Nyjer Morgan also dinked out four hits in his best Tike Redman impression and Steve Pearce hit what could've been a game-winning two-run homer i...

We've got six games left in this long season, and they're coming in the next six days. Tonight we kick off a three-gamer in Milwaukee, as Dale Sveum's boys desperately kick and claw to try and stay in the the playoff hunt. They're only a game behind the Mets at the moment, but it feels like a million after the collapse that they've executed in the past few weeks. CC Sabathia's starting tonight on short rest (again) for the Brewers while the Pirates will be without the services of Bone Crusher Moss, who's done for the season with a knee problem that requires surgery . It sounds pretty minor, but it's enough to keep the Pirates from waiting a week.

The newest WHYGAVS/Bucs Dugout crossover is up over at Charlie's blog. We discuss what we'd do with the current starting lineup. We'll be tackling pitchers next and that will be posted here. Update on the Pedro situation: MLB and the MLBPA are working on getting the grievance dropped before the next hearing, which is today. We should hear something about this fairly soon. Jason Kendall defends Dale Sveum . Freakshow! **tear**

I don't know how many of you are familiar with someecards.com , but it's been one of my favorite websites for a while now. For those of you who don't know, it's a site that has very blunt, hilarious e-cards that are for sending to friends or just browsing for your amusement (for example, this one is on queue for any of my friends who happen to be expecting a child). Anyways, they've recently unveiled a "Create Your Own Card" feature, and I've intercepted some cards being passed around the Pirate clubhouse. And by that, I mean I totally made them up. And all of the e-mail addresses are made up, too. From: mr_eXXXitement -at- yahoo -dot- com To: beezer -at- gmail -dot- com From: buster -dot- laroche -at- gmail -dot- com To: deer_fear_me -at- hotmail -dot- com From: dontcallmeclubby -at- msn -dot- com To: Jack_Of_Gloves -at- aol -dot- com From: beezer -at- gmail -dot- com To: List From: deer_fear_me -at- hotmail -dot- com To: Long -dot- Don -at- gmail -d...

I see a lot of people wondering if Pedro new Alvarez's contract is legal and if it will "stick." I did some thinking about this last night, and I think it's a pretty frivolous worry for a few reasons. First of all, Pedro became a member of the Pirates' organization as soon as he signed that contract on August 15/16th and the Commissioner's Office approved of it. A grievance was filed about the legitimacy of that contract, but the grievance hasn't been resolved yet, so Pedro's original deal still counts. That gives him the right to renegotiate just like anyone else, which is what he and the Pirates did last night. The leaves the question of the grievance, but I think the grievance is probably going to be dropped at this point. The grievance was filed over the legitimacy of the extension of the deadline, but by having the contract renegotiated well after the deadline, the deadline itself is rendered kind of impotent and the point of contention over the e...

Holy crap. On Sunday nights between about 10 PM and 2 AM, I get tied up in making my weekly rewinds for FanHouse and I don't venture to many websites beyond Getty Images or Creative Commons, unless I'm bouncing out to write up an incredibly overdue recap of the Sunday afternoon Pirate game. That means that I missed the Post-Gazette refreshing it's stories at midnight. Which means I missed this : In a stunning reversal of a summer-long drama, the Pirates and top draft pick Pedro Alvarez last night agreed to terms on a revised four-year, major league contract worth a guaranteed $6,355,000, according to three sources intimately familiar with the talks. Dejan has many more details in the article, so I'd recommend that you check that out. Without knowing who initiated these talks and who got this deal done, I'd say that this is great news for the Pirates that is going to make other teams very, very unhappy. The Pittsburgh Pirates' #1 concern has to be the Pittsburgh ...

Perhaps the best microcosm for this season can be found in the gamethreads here for the first and last home games of the 2008 season. For the home opener, I took the time to write up three paragraphs and find a rockin' Donny Iris YouTube video to embed. There were somewhere between 100 and 200 comments, and we angrily discussed the Brian Bixler/Jose Bautista failed "squeeze" play ad nauseum for like a week. Today, I tossed up two sentences ten minutes after the game started and there were 15 comments, all of which came after the game ended and most of which discuss the Steelers. This is despite the fact that the traffic here for September will probably be the same or higher than it was in April. That's not an indictment of you or me or anyone except the Pirates. Today they played another boring game that was more or less decided early on when Nate "No Errors" McLouth (I know that's a low blow, but I'm sticking with it to prove a point about how stu...

