The best way to erase the memory of an ugly game is to turn around and play well the next time on the field. Paul Maholm is pitching much better than his 1-4 record thus far in 2011 and it'd be nice to see him get a win under his belt. Hiroki Kuroda goes for the Dodgers, with the first pitch tonight at 7:05. 

In roster moves, Jose Ascanio is coming off of the DL today and Mike Crotta is going on in his place. Ascanio wasn't great on his rehab stints, but supposedly his velocity is back in the mid/upper 90s, which is where it was before his shoulder problems, and that's a good sign. In any case, he probably can't be worse than Crotta's been recently. Crotta apparently has had some elbow trouble recently and had an MRI this morning. Hopefully it's not a big deal. As for Ascanio, he's probably got a couple of weeks to prove he deserves a roster spot before Evan Meek and Ross Ohlendorf are ready to pitch again. He won't get many high leverage situations, but I'd guess the Pirates will find him some work in the near future to get an idea of what they have. 

After missing my chance to watch the 2010 Indianapolis Indians due to a rain delay, I was bummed by the timing of their one trip to Durham in 2011. They're here in the middle of a week instead of a weekend and on top of that, my yearly thesis committee meeting was on Tuesday. So Monday's game, which would've been a hard ticket to get since it was played at the old Durham Athletic Park (that is, the park from Bull Durham instead of the nice, modern minor league stadium you see above) and that game sold out quickly. Today's game is at 11 AM, which is obviously out. Thursday is the day I can usually convince people to go to the park with me, because hot dogs and french fries and other various ballpark foods are only a dollar. 

The problem for me is that Sean Gallagher is pitching on Thursday. Rudy Owens was pitching last night. You can see why that wasn't going to work for me. So I got down to the park last night, too. Before we launch into the recap, remember that I'm not a scout. I watched David Price late in the summer of 2008 and wrote that I didn't think he was ready for the Majors quite yet and he ended up getting the last out of the ALCS just a few months later. Anyway, on to Owens. 
 
Having never seen Owens in person before last night, I can say that now I think I have a pretty good idea of why scouts are so divided on the guy. Last night, his fastball sat between 89-91 all night, topping out at 92. I couldn't tell the difference between his changeup and his curveball from where I was sitting, but early on in the game he didn't really seem to be using his offspeed stuff much at all. 

As a result, he didn't miss many bats in the first few innings and he barely got any groundballs. Through four innings, he had just one strikeout (it was a big strikeout; it came with Felipe Lopez up, the bases loaded, and two outs in the third) and three groundouts. He wasn't getting hit all that hard, but every out wasn't a pop-up either. And while he'd put seven runners on base (two walks and five singles), the only run that had scored to that point came as a direct result of a single that was really an error by Josh Harrison (more on this later). He had only given up one run and he shouldn't have given up any, but it seemed like he was teetering on the brink of disaster the whole early part of the game. 


And then, suddenly, he was fine. He put down the last eight hitters he faced (he got a pop-up and a flyout to escape what could've been an even uglier fourth inning, then cruised through the fifth and sixth), he struck two of them out, and every out in the fifth and sixth innings was either a strikeout or a groundout. He seemed to be mixing in his offspeed stuff a little better and his command improved a bit and he was suddenly untouchable. He didn't lose anything off of his pitches at any point in the game; his fastest pitch of the night (that I saw, at least, I didn't catch them all) according to the stadium gun was a 92 mph fastball in the sixth inning.

I'm not trying to sound overly critical; I obviously caught the guy at a point in the season when he's not at his best and even though he had rough spots last night, he did finish up awfully strong. It was easy to see why he'd look really good on a nights he has his command and can mix pitches up a little better, but it was also easy to see why some scouts look at him and see a Paul Maholm or Zach Duke style pitcher that's pretty reliant on his defense to get outs. In any case, he definitely didn't look like a guy that's ready for even a cameo appearance in a big league uniform yet, so I think we can safely put that question away at least until the summer. 

