0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/10/2015
Here’s something I didn’t think I’d be typing in the first half (or maybe at all) of this season: this could have been a third straight really frustrating game for the Pirates, if not for the fantastic start by Charlie Morton. If you just looked at the scoreboard, it’d seem like the Pirates struggled with […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
There’s not much to say here: the Pirates have lost two straight games to the Brewers, who are a team they shouldn’t really lose two straight games to. Their bats have been absent in both games. Charlie Morton starts for the Pirates tonight, hoping to keep his strong start to 2015 going. Kyle Lohse starts […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
It was inevitable that the Pirates were going to come back to earth, at least a little bit. The math on 13 of 16 is easy, it’s a 130 in 160 pace. The way they’ve lost these two games, however, is pretty frustrating when it’s put into practice in front of you. Taylor Jungmann made his […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/9/2015
Losing a 2-0 game during a rainstorm to the worst team in baseball at home is not ideal, but it’s probably fine so long as the Pirates don’t find some way to go ahead and lose this series to the Brewers. To that extent, Francisco Liriano takes the mound tonight against rookie Taylor Jungmann in […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Gonna be awkward at Pirate City next spring.
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/8/2015
This is MLB.com’s scouting report on the Pirates second round pick, Kevin Kramer. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: With a Draft class that does have some depth in the middle infield department, Kramer does stand out with his ability to handle the bat. If he can get his surgically repaired shoulder all the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I was promised that baseball after midnight would end with the Pirates returning from the West Coast. Stupid rain delays. I don’t have much to add about this one, honestly. I think it was a bit of a let-down game for the Pirates after their excellent road trip, and the bad weather makes it a […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
With the compensation pick for losing Russell Martin, the Pirates drafted Ke’Bryan Hayes with the 32nd overall pick in the 2015 draft. Hayes is the son of Charlie Hayes, he of the very brief Pirate career back in 1996 (he was signed as a free agent that winter, then dumped off to the Yankees mid-season […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
It’s been a while since the Pirates have taken a college position player in the first round (Tony Sanchez in 2009), but tonight they’ve picked Arizona’s Kevin Newman with the 19th overall pick. The most basic take on Newman is that he can hit. According to MLB.com’s basic scouting report he’s the only player in history […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The Pirates are on a long streak of very good baseball. They’ve won 13 of their last 16 games, they’ve completed one of their best road trips in recent memory, and their offense is starting to resemble the juggernaut that tore through the National League last September on their way to a Wild Card Game. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Recently, I saw someone tweet something about the anniversary of Gerrit Cole being drafted in 2011, and I went back into my archives to find the post that I wrote that day. I found a couple of posts I wrote from the day of the draft and the day after, both in which I said something […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I suppose this is Gerrit Cole at less than his best in 2015. Really, he wasn’t much different than he’s been in any of his other starts, other than that his control was poor enough that he put five Braves on base for free (three via walks and two via HBPs). The bad control stirred […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/6/2015
Jeff Locke faces the team that drafted him with very little room for mistake, assuming that his last few ugly starts have put his rotation spot in jeopardy. Julio Teheran starts for the Braves; he’s got a home run problem that’s caused his early season to not look much better than Jeff Locke’s. First pitch […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
This is what I wrote after the Pirates’ 7-4 win over the Giants on Tuesday: This is the sort of game I envisioned the Pirates winning often this year: you can take an early lead, you can erase an early deficit, you can score four runs, but if you’re going to send Chris Heston out […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/5/2015
The Pirates have already won five of the first seven games in their ten-game road trip, which means that winning just one game in Atlanta this weekend will make it a pretty successful trip for a club that’s had their share of struggles on the road in the recent seasons. Of course, just one win […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/4/2015
I cannot and will not pretend to speak for anyone else, but much of my pre-hot-streak-Pirate-angst was fueled by the memory of 2014, when the Pirates played baseball as well as just about anyone in the season’s last ~110 games and came up short in the NL Central based on how bad they were in the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/3/2015
The Pirates’ four-game series in San Diego had one hidden bonus effect for their rotation: for the second time in a week and a half, the Pirates get to throw Gerrit Cole, AJ Burnett, and Francisco Liriano in the same series. Because Gerrit Cole and the Pirate offense has risen to the occasion in the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Sorry for the late recap here. I’m sure you can guess the drill on this one: last night’s game was long and ended late, I was way too tired to write one then, and then I had a bunch of things at work this morning that needed taken care of before I could sit down […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/2/2015
After Gerrit Cole’s stellar start last night, the Pirates now get to send AJ Burnett and Francisco Liriano out to try and win this series in San Francisco. That’s a nice position to be in. Burnett is ostensibly coming off of his worst start of 2015, though I suspect many pitchers would be happy to […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
On Gerrit Cole’s 81st pitch tonight, he walked Buster Posey to load the bases with no outs in the sixth inning. Two pitches later, he was behind Brandon Belt 2-0 in the count, and it seemed like maybe the Pirates’ 4-2 lead wasn’t going to be quite enough. Cole hadn’t pitched poorly to that point, […]