The real question this year is not whether he players will be around to meet the fans after the game, but whether the fans will be around to meet the players with the Eagles/Steelers game kicking off at four. Ross Ohlendorf and Roy Oswalt are on the mound in what is possibly Jack Wilson's last game as a Pirate in Pittsburgh.

Jimmy Barthmaier makes his second big league start tonight against Brian Moehler in the next to last home game of the season. Barthmaier got ripped in his only other start in Pittsburgh this year, which coincided with WHYGAVS Night back in June and as a result, my memory of his start is a bit hazy. I know people lumped him in with Van Benschoten and Taubenheim and Bullington and all of the other AAA All-Stars we had in Indy that could never break through with the Pirates, but that's not being entirely fair to Barthmaier. He's only 24 and he had a fairly nice breakthrough season with Indy this year, striking out 71 in 79 innings with a decent ERA (3.53) and a nice WHIP (1.22). He's certainly not going to set the world on fire, but he is worth keeping an eye on because he's young enough with the right peripherals to not write off yet. Sadly, that seems like the nicest thing I can say about any Pirate pitching prospect.

We lost last night, but the game was closer than the final indicates. Ian Snell pitched fairly well, but Denny Bautista melted down terribly in the eighth for the final 5-1 margin. Adam LaRoche homered for our only run. Actually, there's nothing else going on in Pirate-land today. I guess there's the Ryder Cup and college football, but that hardly involves the Pirates unless you're an East Carolina fan. That's what happens when you lose a lot.

The Pirates have their final home series against the Astros this weekend. Since they had to endure a hurricane and got a massive (insert crude sexual act here) from Bud Selig, I no longer feel nearly as hostile towards them as I did last time we played. This is probably also because they've dropped from the playoff race with five straight losses. Anyways, the bane of my existence that's known as Ian Snell takes the mound tonight against Randy Wolf at 7:05. That's a maddening pitching match-up if I've ever seen one. I'd love for us to WIN ONE FREAKING GAME against the Astros in this series.

Adam LaRoche is now hitting .271/.343/.491. He's got more homers this year in 522 plate appearances than he did in 632 last year. That's not an exceptional line for a first baseman, but it is an acceptable one and he'll be worth the $7 million or whatever that he's paid in arbitration. I'd guess that he's a good candidate to hold on to over the winter and hope that he hits in April to make him a really good sell high guy in June and July when he catches fire. But more to the point is this: hitting is hitting, whether it comes all in a bunch in the second half or spread out evenly over the year. So wouldn't you rather have a guy that was utterly predictable in his slumps and hot streaks then someone that hit well in a randomly fluctuating pattern? We KNOW LaRoche won't hit in April, so we should bat him lower in the order then. As the weather heats up, we KNOW we can move him up in the lineup because he's going to hit better. In some ways, isn't t...

I don't know if I've ever seen anything sadder than Nyjer Morgan attempting to barrel over Russel Martin (play the video) and score the winning run on a weird little misplay with Tony Beasley waving him home for no reason and Martin brickwalling Morgan, only to have Adam LaRoche hit a fly out in the next at-bat that could've won the game easily. If I could build a statue to remember this season by, it would probably be an animated memorial to this very play. It had ill-advised baserunning, a failure to score runs, and it ended up costing us the game. There were definitely other things that happened in this game (JR leaving Maholm out on the mound in a seventh inning where he clearly didn't have it, risking health and a Manny Ramirez grand slam that Maholm avoided, Craig Hansen losing the strike zone again and wiping out the progress he'd made, etc.), but really, it's only that play that's going to stand out for me. Hey, at least something memorable happene...

I'm not sure if it makes me happy or sad that today is the last time this season that I can pull up my RSS reader right before lunch and realize that there's about to be a Pirate game that I can put on my computer and have infuriate me in lab all afternoon. I am actually sad that this particular game is a day game because I'd love to see Clayton Kershaw pitch and I always like watching Paul Maholm. Brandon Moss gets the day off against the lefty and he's been slumping pretty badly, so that seems fair. That means that the LaRoche/LaRoche combination, which drove in seven of our 15 runs last night, returns to the lineup. And Nyjer Morgan and Jason Michaels are manning the corners tonight. If you combine their slugging percentages, they're at .745. That's almost a good OPS.

