0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/1/2015
I try not to think about last year’s Wild Card Game much these days; obviously there are plenty of what ifs around that game, especially given the way the playoffs played out, but all we can really do now is hope that the future holds something in store for the Pirates that will make wondering […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/31/2015
The Pirates and Padres will close out their four-game set tonight with the oddly timed Sunday night game that isn’t on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. This is due to the San Diego Marathon (see above), which took place earlier today and ended in Petco Park, thus necessitating the late start time. The Pirates have a […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I only caught the tail end of last night’s game; a friend of mine and I set to out see Mad Max last night and ended up driving halfway to Raleigh when the theater in Durham was sold out for their 8 PM showing. By the time I got home, the Pirates were nursing a […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/29/2015
On tap tonight for the streaking Pittsburgh Pirates: James Shields, who is somehow 6-0 despite having allowed 15 home runs in 62 1/3 innings. That is an insane home run rate. Ian Kennedy came into last night’s start with an insane home run rate, and the Pirates certainly knew what to do with him. I’m not sure […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I’ll be the first to admit it; I was skeptical of Jung Ho Kang. When the Pirates signed him this winter, my initial thought was that it was a worthy risk to take and that maybe he’d develop into a decent hitter for the Bucs eventually, but that the learning curve from the KBO to […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
One of my favorite things to be able to do when the Pirates are playing well is to look at a matchup before a game starts, say, “Man, this pitcher sure is giving up a lot of home runs; the Pirates should be able to take advantage of that,” and then watch them go out […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/28/2015
Here’s the thing about winning streaks: they can’t ever be long enough. The Pirates have won six straight games, but the Cardinals have won four in a row and the Pirates are still 6 1/2 games behind them. Even with six straight wins, the Pirates have AJ Burnett on the mound tonight and Francisco Liriano […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The Pirates announced today that pitching prospect Nick Kingham has undergone Tommy John surgery. This news has been coming for a while (Kingham left his start on May 6th with elbow soreness and the team has been silent about it since then beyond saying he was going for a second opinion, which is never good […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/27/2015
This is the difference a week makes: When Christian Yelich hit his seventh inning home run to put the Marlins ahead of the Pirates 2-0, I thought to myself, “I don’t think that’s going to be enough.” The Pirates hadn’t done much at the plate to that point, but knowing the way that they’ve been […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you’re on a five-game winning streak and the sixth game is started by Gerrit Cole and Brad Hand, then a five-game winning streak won’t be good enough. I didn’t get a chance to talk about Cole’s last start against the Mets much, so let me take some time […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Honestly, it feels like someone just flipped a light switch on Federal Street after the Twins series. Last Wednesday, the Pirates were a bland, under-achieving, boring baseball team that couldn’t find a way to win a game against the Twins at home. They’ve made a full turn of the rotation since then, going 5-0 and […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/26/2015
I’m running late on this post tonight, so I’ll keep it short: the Marlins are a mess right now. The Pirates are playing their best baseball of 2015. The Pirates haven’t won two series in a row yet this year, and so I think that tonight is the night for that to change. Don’t leave […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/25/2015
I’ll be honest: my hopes weren’t all that high for Charlie Morton’s return tonight. This could be apocryphal, but it’s always seemed in the past like Morton’s first start back from his many trips to the disabled list were often rough, even if the starts after it were fine. Tonight was classic Charlie Morton, though. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Charlie Morton is not the most popular and is probably one of the most frustrating Pirates of recent memory. He’s obviously talented, but he’s almost always maddeningly inconsistent. I suspect that a lot of this has to do with his health; he’s had Tommy John surgery, got both of his hip labrums fixed, and dealt […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
These are the Pittsburgh Pirates we’ve been waiting six weeks for. Before the season began, the vision of the contending Pittsburgh Pirates was for the top of the rotation to be good, and for the offense to pound opponents into submission. These are some numbers: Pirates 21 Mets 4 Actually, the Pirates hit as many home […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/23/2015
Is there any sight in baseball better for a Pirate fan than Gerrit Cole on the mound, pumping 98 mph fastballs in the ninth inning? If that’s not enough to jump-start a baseball team, I don’t know what is. This Pirates/Mets series is an embarrassment of pitching riches; after last night’s awesome Cole/Syndergaard matchup, Matt […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/22/2015
If there’s one trope that’s been driving me nuts for the last month, it’s the comparison between where this year’s Pirates are and were last year’s Pirates were on the same date or after the same number of games. I have two problems with this. One is that one bad start does not excuse another. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/20/2015
I would hate to try and create a hierarchy of painful Pirate losses from the last month or so, but this game scores pretty highly because it introduced us to the image of Andrew McCutchen doing everything he can to drag his lackluster team to a win, but still falling short. When McCutchen came up […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Jeff Locke’s last start was really bad, and then somehow the Pirates gave the game a worse ending. I want to tell you that he’s pitching for his job, but he’s probably not because with Charlie Morton in Vance Worley’s spot, there’s not really anyone to take his job from him. The Pirates have lost […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
After spending the better part of a week thinking about Francisco Liriano, worrying about Francisco Liriano, and fighting with people on the internet about Francisco Liriano, Liriano went out and laid a gigantic egg against his old team last night. The thing that is probably most relevant about Liriano’s season to this point is this: […]