The rest of the team was ... not good at all. Indianapolis's defense is flat-out brutal. They were charged with four errors last night (Pedro Ciriaco booted a ball at short, Matt Hague made a bad throw on a potential fielder's choice at second, and Dusty Brown and Justin Thomas both made ugly throws), but they could've been charged with more. As noted, Harrison made a bad play on a grounder to third that could've been a fielder's choice or double play that ended up leading to Durham's first run, plus he made a really strange decision on a grounder the inning before with the bases loaded that could've cost Indianapolis a run if Owens hadn't struck Lopez out. On a sharply hit grounder, he fielded the ball and instead of instinctively throwing to second for what should've been a routine 5-4-3 double play, he froze, then panicked and made a bad throw to the plate to get the force out. He did have a nice diving stop and throw in the sixth, but he looked more like a deer in the headlights than anything. Andrew Lambo and Alex Presley did cover a nice amount of ground in the outfield, which was good to see.

The mental mistakes extended all over, too. In the tenth inning with runners on first and third and one out, Wimberly hit a hard grounder to second base with the infield drawn in. Lambo broke for home and was easily thrown out. In the eleventh with the bases loaded and one out, Chase D'Arnaud (who didn't play but was pinch-running for Dusty Brown) stayed at third on a fly to semi-shallow left field instead of trying to score. I don't know who was making the decisions there (it may have been the third base coach), but if I was going to challenge on either of those plays, it would've been the flyball to the outfield. Also, there was a terribly timed bunt, which I'll get to in a bit.

There's not much on the club in terms of hitters, but with Corey Wimberly batting leadoff and Pedro Ciriaco batting second, that was to be expected. Wimberly is incredibly fast, though. The Indians' only run came when he blasted a stand-up triple into the left-center gap, then scored standing up from third on a pop-up by Ciriaco just behind third base that caused the Bulls' third baseman to turn his back on the infield. When he paused for a second and forgot about Wimberly, he had basically conceded the run. Ciriaco also hit the ball square on the nose four times, but ended up with three lineouts to the shortstop and one screeching lineout to center field. 

The two guys I was most interested in seeing, though, were Alex Presley and Andrew Lambo. Presley looked good at the plate; he drew a walk, had a solidly hit single, stole a base, and nearly added a second hit with a grounder that almost snuck between first and second base. Then, he tried to lead off the top of the eleventh with a bunt. The kid's hitting .358 and slugging .528 and Indianapolis can barely get anything together at the plate and he's trying to bunt for a hit. Unreal.

 

I thought Lambo looked pretty good, too. He didn't show a ton of power, but he had a few good at bats (one resulting in a walk) and both of his singles were very solidly struck. It's looked like he's coming out of his funk in the last week or so of games, and that's definitely what I saw when he was at the plate last night. The two pictures below are of his first single. 


On other thing of note from last night is that Cesar Valdez, acquired from Arizona in the Zach Duke trade, looked pretty impressive in an "I have no idea how this is happening" kind of way. In three innings of shutout relief work, he gave up one hit, no walks, and struck out four, but I think every single pitch he threw was between 82 and 87 mph. He sure had Durham fooled, though.

I know this all sounds kind of dire, but this is a team that we all knew going into the year was kind of between cycles with Tabata and Alvarez sticking in Pittsburgh and Sanchez and Marte and Locke and Morris starting in Double-A. Besides Presley and Lambo and Owens, all of whom looked fine last night (and Lincoln and Wilson, who didn't play), there's not a whole lot on the team besides guys trying to prove themselves and marginal prospects. That's certainly what they looked like last night, too. 

Also, they lost 2-1 in 11 innings. Did I mention that?  

The last two times I've been at Durham Bulls/Indianapolis Indians games, Andrew McCutchen has combined to hit five home runs (I got rained out of the one game I tried to get to when Indy was in town last year). I've got some stuff about the Indy game that I'll have posted tomorrow, so let's get the quick hits on the Pirates game done. 

Actually, I don't have much to add here. I'm going to officially classify Andrew McCutchen as "heating up" after his 3-for-4 two-homer night, but it looks like things got out of hand pretty quickly once the wheels fell off for Kevin Correia. Michael Crotta probably earned his ticket out of Pittsburgh with the latest in a line of ugly performances, and a game that had me saying, "I can't believe it's still 0-0" when I checked my phone in the top of the sixth then had me saying, "10? 10-2? That quickly?" when I checked back in the eighth. Kevin Correia is going to give up runs on some nights, though, and the bullpen is going to melt down on some nights, so I guess maybe we should be happy as Pirate fans that they at least synchronized bad outings so that they only really torpedoed one game instead of two. 