There's a reason that games like these are called "laughers." Consider the eight inning tonight; the Pirates rallied for eight runs will all of them coming with two outs. Ryan Doumit hits a right-handed two run homer off to give the Pirates a 9-7 lead. Slight grin. Andy LaRoche singles in two runs, giving the Pirates an 11-7 lead. Grin grows to borderline goofy proporitions. Doug Mientkiewicz triples thanks to a misplayed ball in right by Andre Ethier. 12-7. Chortle. Jason Michaels singles in Mientkiewicz. 13-7. Another snicker. Freddy Sanchez grounds out to first, only to have James Loney screw up the throw while Michaels and Nyjer Morgan race around the bases to score and make the game 15-7. Actual honest to goodness laughter at the ridiculousness of the inning, the number on the scoreboard, and the path of the season in general. If nothing else, at least tonight's game reaffirmed my sneaking suspicion that the team we put on the field next year will not be the wor...

After sweeping the Cards, we're back to where we were before that series with the losing and such. Zach Duke faces Chad Billingsly tonight in a pitcher's match-up that is nowhere near favorable for the Pirates. Besides his high walk total, Billingsley's been the Dodger's best starter this year. With a magic number of eight and an opponent that was so listless last night that one of their players ripped in to the other 24 after the game, I don't expect the Dodgers to be letting the foot off of the pedal tonight.

You know what's the perfect remedy for awful baseball-induced blues? Next year's schedule ! Actually, I don't see the full schedule anywhere, which means that you can't get out your pencil and try to plot the road to 121 just quite yet. There's an important point in DK's morning links post today in which he responds to Wilbur Miller's questions about Jose Tabata needing to be put on the 40-man roster this winter to be protected from the Rule 5. It's all very confusing, but the key point remains that Tabata is 19 years old and not older. Charlie notes some "Voice of Fate" stuff coming from Pirates.com . It's not that it's new, it's just that it's really, really depressing.

I feel like almost the exact same recap from last night's game applies to this one. All of the same themes are there. Hey! At least we scored! This guy that used to pitch for the Yankees did not pitch so well for us. Losing is no fun The Pirates lose a lot Actually, we've got a subplot tonight. Since his near perfecto, Karstens has a 7.11 ERA, a 1.54 WHIP, and only nine strikeouts (against six walks) in his 25 1/3 innings. That's awful. Back to the plot. Opponents have a .345 OBP and a .552(!) SLG against him in that span. That's really awful. He's chalked up a loss in each of his last six starts and he's earned them.

If the Pirates can face the world after giving up a home run to Juan Pierre last night Jeff Karstens will finally make his dental-work delayed start against Derek Lowe tonight. Nyjer gets the start in left while Andy will be the only LaRoche in the lineup thanks to Adam's poor career numbers against Lowe. The Dodgers magic number is nine, so at least we know they won't clinch at PNC.

With the Pirates skidding around lately (the sweep of the Cardinals notwithstanding), there's been a lot of talk that the moves made at the trade deadline were financially based more than anything. I am indeed mostly referring to a column from he-who-shall-not-be-named , but this is an important issue to the team and the future of the franchise and it's something that I think a lot of people misunderstand, so I'm going to take some time to talk about it here. The most important thing here to understand is that it's not money that's going to make the Pirates good. Bob Nutting has OK'd a slight raise in payroll for 2009 and that's a good thing, but expecting signings that are going to turn the team into contenders is expecting too much. Consider the following numbers from the Brewers during Doug Melvin's run as general manager (exact payroll figures can be found here , exact win totals are from Baseball Reference with me estimating them at 87 wins for thi...

I do believe that my feelings on this game can be summed up in the following four words: "At least we scored." I mean, you can imagine nightmare scenarios, but nothing preps you for giving up a home run to Juan Pierre. NOTHING. Thank you Marino Salas, for doing something that was so improbably bad that even I wasn't cynical enough to forsee it. On the flip side, Ross Ohlendorf continues to look really bad as a starter for the Pirates. This isn't exactly surprising or disappointing, though I did allow myself a tiny window of hope after he pitched well in Indianapolis. He's been getting hit HARD though, in his few starts here and his fastball was tracked as being a little down tonight from where it was earlier. I guess if we've got nothing else, we've got plenty of space in the rotation to give him a shot to prove himself, but I'm less confident about that than I was a couple weeks ago. And so it goes with the Pirates, I suppose.

