For the second start in a row, Gerrit Cole didn’t really pitch his best game against an inferior opponent. After giving up ten hits and a walk without a strikeout in seven one-run innings against the Rockies last week, he walked three Diamondbacks and giving up seven hits in five laborious innings, but he only […]

I think that this particular subgenre of baseball wins is one of my favorites: not the comeback win, but the matter-of-time win. The Diamondbacks gave Rubby de la Rosa a 3-0 lead in the second inning, but the Pirates had runners on base in the first, second, and third without scoring. When Sean Rodriguez hit […]

One of the big mistakes that we, as baseball fans, make (and I’m including myself in this group with a bullet) is assuming that all players develop along a similar pattern. Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco all came up through the minors as five-tool centerfielders with gap power and very high ceilings, […]

It is, first of all, always nice to see the Pirates sprint out to a big lead against someone and keep it after those two scares against the Rockies and Braves earlier this year. Francisco Liriano’s control was not at its best today, with five walks in 5 2/3 innings, but the Diamondbacks couldn’t do […]

There is nothing that makes you contemplate your connection to the world quite like an eye injury does. I’m speaking from experience here; when I was 11 I was hit hard in the eyebrow with a line drive and had no idea how bad the injury was until I got to the hospital (I was […]

With the Pirates slicing a bit into the Cubs’ NL Central lead this week as we approach the annual “Pirates are good by” date (it’s May 21st, but I think they may have started a few days early this year), all of everyone’s focus has shifted to the Pirates’ passel of Triple-A pitching and when […]

This is how the Pirates/Braves series was supposed to go. Jeff Locke gave the Pirates a nice and easy seven innings, with the Pirate lineup put a perpetually puzzled look on the face of Mike Foltynewicz over his three innings of work. Combined, that let the Pirates sprint out to a 5-0 lead and stay […]

In the aftermath of Francisco Cervelli’s extension yesterday, a lot of people all noticed the same thing at the same time. Going around the horn, the Pirates’ contract status looks like this: C- Francisco Cervelli, signed through 2019 1B – John Jaso, signed through 2017 2B – Josh Harrison, signed (including options) through 2020 3B […]

It was only about three weeks ago that the Pirates raced out to an 7-0 lead against the Rockies, ROOT Sports flashed a graphic saying that the Pirates hadn’t blown an 7-0 lead since the John Quincy Adams administration, and then the Pirates blew that lead and needed 12 innings to somehow eek out a […]

Here’s a nice little bit of unexpected lunchtime good news for you:

After seeing so much of the Cubs lately, it’s nice to be on the other end of a game in which one team could do no right and the other easily loped to victory. The Braves kicked the ball around in the first inning, and the Pirates scored three times because of it. Jon Niese’s […]

The Pirates put Starling Marte on the paternity leave list this afternoon and called up Alen Hanson to fill his roster spot. Hanson has spent the last week or so starting in left field for Indianapolis, and obviously both Marte and the Pirates knew that this situation was approaching, so my presumption is that they’ve […]

I’m certain that I wrote something similar at this point almost exactly a year ago, but when a season starts like this one, there comes a point at which you stop worrying about the standings and the number of games behind you, are start worrying solely about your own business and hope that something that’s […]

In the face of what I think almost every Pirate fan considered a lack-luster off-season, I spent a lot of time thinking about the way the Pirates had attempted to balance their rotation and bullpen. As a rule of thumb, I do not like to spend much time lamenting the financial state of the Pirates […]