Wednesday, August 25, 2010

I am back and so are the Pirates (20-41)

I had a little visit with the in-laws, and no time to post. But the Pirates managed a 3-3 split while I was gone including tonight's series win over the Cardinals. Always good to pop them in the mouth. The two game win streak was fueled by the top three hitters in the line up as one might expect. A double (McCutchen), triple (Tabata), and single (Walker) was the highlight of last night's win, but tonight they got together again when Walker got the bases clearing triple. Tabata would add an RBI later in the game and Jones hit a homerun to make the top four all look good. Better yet, Daniel McCutchen got the win. He now has more wins than Ross Ohlendorf despite having an ERA two runs higher. Wierd.

Despite the record while I was gone most of the news was bad. Yes, the top three are hitting, but that has to be expected if the Pirates are going to compete. They are not getting a lot of support. Yes, Jones has two home runs with his last two hits, but his hits are getting rarer and rarer. Alvarez is in a big hitting slump since getting two knocks against Johann Santana. His homer draught is getting kind of long too. Both Jones and Alvarez are over used. Alvarez has done well after a day off, and Jones has only had two all year (I think that is right). But with Clement on the DL, who is going to play first? LaRoche would be the best bet. Again, JR is to blame for the overuse. Doumit continues to supplant Milledge, but his stats don't warrent it. Ohlendorf is on the DL, maybe for the rest of the year. Karstens was a scratch tonight. All of this is not good. Even in two of their wins, they were out hit by the other team. Santana only gave up four hits, it just so happened that two of them were homers and Duke was on fire.

The only real good news is that Brian Burres got called up to replace Ohlendorg and not Morton. This is good because there was no need for Morton to make a start with tomorrow off. Burres was better in the majors than Morton. Bring Burres back. Plus, he can do bullpen stuff, with McCutchen pitching today, they might need an inning eater, and Burres can do it.

Yes, the financial stuff happened while I was gone too. I will probably just post some links tomorrow. There is nothing to say other than ESPN is dumb and so are most of the headlines.

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