Before we launch into tonight's gamethread, there is some interesting ex-Pirate news tonight: ex-Freak Show utility man extraordinaire, who actually played with the Pirates again in 1999 after earning a World Series ring with the Yankees as a bullpen catcher, is the interim manager for the Brewers. The wake of Milwaukee's collapse has claimed Ned Yost's job and it's up to Sveum, who's as good a guy as you can run into in baseball from what I understand, to finish this season one game better than the Phillies and get the Brewers into the playoffs. Good luck to him. In Pittsburgh tonight, the Pirates play the Dodgers and hope to keep their nice little run against decent teams going. The Dodgers are looking like certain NL Central winners and if they're going to collapse it has to happen now. I'd sure like the Pirates to have a hand in that because I think Ned Colletti is a moron, I'm tired of Manny Ramirez's schtick, and I think the Diamondbacks are a ...

There's been a lot of talk in a lot of places lately about Andy LaRoche's poor performance with the Pirates and I haven't really said much about it beyond reiterating my opinion that 1.) he was a good acquisition for the Pirates and 2.) he needs to keep playing every day. With Dejan asking Neal Huntington about LaRoche's continued playing time in the face of Huntington's "no more scholarships" statement from a week ago, now seems as good a time as any to tackle this. So in order, let's break this down a little better. It's been 132 plate appearances LaRoche's time with the Pirates represents the only regular and extended Major League playing time he's gotten, so that's all we're going to consider. While he was with the Dodgers he was yanked up and down and rarely got a regular shot to be the starting third baseman. Nate McLouth seems to be to be pretty good proof that some guys play better with a regular lineup slot and so we'...

First things first: a win today ensures that the Pirates won't lose 100 games this year. It's always a perversely good feeling to know that we're bad but not AWFUL. Small victories are all we can get as Pirate fans. This win was even better than that, though, because the win ensured a home sweep of the Cardinals while the Brewers collapse had given them hopes of rejoining the wild-card race. As things stand today, the Cardinals are 4.5 games behind the Phillies and Brewers. With a 7-10 record against the Pirates this year, they've got to be feeling like they should be a lot closer to that lead right now. Playing the spoiler is always the only consolation for a bad team, and swatting the playoff hopes of Tony La Russa is about as good as it gets in my book. Even better from an actual Pirate fan standpoint is seeing Nate McLouth killing the ball again (.393/.460/.698 in September before today with two hits and a homer today), while Bone Crusher and Andy LaRoche chipped in...

Jason Davis gets the start today for the dentally challenged Jeff Karstens. He's facing Brad Thomspon in a game that's already started as the Pirates go for the improbable sweep of the Cardinals and put a nail in their playoff hopes once and for all (if they had won the first two games of this series, they'd be three games behind Milwaukee, instead they're five games behind the Brewers and 2.5 behind the Astros). That's something that I can certainly get behind after the awful losing skid we've been mired in.

Jeff Karstens is missing his start tonight because of emergency dental work. Ian Snell is starting in his place and has already given up a run. That might be enough for Adam Wainwright given how good he is and how bad our offense has looked every night except for last night.

Hey ... we won ? Gorzo is officially done for the year . Talk about a disappointing year. Jimmy Barthmaier, starter on WHYGAVS Night, will get his spot in the rotation. This is good, I'd like to see some more of him. Via Bucs Dugout , some ugly allegations are being made in the Pedro Alvarez situation from those close to Alvarez : Marc Cuseta, Alvarez’s former coach on the Bayside Yankees, a summer league team, said the discrepancy between the bonuses offered to Posey and Alvarez indicated that the Pirates were being unfair. “He’s obviously in a situation where, to be honest with you, they’re trying to take advantage of a lower socioeconomic kid,” he said. “It’s certainly not because he’s not well represented. He’s represented by the best agent in the history of baseball.” The difference in bonuses for Posey and Alvarez wasn't much, but there was a lot of "he's going to sign because he's from a poor neighborhood" kind of stuff that was being implied by both th...