I'm sure that many of you have heard already, but the Pirates' famous "Lemonade/Cotton candy/Coke Here!" vendor, Kenny Geidel, passed away yesterday at the age of 67. When I was a little kid, my friend Mike and I used to attend bunches of Sunday afternoon games at Three Rivers. His dad had daylight season tickets and whenver they had an extra ticket, they'd bring me along. Mike and I would always look for the lemonade guy whenever we were at the park. Last summer, I got a text from Mike that said, "Leeeeeeeeeemonaaaaaade heeeeeeeeeeeere!" and I knew that he was home for the weekend and at PNC. 

Some things become every bit as much a part of the ballpark as the game and the team itself; that's why everybody's favorite ballpark is their home park, whether it's as nice as PNC or as rundown as the Mellon Arena. Without Kenny, PNC is a little bit less special. As people have noted, nobody worked harder anywhere than the Lemonade Guy and it's weird to think that the next time I go home, he won't be there. 

The fans weren't the only people that noticed either; Paul Maholm tweeted about his death this afternoon. It'd be great for the Pirates to stretch this winning streak to four, just to tack one on for Kenny Geidel. 

Kevin Correia pitches tonight for the Bucs against Ted Lilly at 7:05. I think I'm going to make my way to Durham tonight for Rudy Owens' start.  

Before we get to the elephant looming over this game, let's hit the positives. Jeff Karstens and the bullpen did some great work tonight and I thought Clint Hurdle did an excellent job managing his pitchers. We all know how quickly Karstens runs out of gas and Hurdle hooked him in the sixth inning tonight of a 1-1 game just as he started to look tired. I thought bringing Mike Crotta in was risky, but he got the groundball Hurdle had him out there for and got out of the jam. When Crotta got into trouble of his own in the seventh, Hurdle brought Joe Beimel out to put out the fire and even though he gave up a loooooong flyball to Andre Ethier, he got the job done. Jose Veras and Joel Hanrahan weren't perfect in the seventh and eighth, but they got the job done. It's not easy to hold a team to one run when your starter gives up eight baserunners in 5 1/3 innings, but both Hurdle and the bullpen did a good job keeping the game 1-1 for as long as they could. 

And in doing so, they gave the Pirates offense a chance. The Bucs haven't been setting the world on fire at the plate this year, but in the last ten days or so you can definitely see the bats start to come around. Tonight they got a parade of doubles from Neil Walker, Lyle Overbay, and Ryan Doumit (again righthanded!) after Garrett Jones opened the bottom of the eighth up with a walk. I was terrified that Neil Walker was going to square around to bunt after Hurdle replaced Jones with Xavier Paul and while the hit and run that Hurdle ultimately called for was definitely a dangerous play, I'm happy that Hurdle at least left the bat in the hands of his hottest hitter. Walker delivered and the guys behind him piled on and the Bucs got a solid win. 

They got some great defense tonight, too. Pedro Alvarez made some nice plays at third including a diving stop to end the game and Andrew McCutchen covered a ton of ground out in center, including chasing down a Matt Kemp blast to the fence and turning it into a double play. Of course, the one play that will get the most attention is the sliding trap-catch that Jose Tabata made in the top of the eighth that got turned into a second outfield-assisted double play. The Dodgers were livid about the bad call (both Juan Uribe and Don Mattingly got tossed in between the top and bottom of the eighth) and they should've been; it was a brutal call that, unlike Andrew McCutchen's sliding catch that wrongly got called a trp yesterday, the umpire should've had a good view of the play and he still blew it. I've been pretty vocal in my support for expanded replay and even though the Pirates won tonight, this sort of play is exactly why I think baseball needs it. It just feels wrong that such a huge swing in momentum is allowed to happen based on something other than what the players do on the field. 

But you know what? The game was still 1-1 after the Dodgers got hosed. It wasn't the umpires that reeled off three straight RBI doubles in the bottom of the eighth inning. It was the Pirates. The 18-17 Pittsburgh Pirates.  

It's May 9th. The Pirates are 17-17. Many people, Pirate fans included (including me; I'm still sticking with my 70-75 win prediction from the pre-season) don't think they'll be able to keep this pace up over the course of the season. The only way to change people's minds is to keep on winning. Tonight, the Dodgers come to PNC for a four-game set. They're not playing terribly well at the moment and it would be fantastic to see the Pirates get three of four to run their record to 5-2 on this homestand. 

