Sorry, Peter Bourjos. I feel like I should put Gerrit Cole's name in here somewhere, just so that this makes sense without context in a year. As if the Pirates have another pitcher that's going to throw a fastball like that.  Via Brooks

I think that Gerrit Cole broke the PitchFX pitch classification system tonight. I mean, seriously, what do you even do with this? According to the pitch classification, Cole threw 90% fastballs with maybe a handful or two of sliders mixed it. From what I could tell and from the best guesses of everyone watching the […]

The Pirates are usually terrible on the west coast. I'm not going to look the numbers up, but you don't need me to. When the Pirates play games after the east coast has fallen asleep, they lose a lot. Now is the time to change that. Neither the Angels nor the Mariners are very good […]

Pedro Alvarez single-handedly dragged the Pirates to a win yesterday with an RBI single, a solo home run, and a three-run double. Alvarez does this from time to time, as I'm sure Cardinal fans remember. His season line is now up to .223/.290/.464. That's not very good, but in this era of diminished offense it's […]

David Schoenfeld lit a fire under Pirate fans this morning with his post on ESPN's SweetSpot blog entitled, "Pirates need to make big pitch for Stanton." The Stanton in question is, of course, the Marlins' Giancarlo Stanton. You can probably guess Schoenfeld's logic from here, but let's lay it out. The Pirates need offense, Giancarlo […]

The Pirates were losing 1-0 when Pedro Alvarez singled in Andrew McCutchen in the top of the third.  The Pirates were losing 2-1 when Pedro Alvarez muscled a ball over the right field fence in the top of the sixth.  The Pirates were still tied at two when Pedro Alvarez laced a Tony Cingrani pitch […]

Last night was rough. That's fine. The Pirates have played three games in Cincinnati, and all three games have generally been well-played, close baseball games. I think a split was always going to be the best outcome for this series for the Pirates and that's still possible. It's a bit of a long shot today, […]

Very early on in this one, Tim Neverett and John Wehner mentioned that there was no home run hit in last night's 4-0 Pirate victory. They mentioned that in the huge majority of games at Great American Ballpark, someone hits a home run. And they mentioned that you could count on one hand the number […]

Yesterday was entertaining and fun and cathartic on a number of levels, but let's lay this out the way that it is: while I wouldn't say that the Pirates need a split in this series (no baseball team really needs anything in June), they really should try to win two games from the Reds in this four-game set. It'll […]

If ever there was a baseball game that you only needed the first inning to understand in its entirety, this one was it. Starling Marte lead the game off with hit a triple, which was aided by Brandon Phillips clearly not understanding how fast and completely fearless Starling Marte is once he starts running bases. […]

I'm not particuarly interested in the Pirates-Reds HBP shenanigans that have gone on over the last two seasons. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Reds are the schoolyard bully of the NL Central, particularly when it comes to Aroldis Chapman and Dusty Baker. I don't know that they're particularly far into the Pirates' […]

It became apparent shortly after this year's MLB Draft that at least one of the Pirates' two first-rounders was going to be a no-drama signing. That one was Reese McGuire, and now that he's all graduated from high school he officially signed with the Pirates for

This is about as frustrating as losses get. The Pirates went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position tonight against Mike Leake, Tony Cingrani, and Aroldis Chapman. Francisco Liriano turned in one of his smoother starts as a Pirate (six innings, 84 pitches, six strikeouts, five hits, two walks), except that two of the hits he […]

The last time the Pirates played teams with a record similar to theirs, they dropped five out of six to the Reds and Braves in what was their worst stretch of baseball since the season's first week. It's worth noting that evne thought they've bounced back from that ugly stretch with three straight series wins, […]

It's Father's Day and the Pirates are halfway to 82 wins. They got their 41st win today when Zack Greinke left a 3-2 curveball up in the middle of the zone and Pedro Alvarez whacked it out into the bushes in center field, breaking a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the fifth. Gerrit Cole […]

One of the most interesting aspects to me of Gerrit Cole being put in the Pirate rotation slightly ahead of schedule is that it's going to force him to grow as a pitcher pretty quickly. I think that he could've pitched for forever in Triple-A the way that he did on Tuesday: hammer the zone […]

For the second time in one turn of their rotation, the Pirates are going to put a starting pitcher on the mound with absolutely no big league experience. Brandon Cumpton makes his big league debut today out of necessity more than anything; with AJ Burnett and Wandy Rodriguez and Jeanmar Gomez and Kyle McPherson and […]

For at least the next turn or two, the Pirates' rotation is going to look something like this: Jeff Locke, Brandon Cumpton, Gerrit Cole, Francisco Liriano, Charlie Morton. This is pretty far from what anyone thought the rotaiton would look like in mid-June. That includes Charlie Morton and Brandon Cumpton, I think. And yet, here we […]

I've been accumulating share-worthy Gerrit Cole links for a couple of days now, so let's get that out of the way along with a few newsworthy stories.  At FanGraphs, Jeff Sullivan took a look at one of Cole's innings and his pitch placement vs. where Russell Martin set up for him. It's interesting, and his […]