They've already canceled the pre-game Clemente Day festivities at PNC tonight, so I don't know how likely it is the game is going to be played. I also don't live in Pittsburgh, so it's hard to get an accurate handle on the weather. If the game is, in fact, postponed it's hard to imagine that a lot of Pirate fans will care or notice given the fact that we have a .150 winning percentage in our last 20 games. Anyways, so for the blog being so down in the doldrums-y this week. Next week I'm going to start picking things up again. This requires not focusing on how awful the Pirates are at the moment and kicking into off-season mode a couple weeks early. This is easy to do because the Pirates kicked into that mode about three weeks ago. Anyways, gamethreads, news posts, and links will continue on as usual over the weekend, then maybe some real content on Monday.

If you're looking for good news among the dreck of losing, it looks like the best amateur pitcher in Japan, Junichi Tazawa, is going to skip the Japanese draft and come to America . Apparently the Pirates have been over to see him pitch before. I could have this wrong, but he should be a free agent, which would mean that there's no posting fee and anyone in the majors could sign him. This means a giant bidding war, but if we're going to be shelling out large sums of cash I'd much rather it went to a 22-year-old Japanese phenom with a 150 kilometer-per-hour fastball (which is actually about 94 mph), forkball, and slider. The alternative is paying $70 million just for the rights to negotiate with Yu Darvish, so I hope we at least make a run at this. Forgot to mention this before, but both links via MLB Trade Rumors .

Like the Pirates last night, I got nothing. I'm ready to kick into "season in review" mode with 16 games left, to be honest. If you're keeping track at home, this is 17 losses in 20 games (lose 10 in a row, win three of four, lose six in a row). This is bad, bad stuff. Bring on the Cardinals?

According to Dejan, it looks like the Pirates/Astros game is going to happen tonight, followed very quickly by the teams and everyone associated with them vacating the city. Houston is being evacuated in anticipation of Hurricane Ike's weekend arrival as we speak, which might make for rather empty conditions at Minute Maid tonight. That's good for the Pirates, because I feel like Zach Duke vs. Roy Oswalt is a pitching matchup that's worked out consistently poorly for us for a couple of years now. The fewer people that actually see it, the better. Meanwhile, UNC plays Rutgers tonight and I'm probably going to watch that (remember, I'm a Tar Heel now) instead of baseball. That's how bad the Pirates are right now. Bad enough that I feel like UNC/Rugters on a Thursday night is a better viewing option.

Sorry I didn't get to write this up before now, I spent most of last night focusing on my weekly FanHouse column, which I took to examine the Astro s and what Ed Wade and Drayton McLane have done to them in the name of contending year. It was really quite fun painstakingly making the point that Miguel Tejada's been a terrible addition for them this year, only to see Denny Bautista turn and surrender a grand slam him minutes later. I could be wrong, because I feel like I say this every single year, but this is one of the worst stretches of Pirate baseball that I can remember. Last night Tom Gorzelanny left with a finger injury that seems like it might be pretty bad, Freddy Sanchez is seeing an eye specialist for his blurred vision, and Jack Wilson's not even allowed t hold a bat. Throw in McLouth's shiner, and I hope they just freeze Paul Maholm in carbonite before something bad happens to him.

OK, so I know we have 60 wins with 18 games left, but is anyone afraid that we're going to lose 100 games this year? We've been so bad lately and the Padres are the only non-contenders left on the schedule that I feel like a 2-16 finish from here out isn't impossible. I mean, it likely is, but how depressing is it that I can even think that? Anyways, Tom Gozelanny and Brian Moehler at 8. The Pirates try to avoid their fifth straight loss, Tom Gorzelanny tries to convince us he's still a major league pitcher. I know you're excited.

Part one of the Alvarez hearing is today, but lest ye expect a resolution this afternoon, most people are now saying that there won't be a decision rendered for a while. DK is reporting that there's going to be two hearings for sure , one that seems procedural involving baseball and the union and a second one that will deal with specific signings. The first one is today and doesn't involve the Pirates or Alvarez at all. Kevin Goldstein also stokes the rumor fires a little more today by passing along a rumor that a second day pick that signed late for an above-slot bonus may have also signed after the deadline. Quenton Miller fits the bill, but it certainly seemed to me like he was signed well in advance of the deadline. That means it's possible and maybe even likely that a third team will be dragged into the wake of this situation (or a fourth team if you count Aaron Crow and the Nationals, who could be involved even though Crow didn't sign because they may have re...

