0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/13/2016
It’s May 13th, sure, but the Pirates are seven games behind a Cub team loaded with talent that was off to an all-time great start before losing both ends of a double-header on Wednesday. The Pirates can’t erase seven games this weekend, but they can cut into that lead a little bit (or a lot! […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/12/2016
I will admit that last week’s ugly sweep at the hands of the Cubs has made it awfully difficult for me to figure out how to process May baseball in 2016. Even after losing a double-header to the Padres yesterday, the Cubs are massive favorites in the NL Central: Baseball Prospectus has them at 93.3% […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/9/2016
I apologize for not writing much about the Cardinal series this weekend; it was Mother’s Day and my Mom was in town for my official graduation and hooding ceremony (that’s right: I’M NO LONGER A GRAD STUDENT), so I watched baseball but didn’t write much about it. With the Pirates taking two of three pretty easily […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/5/2016
Here is The Real Deal At Least As Far As I See It: There comes a point where being good ceases to be sufficient. I don’t know honestly how to draw that line and if we were to phrase it as a question (When does being good cease being good enough?) I don’t even know […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/3/2016
After laying an egg last night, the Pirates get to face the beard-in-human-form that’s haunted their dreams since last October tonight. This is about as unpleasant as a matchup gets; lose on Monday with your ace on the mound, then send Jon Niese out to face Jake Arrieta in the second game of a series. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
The danger of big divisional games in early May is that it is almost impossible to watch the Pirates squander opportunities and make dumb/bad plays in the field with Gerrit Cole operating at less than top capacity, and not think about the futility of winning 98 games with a certain wild card game awaiting you, […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/2/2016
This week, the Cubs come to PNC Park for a three-game series. After the series ends, the Pirates will travel to St. Louis for three games, then go to Cincinnati for three, then to Wrigley Field for three more. It’s only May 2nd and the Pirates are off to a solid 15-10 start, so it’s […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 5/1/2016
It is tempting and not incorrect to say that not all baseball teams can win all games and that even teams like the Pirates lose to teams like the Reds from time to time. That doesn’t make this loss any less frustrating. The Reds had to scratch Raisel Iglesias on Saturday and give a start […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/30/2016
The Pirates, you are certainly aware, have won five in a row and seven of eight, to run their record to 14-9, which is a very good record after 23 games (“on-pace for” stats are dumb and entirely unhelpful in April but the Pirates are on a 98-99 win pace, which means that we can […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
After a week of playing a sport that only vaguely resembled baseball in Arizona and Colorado this week, the Pirates’ fifth straight win looked a lot more to my eye like the Pirates of 2013-2015. Juan Nicasio threw seven brilliant shutout innings, striking out eight and holding the Reds to just three hits. The Pirates […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/29/2016
The Pirates are, despite their pitching woes, playing relatively good baseball right now; they won five times in six games against the Diamondbacks and Rockies, and their 13-9 record is slowly climbing up the National League standings. They’re going to open May with two huge series against the Cubs (at home) and in St. Louis. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/28/2016
The good news, if i you can call it that, is that the Pirates just played a game on Sunday in which they had a big lead, their bullpen blew said big lead, and the offense bailed everyone out, and so we already know how to feel about last night’s way-too-close-for-comfort 9-8 win over the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/27/2016
Inside of a week the Pirates have gone from a horrible ball of stress and frustration to a vaunted offense bludgeoned their way towards the upper part of the National League. This is possible because it’s only April, of course, but it’s a welcome change from the week that preceded it. Jon Niese takes the […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I suppose this goes without saying, but when I type something like perhaps a struggling lefty and Coors Field are what Andrew McCutchen needs to get jump-started, I don’t actually expect the result to be that Andrew McCutchen goes out and lights the Rockies up for three home runs. McCutchen did exactly that, though, launching […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/26/2016
Gerrit Cole’s strong start against the Padres last week avoided a sweep in Petco Park and kick-started a solid turn of the rotation for the Pirates, with four wins in five games. Cole’s been solid ever since his rough first inning against the Reds in his first start. After Locke focused entirely on fastballs and […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
For the past year or so, one of my favorite toys on all of the internet has been FiveThirtyEight’s Complete History of the NBA, which is a compendium of ELO rankings for every franchise in NBA history across every game they’ve played since the NBA began. ELO is a relatively straightforward concept that FiveThirtyEight ported […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
You know the Jeff Locke drill by now; we all do. After a couple of really ugly starts in which Locke lost all feel for the strike zone and had Pirate fans proclaiming that THIS FINALLY HAD TO BE END OF, Locke came out in Coors Field tonight and spun a gem. He threw six […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/25/2016
Anecdotally, Jeff Locke always seems to come with strong starts whenever Pirate fans are ready to drop him from the rotation. His last two starts (out of a total of three in 2016) have been brutal, and as such, he’s been the focus of much Pirate-fan-related angst over the rotation through the season’s first month. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/24/2016
Sometimes it is easiest to let a game speak for itself, so here are a few facts without commentary: The Pirates and Diamondbacks used 43 total players. The Diamondbacks had four different starting pitchers in the box score in some capacity. Shelby Miller played left field after the D’Backs ran out of position players with […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 4/23/2016
OK, now that I’ve had a full night of sleep, woken up, stretched out some, eaten breakfast, and gotten some caffeine inside of me, I’m willing to try and start re-considering this game from last night. The roof was open at Chase Field last night, and as a result the Pirates and Diamondbacks played a […]