Tonight, Pedro Alvarez returns to the lineup. Andrew McCutchen has heated up a bit in his last nine games (.294/.385/.500 since the beginning of the Pirates' Colorado/San Diego trip); if Pedro can heat up, too, I think this team can hang some crooked numbers on the scoreboard. Hopefully, his few days off help him get his head straight rather than set him back even further. 

Jeff Karstens pitches for the Bucs, Chad Billingsley for the Dodgers. The first pitch tonight is at 7:05.  

Even knowing the Pirates history as it's been for the last 18 years and particularly as it's been for the last five or so, I've been kind of taken off guard by what a huge reaction the club getting to .500 in early May has produced. I mean, obviously it's great to see the club play well for an extended stretch and it's great that they have their heads above water without Tabata, Alvarez, or even McCutchen producing much offense of late, but we're not even to the quarter pole of the season. It's true that the Pirates are 9-6 in their last 15 games and with a few bounces or better bullpen performances they could be 12-3 over the same stretch, but it's also true that there's not much that divides wins like yesterday's from losses and they could easily be 6-9, too, and then they'd be 14-20 right now without having played much different and people would barely notice them. 

Maybe I'm just the wrong person to judge this sort of thing. I understand the appeal that finishing a season .500 holds for Pirate fans. If I had to choose, of course I'd rather see the team go 82-80 instead of 80-82, if only to avoid having to endure another offseason full of jokes and lazily written pieces about how bad the Pirates have been for so long. Ultimately, though, it just doesn't make that much of a difference. If this Pirate team, one year removed from the one of the worst Pirate performances in recent history can win 80 or even 75 games in 2011, I'm going to be psyched about 2012. I'll be every bit as psyched as I would be if they win 81 games. 

Clint Hurdle said it best to reporters after yesterday's game: "I want people to feel what they need to feel [about .500]. Because I can't control what everybody else feels. And if there are good feelings out there, so be it."

I get why people are excited, it's just way too early in the year for me personally to start considering the Pirates' final record. It's too early especially because in the grand scheme of things, I don't know if it matters how many games they win, so long as they don't tank like they did last year. How are the Pirates playing? Are they better than last year? Are they better than I (or anyone else, for that matter) expected? Why are they better? Is that sustainable? That's mainly what I'm worried about right now and it's why I haven't put a whole lot of thought into what the club's record is through 34 games. Personally, I'm going to enjoy the way the team is playing right now and try figure out what this team is capable of and what that means down the road and worry about the record much, much later in the season. 

This was like three crazy games all rolled into one. Things started off nicely enough with James McDonald cruising. He matched his career high with eight strikeouts in six innings. He was really in the zone with his curveball today and he did a great job playing the curve (average speed: 76.5) off of his fastball (average speed: 92.5) and vice versa. In McDonald's last two starts, he's now got 13 strikeouts and three walks allowed in 12 innings. It's true that the Astros and Padres are probably factors too, but he definitely seems to be finding a groove after his rough start. 

Of course, the offense wasn't really able to get McDonald any sort of cushion. They strung some hits together in the first inning and had a great chance in the fourth, but had only mustered a 2-0 lead by the time McDonald was removed at the end of the sixth. It's easy to question such a quick hook for McDonald in hindsight, but he was creeping up on 100 pitches and seemed to be close to hitting the wall in the sixth. When Hurdle made the decision to bring Resop in in the seventh, I thought it was the right call.

Of course, things immediately went straight to hell. Chris Johnson took Resop deep to lead off the seventh, then Bill Hall singled, then Humberto Quintero doubled him in on a ball that Andrew McCutchen bobbled when he had a chance to hold Hall at third. After an incredible April, Resop has had a pretty rough go of things in May. Hopefully it's just a rough patch and he'll get things straightened out. Whatever happened with him, things really hit the fan when Joe Beimel came in. With Quintero, who is not fast, at second and nobody out, the Astros sent Angel Sanchez in to pinch hit for Happ in what was clearly a bunting situation. Still, Neil Walker didn't get to first base all that quickly, which caused Brandon Wood to double-pump on his throw, which created an opening for Quintero, who broke for third with the pitch, to round home and head for home, which caused Walker to rush his throw home and as a result not get an out at first or the plate. This is at least the second time in the last couple weeks I've seen the Pirates screw up a bunt down the third base line with a runner on second. Unless I'm mistaken, it's happened with all sorts of combinations of first and third basemen on the field. Quintero breaking for third is a complicating factor, but Wood still fielded the ball with plenty of time to get an out at first without risking a run scoring. What took Walker so long? 