There is quite the debate raging on over at Charlie's site right now over the worth of Steve Pearce and Nyjer Morgan to the future of the Pirates. Though I haven't talked much about either of these guys this year, I feel like it's kind of incumbent on me to say something about this because I feel like a lot of the misunderstanding that's going on right now is based on something I said over the winter that, if I'm not mistaken, Charlie more or less agreed with me on. I'm talking, of course, about my suggestion over the winter that non-tendering Xavier Nady and going with Steve Pearce as the starting right fielder might not be the worst idea in the world, given what we knew about those players at the time. I took a lot of flack from a lot of people when I said that and I think that's where the idea of the "Pearce lovefest" originally came from. As things turned out, cutting Nady and going with Pearce would've been a poor choice. Nady had a care...

This was a pretty disastrous effort from the Pirates on all fronts tonight. Ross Ohlendorf got completely bombed by the Astros, giving up six runs on nine hits in four innings. He looked a lot like he looked in his first start after the Reds had seen him once. I see in the comments that Nate says he got squeezed lower in the zone and I'll check on that a bit later, but he seemed very, very hittable tonight. The offense, meanwhile, was made to look pretty awful by Randy Wolf almost all night after a two-run first inning. The only offense we got after that first inning was Steve Pearce's first career homer, a nice shot off of Wolf in the seventh inning. In the name of seeing young guys do well, I guess that's a positive tonight, just like Craig Hansen getting through an inning without a major incident is a positive. All told though, they feel like pretty minor wins after Ohlendorf flamed out tonight.

Currently, the Pirates losing streak stands at three. That's not nearly as noticeable as the ten-gamer they embarked on just over a week ago, but it is getting there. Ross Ohlendorf tries to stem this one early in his second start in black and gold. Hopefully, he'll improve on the first one where he was decent but certainly nothing great. He's facing Randy Wolf, the centerpiece of Ed Wade's refusal to give up on the playoffs. I still don't think they have a chance to make it, but that doesn't mean I think it's going to be the Pirates that stand in their way.

From Dejan yesterday: The matter is seen by some as too complex for the one hearing scheduled for Wednesday in New York, and there already has been discussion that arbitrator Shyam Das will need more than one hearing in the grievance filed by the Major League Baseball Players Association against commissioner Bud Selig's office, alleging that extensions were granted by Selig for teams to negotiate deals -- including the Pirates and Alvarez -- past the Aug. 15 deadline. Apparently tomorrow may not be D-Day after all. Kevin Goldstein had a good write up of the potential outcomes of the case at BP over the weekend (subscription only). His best guess at this point is the same as mine- that the arbitrator will rule that the Commissioner's Office was wrong to extend the deadline, but that he has no jurisdiction over Alvarez and Hosmer because they're not MLBPA members. On a semi-related note, Matt Wieters is Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year . Feel that? I...

There are a number of aspects of this game that I could focus on for this recap. Ian Snell continued with his baby steps, making another pretty solid start by striking out nine Astros in six innings and holding them to three runs (even though three runs was enough for the loss). I could talk about Nyjer Morgan's nightmarish base running and outfield play but, guh, I'd rather not even think about that. There's also the bad bounce that turned what should've been a game-tying double by Adam LaRoche into a ground-rule double, sticking Ryan Doumit at third base where he would eventually be stranded. Those things seem to happen to bad teams. When you can't catch a break, you just can't catch a break. Instead, I'd like to focus on one pitch. Ian Snell did a nice job tonight, but he made one mistake and it ended up costing him the game. Facing pinch-hitter Matt Saccomonno in the fifth inning, Snell probably didn't have a book on the guy and decided to groove him...

Let me put this in no uncertain terms: if the Astros somehow make the playoffs this year after Ed Wade's hatchet job on their minor league system to acquire middling veterans for one push at things I'm going to be more depressed about the state of baseball than I am over another Pirates' losing season. Wade is basically applying the Dave Littlefield approach to a slightly more talented roster than Littlefield ever had to deal with, and he's now got a team on a huge winning streak trying to back into the playoffs. It's still an incredibly long shot, but that doesn't mean it doesn't miss me off. Also, Ian Snell is starting tonight against Alberto Arias, who's not really a starter at all from what I can tell. The Astros are on fire. The Pirates are not. I'd love to see us end their playoff hopes, but I'm not expecting much here.

