0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/27/2014
If we’re being honest, I don’t like to spend a whole ton of time worrying about the Pirates’ payroll. There is, quite simply, nothing I can do about it. The front office has to accept the number ownership gives them and put the best team they can on the field with it, and I’m more interested […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/26/2014
I sat down to watch tonight’s World Series game with my laptop fully intending to get WHYGAVS fired up again. There are two ideas for posts that have been kicking around in my head for a while (they involve payrolls and shifts, which shouldn’t be surprising) and I was determined to hammer one of them […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/16/2014
0 comments by Pat Lackey
My first reaction to the Royals sweeping the Orioles out of the ALCS and clinching a World Series berth last night was the same as any non-A’s/Angels/Orioles fan with a shred of decency and a sense of wonder: This is really cool. The Royals were pathetic for just as long as the Pirates were, and they […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/13/2014
What I found was perhaps not surprising – the strike zone did continue to expand, and that expansion was almost entirely due to the bottom of the zone dropping once again. What surprised me was that this season saw the largest single year increase in the size of the strike zone in the PITCHf/x era. I’m […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/8/2014
“Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it’s not decades away; it’s right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.” — Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz When the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirate season ended, I was pretty OK with it. The […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/3/2014
I just wanted to take a second to say thanks to everyone that’s said kind things about me and/or WHYGAVS on Twitter or otherwise over the last few days. This season has been quite a ride, and I have quite a bit more to say about it, but I want to take a few days […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/2/2014
Let’s start with this: From when I got down to Pittsburgh around 5 PM until the first pitch was amazing. There were a handful of moments from 2001-2007 at PNC Park where I’d look at my dad or my friend or whoever I was at the game with and say, “THIS! This is it! This […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 10/1/2014
Now that it’s time to write a game preview for this game, I sort of feel talked out. I’ve said my piece about Edinson Volquez and about the Pirate offense and about the historical precedent between the Pirates and Giants and the nature of these one-game playoffs. I haven’t talked about the Giants much, but most […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
When the Pirates and Giants play into tonight’s Wild Card Game, it’ll be their first playoff meeting since the 1971 NLCS. The 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates were a fearsome offensive baseball team. They lead the National League with 788 runs scored and 154 home runs. Their .274 batting average was the second in the NL, their .330 […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Much of the focus in the run-up to tonight’s Wild Card Game has understandably focused on Edinson Volquez. This is understandable. The Royals started James Shield, the A’s started Jon Lester, the Giants are starting Madison Bumgarner, and the Pirates are starting Edinson Volquez. Volquez sticks out like a sore thumb in that quartet, and […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 9/30/2014
Edinson Volquez had a better year in 2014 than he did in 2013. This seems like an obvious statement to make — Volquez had the worst ERA among qualified pitchers in baseball last year, putting up a 5.71 ERA with the Padres and Dodgers. Given that the Padres and Dodgers both pitch in pitcher’s parks, that number […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 9/29/2014
Today might be the worst sports day of the year. The Pirates and Giants won’t play the National League Wild Card Game until Wednesday night, and so I’m sitting here on Monday morning trying to sort through a huge tangle of thoughts and sort them into two or three day’s wort of posts, while simultaneously […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
#Pirates announce RHP Edinson Volquez as our starter for the 2014 NL #WildCard! Here’s some info to start #Buctober pic.twitter.com/hY7MnyqNb9 — Pirates (@Pirates) September 29, 2014
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 9/28/2014
To put it bluntly, this game was every stupid thing that I was afraid it was going to be. Gerrit Cole was phenomenal for the Pirates; he got into a little trouble in the first inning in part due to a Brandon Phillips bloop single, escaped the jam with only one run allowed, and then […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I spent most of yesterday’s game sitting out in the sun on campus, checking my phone obsessively every ten minutes or so to see how the Pirates and Reds were progressing. The approximate roller coaster of emotions was like this: OH MY GOD LIRIANO SCORED HIS FIRST RUN EVER AND I DIDN’T EVEN PUT MY […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 9/27/2014
About ten minutes ago, I walked into lab and immediately remembered that the Pirates have an afternoon game today. The Reds were in the process of scoring three runs in the first inning when I turned it on, so that’s where we are right now: the Reds are up 3-0 after a weird review at the plate […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
This is a weird kind of end-season baseball purgatory. I want the Pirates to win the NL Central, maybe a little bit more than I’d be willing to admit to myself. If the Pirates end this season as anything short of National League Champions, the reality is that I will remember this season differently if they […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 9/26/2014
The second that Vance Worley steps on the mound at Great American Ballpark tonight, I’m going to start worrying. The Pirates are in a bit of a bind this weekend, in that they’re lined up to have their two best pitchers pitching with the division on the line, that they’ll probably need those two pitchers […]
I don’t even know how else to describe this article by Rocco DeMaro at Baseball Prospectus other than to say that it’s delightful:
[Rocco DeMaro]: So does the shape of the bread matter? The type of bread?
[Tony Sanchez]: No. Bread is bread.
[RD]: So is a wrap a sandwich?
TS: No! Heck no. Absolutely not! A wrap is a poor excuse for a sandwich. But godblessit, a sub is a sandwich. And the bread… I’m so rattled right now.
Personally? I started out where Craig Breslow did (the bread of the sandwich must have the intent to close on all sides) because presumably all of us molecular biology types think similarly, but then once I started thinking about subs, well, obviously subs are sandwiches and I’m not sure that there’s any intent for a sub to close on all sides. So does that mean that a hamburger is a sandwich but a meatball sub isn’t? Because I’m not really sure that a hamburger is a sandwich. I mean, it’s a hamburger. And here I thought it was mainly marinara sauce that made the two different.
Oh dear. I have work to do today.
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