Strange Human Being That You Either Love or Hate Brian Wilson ™ is apparently close to returning to baseball after his second Tommy John surgery last year, and the Pirates were one of the teams that watched him pitch today. Michael Sanserino also said today that

Trying to follow along with this game via a radio broadcast and Gameday was more or less impossible. The Pirates played terrible defense in the first inning, the strike zone seemed unfathomabley complicated, both managers got ejected, Pedro Alvarez was apparently called out after a half-turn the wrong way after running through the first base […]

The Pirates look for their first four-game sweep on the road since 1997 in DC today. Because Gio Gonzalez is on the mound, the Pirates have a crazy, righty-heavy lineup that includes Russell Martin batting cleanup and Josh Harrison in right field. AJ Burnett is starting for the Pirates, and he hasn't pitched to the […]

Stephen Strasburg pitched a gem against the Pirates tonight, but Pedro Alvarez took him deep in the second inning. That was the main difference between Strasburg's great start and the great start that Francisco Liriano made for the Bucs. Liriano flirted with a no-hitter for a while, and ended up turning in 7 2/3 shutout […]

When the Pirates signed Francisco Liriano back in December, who would've thought that his season stats would match up pretty favorably with Stephen Strasburg when the Pirates and Nationals met in late July?  Anyway, the Pirates and Nats have both played five games since the All-Star Break, which means that the last two games of […]

These things are always subject to change on the quickest of whims, but I'm not sure I like what the first two trades of this year's run up to the deadline portend for the Pirates. On Monday, the Rangers sent Mike Olt, CJ Edwards, Justin Grimm, and a player-to-be-named to the Cubs for Matt Garza. […]

One way to ease the loss of your closer a little bit is to jump out to a 3-0 lead, get a strong start, and reel in a wire-to-wire four-run win. That's what the Pirates did to the Nationals tonight, converting one of Gerrit Cole's best starts as a Pirate, timely hitting (some from Gerrit […]

Jason Grilli is on the disabled list, but baseball waits for no one. The Pirates have one win in a four-game set against the Nats in which I think three wins is a reasonable expectation. Tonight seems like a decent opportunity to get the second one; Gerrit Cole starts for the Pirates against the Nats' […]

With Jason Grilli's injury last night and Neil Walker's rehab stint over, it there was at least one roster move expected today. The Pirates made two moves today; Vic Black has been called up from Indianapolis to replace Grilli on the roster with the suddenly ubiquitous "forearm discomfort," and Brandon Inge has been designated for […]

For eight innings it looked like this was going to be a nice, strong Pirate win. Then Jason Grilli served up a two-run homer to Jayson Werth and left the game three batters later, flexing his right forearm and that's all that anyone can think about. There's absolutely nothing that can be done about Grilli […]

As I mentioned yesterday, the Nationals are playing some really putrid baseball right now. They only scored five runs in a three-game set against the Dodgers in this weekend that just passed, and they're 2-8 since a four-game winning streak ended on July 8th. They're a good team that could turn things aroudn quickly, of […]

Just as the Pirates/Reds game was ending on Friday night, Alex Rios and Alen Hanson were concurrently pulled from their respective games. For 20 minutes, a bunch of Pirate fans had their jump-to-conclusions mats out. It became apparently pretty quickly that Rios had been pulled for not running out a double play (which is apparently […]

It sure is nice to get the first win after the All-Star Break, isn't it?  The Pirates didn't really play all that badly on Friday or Saturday (at least, I didn't think so; they got slammed by bad inning from Liriano on Friday and were just one or two hits away on Saturday), but at […]

This is probably not where the Pirates wanted to find themselves two days after the All-Star Break. They've dropped two in a row to the Reds, they're facing Homer Bailey, and their lead on Cincy will drop to just one game with a loss this afternoon. The Pirates went into the break with a nice […]

When Mike McKenry pinch hits for Garrett Jones with a one run deficit, runners on first and third, and one out in the top of the ninth inning, it's probably safe to say that there are a number of things that need to be evaluated. 

The Pirates are one of the "national games" on FOX again today, which means that the number of people that can legally watch them play baseball is limited to people that live in the Pittsburgh and Cincinnati "markets." Good work, Bud Selig.  AJ Burnett's scheduled to start this afternoon against Mat Latos. This is the […]

For four innings, I kept trying to refresh my phone or my slightly lagging MLB.tv feed, certain that Francisco Liriano's complete lack of control was about to come back and haunt him and that he'd start serving up runs like crazy to the Reds. Thanks to weird double plays and terrible base running by the […]

Look, let's not mince words: we Pirate fans have been waiting 20 years for a legitimate baseball team to take place in a legitimate pennant race. We almost got one last year, but instead we ended up with something much worse. This year looks different. The Pirates have a huge stretch of games between today […]

There are 69 games left for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2013 season. If they win 35 of them, they will have 91 wins when the season ends. In order for the Washington Nationals to win 92 games, they will have to go 44-23 in their final 67 games, which is a 106-win pace. That […]

The All-Star Break is mostly over, and so is my mostly internetless vacation. Starting tomorrow, the Pirates will play the three games against the Reds (second place in the wild card, four games behind the Pirates), four games against the Nats (third place in the wild card, nine games behind the Pirates), three against the […]