The frustration didn't end there. Carlos Lee lead off the eighth with a screaming line drive into the left-center gap that Andrew McCutchen made a fantastic, back-handed, sliding catch on. Except that he didn't convince the umpire of it and instead of coming up throwing, he threw his hands up in disagreement. While that happened, Lee took second. He then moved to third on a botched pickoff play at second and scored on a sac fly. The bullpen (especially Resop) did itself no favors today, but the defense (with an assist from the umpires) made pretty glaring mistakes on the quote-unquote "little things" today that suddenly had the Pirates in a 4-2 hole. 

And then just as quickly as the frustration bubbled up, Neil Walker singled, Steve Pearce drew a walk, and Ryan Doumit annihilated a 1-0 fastball from Fernando Abad for his second clutch, monster home run from the right side of the plate this week. Of course the guy that walks up to the plate to Danzig gets the big hit on Mother's Day. 

(hold on while I shake my head sadly here for a minute)

Of course, plenty of people are making a big deal about the Pirates getting to 17-17 (Greg Brown gave a, "If you're not a Pirate fan you just don't understand why this is such a big deal but it is" speech on the radio broadcast which seemed ludricrous to me since we're not even a quarter of the way into the season), but that's really not something I'm thinking about at this point in the season. What I like is that the Pirates have played very well since getting swept out of Miami in mid-April. They've won four of five series (9-6 total against the Nats, Giants, Rockies, Padres, and Astros) since then and even in their six losses, they've been in the games. Right now, the club is 17-17 and they've scored 127 runs and allowed 139. Last year they hung around .500 through 30 games (they were 14-16), but they'd been outscored so hilariously (109 runs scored, 184 allowed) that everyone knew that they couldn't keep up with that sort of pace. Over their next 30, they went 9-21. This team is playing much differently than that club, though, and I'd be pretty surprised if they slumped that badly over the next month. They're certainly frustrating to watch sometimes and it's worth wondering how long the pitching staff can keep going, but it's also pretty clear that they're a better club at this point in 2011 than they were in 2010. 

I've been in lab all morning, but I swore I put a gamethread up that said, "This is the best pitching matchup of the series for the Pirates because McDonald is pitching well and Happ isn't all that good." Through 3+, McDonald has looked awesome and Happ has looked Zach Duke-arific. Let's hope it continues. 

I don't have much to say about last night's game: I wasn't kidding when I said I wasn't going to watch before the game started. I did follow along with the Gameday as I took care of other stuff last night, though, and it was easy to see that Charlie Morton had one of his better outings of the year, striking out five, walking just one, and getting 12 groundballs to just two flyballs in 7 2/3 against the Astros. I'll write more about this for tomorrow, I think, but it's interesting to watch how Morton adapts his approach from team to team. Last night, he used almost all sinkers again (more like his first two starts of the year than the past few) and since he was getting strikeouts, he just kept pushing ahead. 

Andrew McCutchen's bat finally came alive a little bit with two hits, including a big two-run double. Everyone's made quite a bit of his struggles this year, but he's OPS+ and wRC+ are both above average (103 and 104, respectively) because he's getting on base at a good clip and showing some power with 5 doubles and 5 homers despite his low batting average. Basically, if he tears off two or three hot weeks here in May, he's going to end the month with one of the best offensive lines for any centerfielder in baseball. 

Finally, it's only fair to note that Brandon Wood's looked pretty good as a Pirate so far in what is admittedly a pretty small sample size. His big two-run double that put last night's game away came on a good 0-2 swing and thus far, he's done a much better job of working counts and putting the ball in play than I expected. It's obviously early for him, but thus far he's definitely been worth the roster spot and definitely a better utility option than Josh Rodriguez. I'm not ready to say more than that after nine games and 28 PAs, but even that's not something I was sold on when the Bucs picked him up a couple weeks ago. I'll happily admit that I've been wrong so far and hope that he continues to prove me wrong.