How do you properly couch another losing season for the Pittsburgh Pirates? The last time the Pirates had a winning season, I was seven years old. Seven! I'm in my second year of graduate school now. Second grade was a looong time ago. Somewhere in the depths of my memories, I remember going to class the day after the Francisco Cabrera game and asking a friend who was a year younger than me if he saw that the Pirates lost again the night before. He had and seemed upset about it, so in all of my endlessly optimistic seven-year-old wisdom I told him that we'd get to the World Series next year. This was the only logical conclusion for me because to that point in my life, I'd really only known good, playoff caliber Pirate teams. I couldn't have possibly fathomed a world in which sixteen years down the road, I'd still be waiting for next year. Somewhere, the losing seasons start to blend together. I remember 1993, because I started the year out with high hopes and had th...

Loss #82 comes with a ten run fourth inning. Jeff Karstens does a Zach Duke impression, the Pirates score 12 runs in two straight losses, and the sixteenth straight losing season is clinched. I will have more about this later. One the bright side, Craig Hansen made it through an inning without giving up a run or a walk. In the history of babysteps, this is the babiest. More on the momentous occasion later.

So the Steelers are playing, the NFL in general has started, and the Pirates are on TV. Will anyone notice Jeff Karstens and Jonathan Sanchez at 4:05 today? Bixler's at short, Steve Pearce is getting the oh-so-rare start in right, and we get our firzt look at Robinzon Diaz behind the plate, which tells you what everyone must think of Ronny Paulino. Staving off the sixteenth year in the canyon starts today, maybe.

Even in the 141st game of the year, it's impressive how quickly the Pirates' bullpen can blow a lead. Last night, Denny Bautista came into the game in the seventh inning, probably because Paul Maholm rightly won't be crossing the 100 pitch barrier much for the rest of the year, and in six batters and what felt like about 30 seconds had turned a 4-1 lead into a 4-4 game. That set the stage for John Grabow to come in and throw one pitch to Scott McClain, which was promptly launched into the stands to give the Giants a lead. Later on, Jesse Chavez got his official inaguration into the Pirates pen by giving up the first homer of his career, and a game that the Pirates had on lock through six turned into an ugly 7-6 loss. Pretty fitting for the 81st loss of the year.

The Bucs play another game with no TV coverage tonight in the first series without TV coverage since they went to San Juan to play the Expos a few years ago. Paul Maholm and Matt Cain take the mound against two deficient lineups in a game that could conceivably fly by. The Pirates are starting Luis Cruz at short tonight in response to Brian Bixler's solid night last night for whatever reason. I assume the reason is the same as the reason used to justify Nyjer Morgan getting lots of starts in left field. That means it's a reason that I don't understand. Anyways, Pirates! Giants! 10:15! Will there be an earthquake? Tune in to find out! But only if you live out of market and pay for an internet or TV package! UPDATE: Wow, this one started at 9. Who knew?

From last night's A's/Orioles game, I saw this in the boxscore: HR : Davis (3, 8th inning off Bierd, 3 on, 2 out). Do you know who "Davis" is? The one, the only, Rajai Davis. He entered last night's game as a pinch-runner for Jack Cust in the eighth inning of a 3-2 game, then later in the inning hit a grand slam to make a 7-2 game an 11-2 blowout. That gave him this awesome line for the night: Davis, PR-DH 1 2 1 4 0 0 0 .247 That's 1/1 with two runs scored, four RBIs, no walks and no strikeouts. That's just not something you see every day.

With nothing to do due to the fear of a hurricane bearing down on North Carolina, I actually stayed in and watched most of this one last night. The early going was interesting, it seemed like Zach Duke put someone on base every inning. Indeed he put two runners on in the first, one on in the second, and loaded the bases with no outs in the third, but escaped unscathed every single time. All in all, he only got one 1-2-3 innings the whole game, but he strung nine zeroes together for his second career shutout, which is a pretty stunning statement about the quality of the Giants offense. Really, it was a vintage Zach Duke performance, if we define vintage as "his awesome rookie year in which he somehow managed an ERA under 2.00 with a 1.21 WHIP." On the offensive side of things, it was a weird night that saw FOUR run scoring sac flies and two triples, one by Brian Bixler and one by Bone Crusher Moss. Freddy Sanchez, Nate McLouth, Ryan Doumit, and Adam LaRoche combined for ten hi...

