Lots of links

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

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

Ian Snell may have a message for me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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