0 comments by Pat Lackey on 7/1/2014
I have this form post stowed away that I feel the need to break out from time to time. It goes a little bit like this: As fans, we always like to put things in terms of what our favorite team does, but sometimes, you really have to flip it onto the other team’s terms. Some […]
Apparently, someone leaked a full ten months’ worth of Astros trade talks online today, and Deadspin has a long look at them:
Documents purportedly taken from Ground Control and showing 10 months’ worth of the Astros’ internal trade chatter have been posted online at Anonbin, a site where users can anonymously share hacked or leaked information. Found below, they contain the Astros front office’s communications regarding trade overtures to and from other teams, as well as negotiations—a few of which actually led to trades.
You should check the whole thing out, if only because it contains the answer to the question, “What sorts of offers did Neal Huntington make at least year’s trade deadline that he said made him so nervous.” The answer, apparently, is Luis Heredia for Bud Norris. Yeah, that would make me nervous, too.
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0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/30/2014
On May 31st, the Pirates got smoked by the Dodgers. The 12-2 loss ballooned Brandon Cumpton’s ERA up to 6.85. The Pirates were 25-30 and Pirate fans were attempting to talk ourselves into May being a good month due to the Pirates’ 15-14 record, though that meant ignoring their 111/137 run differential that month. We […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I will admit that in the early part of this game, my attention was split between the Pirates and the World Cup. For the first few innings, every time I looked up I felt like I saw the Mets hit a deep fly ball to Starling Marte in center field, and so it took me […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/29/2014
I missed Gerrit Cole’s return from the disabled list yesterday, but obviously after seeing his box score in the afternoon the first thing I did when I got home last night was to open up his Brooks Baseball page and check out his velocity chart. Seeing his fastball top out at 99 and average 96 […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/27/2014
Jason Grilli wanted to be a Pirate. I think that’s what I’ll remember more than anything. He’s been a bad pitcher this year and by all accounts his book seems ridiculous and it recasts the light that I view him in just a little bit, but that still won’t make me forget a weird tweet […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
This is the sort of game that I feel strange about offering much of an opinion on because I was watching Durham and Indianapolis play tonight (I will write a little bit about the minor league game, probably on Monday and not in the way that I usually do, but we’ll get to that in […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
With Gerrit Cole returning to the rotation tomorrow night and an off-day on Monday, I think that there’s an awfully good chance that no matter the results of tonight’s game, Brandon Cumpton is going to be headed back down to Triple-A after his start tonight. A lot of Pirate fans want to see Jason Grilli […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/26/2014
In the third inning, it felt like the Pirates were on the verge of breaking this game open a little bit. The score was tied at one, but the Mets had almost no luck against Vance Worley besides Lucas Duda’s solo homer, while the Pirates put at least one runner on base in every inning […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The Pirates kick off what might be their most important homestand of 2014 tonight against the Mets. Their next 10 games will be at PNC Park, and they’ll be against the Mets, Diamondbacks, and Phillies. I’d like to see seven wins, at least, from the Pirates on this homestand. Vance Worley makes his third Pirate […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/25/2014
The easiest way to characterize this game would be thusly: both David Price and Charlie Morton pitched absolute gems on Wednesday afternoon, with Price striking out 11 Pirates and holding the Bucs to on five hits in 8 1/3 innings, while Charlie Morton struck out 11 Rays and held them to four hits in seven […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I’ve been saying “11-5 11-5 11-5” like a broken record for about a week now in relation to the Pirates’ 16-game stretch against the Cubs, Rays, Mets, Phillies, and Diamondbacks, but here’s a dirty secret: it’d be just fine if the Pirates won more than 11 games in this stretch. That’s going to be a […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/24/2014
If not for the last two innings, this would’ve been a pretty similar story to last night. Only one Pirate had multiple hits tonight (in this case it was Russell Martin, and his second hit was what turned out to be the game-deciding home run), but they took advantage of a Rays’ error and made […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
First things first: there was some confusion today about exactly what the Pirates did with Jose Tabata today to clear roster room for Neil Walker, so let’s run through that quickly. Outrighting a player to Triple-A means that the player has been both removed from the 40-man roster and sent to Triple-A. It’s a process […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Neil Walker is going to start at second base for the Pirates tonight, which means that the Pirates have some big decisions to make. The first decision is the relatively straigthtforward: they need to open up a roster spot for Walker, and to do that they’ll probably have to DFA either Travis Snider or Clint […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/23/2014
When you have a hitter like Pedro Alvarez playing for your favorite baseball team, it’s almost impossible to keep your mind from the automatic, “A home run here would sure be nice” reaction in close games with runners on base. That’s still true for me with Alvarez up even though he’s gone most of the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I feel like this run of games that the Pirates have against bad teams speak for themselves and I sound like a broken record: the Pirates need to rack up wins, and that’s just all there is to it. These next three games are in St. Pete against a Rays team that’s probably a bit […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/22/2014
With his spot in the rotation probably on the line, Brandon Cumpton turned in maybe his best start of the season for the Pirates. He held the Cubs to just two hits in seven shutout innings, striking out four and walking two. The Cubs really only threatened against him in the sixth inning, when they […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
You certainly haven’t forgotten the great Edinson Volquez Debates of the Winter of 2014, in which the value of spending $5 million on what was almost certainly a broken pitcher was debated and debated and debated some more. I’m not sure where everyone else ended up (I dunno, there was a lot of yelling about […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 6/20/2014
I had this big post planned out for my preview where I laid out the upcoming schedule and did some math and ended on this conclusion that the Pirates were going to need to go 11-5 over this 16 game stretch against bad baseball teams to really get themselves back into the playoff race before […]
