0 comments by Pat Lackey on 8/7/2015
I guess when Gregory Polanco homered off of Clatyon Kershaw on the first pitch that Kershaw threw tonight, we all should’ve known it was going to be a strange came. Kershaw came into the game with a 37-inning scoreless streak and it was over before the ESPN crew for this game could even comment on […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Gerrit Cole and Clayton Kershaw pitch tonight. What else is there to say about this game? Kershaw hasn’t allowed a run in a long time. Cole is awesome. If you’re out of Pittsburgh, you’ll be able to find this game on ESPN. That’s how big it is. First pitch is at 7:05. Someone will probably […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 8/6/2015
It rained all afternoon in Chapel Hill, and as the clocked ticked closer to seven o’ clock, I was sending text messages to my friends. You know that I don’t care how hard it’s raining, I’m going out to DBAP tonight unless they cancel the game early, right? I was worried that the weather would […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 8/5/2015
If the Pirates are going to keep winning games at a quick pace in the last part of this 2015 season, I suspect that quite a few of the wins will resemble this one. The Pirates were able to build a nice lead early on against Dan Haren, thanks to homers from Gregory Polanco and […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Sorry for going MIA yesterday: I had my committee meeting early and a softball game right after work that ended up being a 15-inning epic that will live on in the lore of the Carrboro Co-Rec Slowpitch Softball League forever. I wouldn’t have much to add to last night’s game that wasn’t obvious: JA Happ […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 8/3/2015
Sorry for the late post today; I have a meeting with my thesis committee tomorrow morning, I’m moving this weekend, and I have to make time for Josh Bell and Tyler Glasnow, too, so it’s a pretty busy week for me. At this point a Pirates/Cubs series is pretty straightforward: the Pirates are awfully comfortable […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 8/2/2015
Let’s begin with baseball. Charlie Morton was excellent today, which is really important news for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Prior to AJ Burnett’s recent struggles, Morton had easily been the Pirates’ worst pitcher. His last seven starts were disastrous: 37 innings, 45 hits, 30 runs, 26 strikeouts, 16 walks, 6 homers, 6 HBPs, and a .935 […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 8/1/2015
Gerrit Cole’s excellent 2015 has come with three starts in which he didn’t pitch at least six innings. All three have come against the Cincinnati Reds, including the 4 2/3 inning shelling at the hands of the Reds back in June that might be his only legitimately bad start all season. Like much of the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
This morning, @WalkoffHBPRyan asked me and a few other Pirate bloggers on Twitter why the general response to the Pirates’ deadline day moves was more or less lukewarm: I tend to tackle all acquisitions by the Pirates at this point from the angle that they’re a good front office and that they don’t acquire players […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
All afternoon, all I wanted was the Pirates to finish their deadline moves up even a little bit early because I knew that at 5 PM I was supposed to be out in Durham to meet up with friends to head out to Raleigh for this year’s Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ festival. When the deadline […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 7/31/2015
I have plans this evening that directly abut the trade deadline, so I’m writing this post early. I have no idea if the Pirates have traded for anyone, or if the Reds have gotten rid of anyone, or if nothing at all has happened. The posts underneath this one could say anything. Regardless of what […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Just when you thought that the Pirates had done nothing at the trade deadline, suddenly a mini-avalanche of small moves happens. The first one is one that we probably could’ve anticipated earlier in the trade season: the Pirates swapped DFA’d players with the Dodgers by trading Jose Tabata for Mike Morse.
0 comments by Pat Lackey
We’ve got about six hours until this afternoon’s trade deadline, and I think the safest bet might be that the Pirates are done. They’ve already addressed their infield/bench depth situation with Aramis Ramirez, they’ve made one trade that upgrades their bullpen with Joakim Soria, and they’ve made a third move that might do the same […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 7/30/2015
The easiest response to a 15-5 loss in which Jaff Decker throws a scoreless inning is probably to laugh. You know the tropes here — a 15-5 loss is the same as a 1-0 loss, and seeing a sub-six-foot outfielder sling 82 mph fastballs towards Major League hitters is never not hilarious. The problem, of […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The Pirates just announced this afternoon that they’ve acquired Joakim Soria from the Tigers in exchange for minor leaguer JaCoby Jones. A few people started connecting the teams together about an hour ago, but
0 comments by Pat Lackey
It’s getting late and I’m still in lab, staring at a post about Joakim Soria (coming up next!) and so I’m going to keep this series preview short. The Pirates have been awful against the Reds this year (2-7). The Reds, in turn, have been awful at baseball this year (45-54, including all those wins […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The Pirates just tweeted that it will be Vance Worley and not Deolis Guerra that will be designated for assignment to make room for Joe Blanton tonight. Since I spent most of my time assuming the Pirates were going to use Blanton in the Guerra role and that Guerra was the most likely to be […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
With less than 30 hours to go until the trade deadline, the Pirates have been very quiet. They announced that Joe Blanton trade at about 12:30 last night when no one was paying attention, but before that they hadn’t been attached to any specific player or rumor since the rumor that they were “working on […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 7/29/2015
The Pirates announced tonight that they acquired Joe Blanton from the Royals for cash. Blanton was designated for assignment earlier this week when the Royals acquired Ben Zobrist. It’s late and I’d rather go to bed than dig through Blanton’s Baseball-Reference page (I was honestly just laying in bed, updating Twitter on my iPad and […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
One of the wonderful things about a player like Andrew McCutchen is that no matter how badly he seems to be slumping, he’s never more than a swing away from breaking out. After an 0-for-5 night last night, a relatively slow start to the second half, and a strikeout in the first inning against the […]