Let's see, a 10:15 game on a Friday night between the Pirates and the Giants with Zach Duke and Kevin Correia starting and no local TV in Pittsburgh with Pitt playing tomorrow and the Steelers on Sunday. Does anyone even notice if they don't play this one tonight?

In celebration of the beginning of the Steelers' Thunderdome Fantasy Football League, Cotter at One for the Other Thumb has put together a Meeting People Is Easy with the contestants . It's quite a cast, as you'll see if you click the link. I could tell you that our five-day e-mail draft was one of the most hilarious things I've ever done, but you don't care about my fantasy football team. The Centre Daily Times has been destroying the Pirates' management of late for letting the State College debacle happen. Charlie has been on the ball for the whole thing and the problem is really quite simple: it's Dave Littlefield's fault. Welcome to the club, State College. Remember last year when the Brewers and Cubs passed around the NL Central lead like a hot potato and it seemed like no one wanted to win? Yeah, it's happening again . If the Astros make the playoffs, so help me god ... So ... many ... LaRoches ... The blogger formerly known as Postman R left...

When I was digging through Craig Hansen's PitchFX last night, it dawned on me that maybe instead of doing that to be funny, I should use it to look at something that I find actually interesting. Accordingly, I thought I'd take a look at Ross Ohlendorf's start and see what some of the more objective data came up with. First we'll start with pitch types (you can find them in the table on the top of every Ohlendorf page). His fastball average 93.66 and toped out at 95.5, which is pretty much exactly what was to be expected. He threw 62 fastballs for 38 strikes. There were a few lower velocity fastballs, around 90-91 that Charlie thought might have been sinkers, which Ohlendorf threw in the minors, but the break charts don't really bear that out and Rocco DeMaro's radio profile of him more or less indicated that he dropped the sinker once he came to Pittsburgh He only threw seven changeups and they clocked in at 83.14. Of those seven, he threw four for strikes. The...

For some insane reason, I decided to go look up Craig Hansen's PitchFX from his outing today. I was mostly interested in his control for obvious reasons. For a second, I thought I was on to something. The location graph from his at-bat against Wilkin Castillo is interesting: Could that be right? Was Hansen getting squeezed by the umps? The next two batters, Corey Patterson and Chris Dickerson, singled and bunted on the first pitch. Both pitches were strikes. The last batter he faced was Jeff Keppinger. Was he squeezed against Keppinger, too? Uh, that's a big no. Let's play a fun game: can you find the fourth dot on the graph?

When Chris Gomez hit a two-run homer after a scoreless Gorzo first inning, I knew we were in for trouble. There's nothing in the world that can slowly suck away your soul quite like watching a 5-0 lead dissipate one run at a time over five innings for the other team. Somehow, though, the Pirates bounced back from their death by a thousand cuts to take a 6-5 lead in the top of the eighth on a Nate McLouth solo homer. Surely with 10,000 relievers at his disposal John Russell would find a way to get the last six outs, right? I mean against the Reds, the only thing he could do to flat out lose the game at that point would be to do something silly like bring in Craig Hansen. So JR brought in Craig Hansen and he once again avoided the strike zone like the bubonic plague, walking two hitters, giving up a hit, and only recording one out while only throwing three of 11 pitches for strikes. I can't imagine what he was doing in the game in such a high leverage situation, but his presence ...

Crap. 12:35 start. Gomez at second. Cruz at short. Obi-wan at first. Pearce in right. Chavez catching. What a lineup to back Tom Gorzelanny today. And face Josh Fogg. I kinda wish I could see this bloodbath on TV today.

We're starting a new morning feature at FanHouse called "From the Windup," in which one of the MLB 'Housers gets to write a long-form column. All of the stuff everyone's been doing so far is quite good. I think my day of the week will be Thursday. I bet you can't guess what my first topic was . John Russell and co. were way more impressed with Ross Ohlendorf than I was. I have no idea if we were watching the same pitcher, but I don't feel like we were. ZOMG! REPLAY ! Hey did you guys see that speech by Sa... oh, wait, this is Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke? , not Where Have You Gone, Chester A. Arthur? . If you want your baseball and politics mixed, I recommend FiveThirtyEight.com , where BP's Nate Silver does election projections. I swear to you that I will punch the next person that I see use the term, "Rock-tember." I am not kidding about this.