0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/18/2014
The Pirates will play two in Yankee Stadium today. Charlie Morton will start the first game for the Pirates and Gerrit Cole will start the second. They’ve both pitched pretty well lately. A piece of advice I would give them would be, “Don’t give up a million home runs like Edinson Volquez did yesterday, because […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/17/2014
I don’t know if there’s much to say about where the Pirates are right now other than to say that the ninth inning problems against the Brewers have created a huge deficit for the Pirates that they most likely will need outside help to pull themselves out of. That’s really what it amounts to now […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/16/2014
Tonight's #Pirates at #Yankees game has been postponed & will be made up as the 2nd game of a doubleheader Sunday. — Pirates (@Pirates) May 16, 2014
0 comments by Pat Lackey
After yesterday’s Mark Melancon meltdown, I obviously started thinking about the way that the Pirates’ bullpen has seemingly been the biggest obstacle between where they are (borderline out of division contention) and where they could be this year. Every time I started down this road, though, this nagging thought kept coming back to me: by […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/15/2014
After six solid innings from Wandy Rodriguez, after a Tony Sanchez two-run home run and a Gaby Sanchez solo homer off of a righty, after all of those improbable things came together to give the Pirates a 3-2 lead headed into the bottom of the ninth, Mark Melancon went out and gave up a single to […]
Via an MLB Press release:
The committee will be chaired by William O. (Bill) DeWitt, Jr., Principal Owner and Chief Executive Officer of the St. Louis Cardinals. The other members are Colorado Rockies Owner/Chairman & CEO Dick Monfort; Philadelphia Phillies General Partner, President & CEO David Montgomery; Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Owner Arte Moreno; Pittsburgh Pirates Chairman of the Board Bob Nutting; Minnesota Twins CEO Jim Pohlad; and Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
I don’t really know what this means, but I’m kind of looking forward the wide variety of reactions from Pirate fans to this news.
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0 comments by Pat Lackey
The sort of situation the Pirates are in with Wandy Rodriguez is always a tricky one to try and sort out from a fan’s perspective. Rodriguez got hammered in a few starts with the Pirates and looked really awful in the process, then went on the disabled list with a knee problem (and despite all […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Before the game started, I joked on Twitter that Clint Hurdle needed to manage this game like it was Game 7 of the World Series because of tomorrow’s impending Wandy Rodriguez start. Then I went off to Durham to watch some Triple-A baseball and only really kept tabs on the Pirates’ score and how Francisco […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/14/2014
Earlier in 2014, much of the concern with Francisco Liriano was focused on his velocity. That’s picked up nicely in his last few starts. Unfortunately, his results really haven’t. I thought that he seemed a little bit unlucky in his last start against the Cardinals; in his one bad inning he gave up two hits […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/13/2014
I don’t really know what to make of this game, other than that it was a sloppy mess for the Pirates. For most of Gerrit Cole’s uneven start, I simultaneously felt like he wasn’t pitching well and that he didn’t deserve the fate that the Pirates’ defense had left him to. In the second inning, […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The Pirates played better baseball on their just-concluded nine-game homestand. It wasn’t really great baseball (there were some pretty great spots, I suppose), but it was “good enough” baseball. The season was on the verge of completely falling apart ten days ago, and they’ve somehow managed to pull it back a little bit from there. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/12/2014
It’s hard to say that the first Sunday Night Baseball game in the history of PNC Park was a bad loss for the Pirates, since the Pirates spent all night playing catch-up and since the Pirates won six of the first eight games in the homestand before Sunday night’s game. The way the whole game unfolded […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/10/2014
When the Pirates decided before the game to sit Andrew McCutchen, it took a second to register that with Travis Snider still suspended, the Pirates would be headed into the game with 2+ active outfielders (Josh Harrison plays outfield from time to time, but I’d still mostly consider him an infielder). Since the Pirates didn’t […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Andrew McCutchen has played 158, 157, and 157 games in each of the last three years, respectively. This means that there will be a handful of nights every year where he doesn’t play. It would seem odd for one of those games to be on a Saturday night at PNC Park against a division rival […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/9/2014
The Pirates are playing better lately; that much seems clear. How much better is certainly up for debate. There’s not much room to slip back into where they were before, though. This three-game set against the Cardinals is important: the Brewers are out in front of the NL Central, but they’re at best a coin-flip […]
The Polanco Problem, the Heyward/Fernandez Plan, and the Shifting Science of Promoting Prospects, at Grantland:
Although the financial benefits of micromanaging call-ups can be considerable, teams run a real risk by letting weeks or months go by before putting their top talent on the field. In 2011, Tampa Bay Rays left fielders other than Desmond Jennings hit .246/.302/.392, but the Rays waited until July 23 to call up Jennings, their top hitting prospect at the time. Jennings hit .259/.356/.449, a vast improvement over his predecessors, and Tampa Bay won the wild card by one game.
What is Gregory Polanco worth? at FanGraphs:
But is [the Pirates’ reported offer to Polanco] a match for, or at least close to, what Polanco should expect to earn during his arbitration years? Predicting future salaries is difficult, as you not only have to predict future performance but also how the arbitration market is going to go, and how much inflation we might see in the future. So, instead of looking forward and making guesses, let’s look backwards and see what other prospects in Polanco’s range made during their first seven years of team control.
In the first story, Ben Lindbergh looks at how the Pirates and Rays handle prospects vs. how teams like the Braves and Marlins have handled Jason Heyward and Jose Fernandez, and what the ramifications of that are. In the second, Dave Cameron tries to determine what Gregory Polanco might make in arbitration if he doesn’t sign with the Pirates (hint: more than the Pirates offered him). Both very interesting reads that I’d recommend to you.
With all of the national media attention on Polanco to go along with the pre-season hype and the Pirate fans going crazy, I think Polanco might be the most anticipated prospect in Pirate history.
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0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/8/2014
Trying to get a read on exactly what’s happening with the Pirates through the first five weeks of the 2014 MLB season is a pretty difficult task. At face value, they’re 14-20 and 7 1/2 games behind the Brewers in the NL Central with the knowledge that they’re not enormously different from last year’s 94-win […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/7/2014
Suddenly, life feels a lot more normal. Gerrit Cole went out and gave the Pirates eight really strong innings today, the Pirates’ offense got him a lead early on, and then Cole and Mark Melancon held on to it. In other words, a Pirate starter got a win. If it feels like it’s been almost […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
Last night’s Charlie Morton start aside, it’s hard to view the last five games as anything other than a continuation of the awful 19-game stretch that preceded it. The Pirates have had bullpen trouble and starting pitching trouble and their offense has run hot and cold with no predictability. And yet, if they get a […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
During the protracted Gregory Polanco Saga, I’ve wondered a bit whether or not the Pirates would try to sign him to an Evan Longoria style contract at or before the time of his big league debut in order to stablize the service time and Super Two concerns. Jeff Passan reported last night that the Pirates […]
