Let's take one second and breath this in: it's before noon on Memorial Day. There are six teams in baseball right now with 30 wins or more. One is the Yankees. Another is the best franchise in the American League of the last few years, the Texas Rangers. The Braves, who became a serious National […]

The Pirates stumbled into the Brewers' formula for winning at Miller Park yesterday: just hit the ball over the fence a lot more than the other team does. Between Andrew McCutchen's line drive first inning shot and Pedro Alvarez's MAMMOTH late-game blast, there was another Pedro homer and a Neil Walker home run. With Jeff […]

OK, so last night didn't go all that well. Mike Fiers is starting for the Brewers today. That's a good chance for something to go better. First pitch today is at 4:10. 

OK, so last night didn't go all that well. Mike Fiers is starting for the Brewers today. That's a good chance for something to go better. First pitch today is at 4:10. 

I feel like every single time I get all riled up about the Pirates' struggles with the Brewers and go all fire-and-brimstone about how great it would be to beat them, the Pirates lose and I feel like a huge idiot.  Let's try this instead: one game only means something in baseball if you let […]

The Pirates have won three in a row and four out of five against their archest of nemeses in Milwaukee, but only one of those wins (the first) came at HH Holmes Murder Castle that is occasionally also referred to as "Miller Park." The next step in the evolution of the Pittsburgh Pirates is to […]

Jim Callis just posted his second mock draft at Baseball America today, and both of the Pirates' first-round picks have changed from the 1.0 edition. Callis had the Pirates' taking Colin Moran and Sean Manaea in his first mock, but now he's got Moran coming off of the board before the Pirates pick at #9 […]

The long rain delay in the fourth inning put a bit of a damper on this one, but the Pirates came out of the gates firing on all cylinders against Edwin Jackson and the Cubs this afternoon. In the first inning Starling Marte and Andrew McCutchen both singled and stole bases, with McCutchen's hit driving […]

The Pirates and Cubs have a 12:35 getaway game this afternoon, but Clint Hurdle is not messing around with the typical "afternoon getaway game after winning the first two games of the series" blowoff lineup; with the exception of Mike McKenry starting for Russell Martin, Hurdle's got all of his regulars on the field today.  […]

Maybe it's just me, but isn't there something about taking a 1-0 lead in the first inning and holding it for eight straght innings that says, "Attention, Universe, this is a baseball team to be reckoned with?" It's probably just me. It's probably just the Pirate fan in me that's so used to seeing something […]

For the last half-week or so, the Pirates have been winning ugly games against bad teams. I'm completely OK with this, so long as the wins keep coming. Francisco Liriano makes his third start for the Pirates tonight, and while the Cubs are not an intimidating lineup he did draw Pirate Killer Jeff Samardzija. Samardzija […]

In both 2011 and 2012, Andrew McCutchen got off to a bit of a slow start. In his first 25 games of 2011, he only hit .202/.318/.348. In 2012, he got off to a more rounded start, but he didn't hit a home run until his 28th game of the season. In both seasons, I […]

You can take pretty much any old baseball adage about gutting out a win on a night when you don't play your best game and apply it to this 5-4 Pirate win against the Cubs right here, but it doesn't mean that the win counts any less. Wandy Rodriguez didn't quite have his best stuff […]

Five of seven from the Brewers and Astros was an acceptable outcome. More would've been nice, but this is baseball. No one wins every day. The schedule is about to get a little bit tougher, though, so getting at least two wins from the Cubs here would be a pretty big thing. Matt Garza makes […]

Let's try a different perspective here: for the first time in a long time, you could accuse the Pirates of playing down to their opposition this weekend. Against an awfu Astro team, the Pirates spent most of this weekend playing on one side or the other of a low-scoring one-run game. Today, the only run […]

Eventually, Mark Melancon was going to have to do something that resulted in some runs and maybe a loss. Eventually, the Astros were going to have to win a game against a team better than them (this happens whenever the Astros win, of course). The important thing is that even with yesterday's loss, a win […]

On the mound tonight will be the Pirates' two big pitching acquisitions from the winter of 2011/2012. AJ Burnett worked out quite well. Erik Bedard did not. Astro Erik Bedard looks a lot like Pirate Erik Bedard; there are tons of strikeouts, a lot of walks, hits all over the places, and just tons and […]

Take what they give you. 

Let's keep this brief: the Pirates are 24-17, but they haven't won more three games in a row at any point this season. They are playing the Astros now. They've won three games in a row. Maybe it's time to change that. Jeanmar Gomez pitches for the Pirates tonight, trying to extend his ridiculously improbable […]

This is a fun baseball team. With the Pirates looking for runs in the bottom of the fifth inning, Travis Snider stepped up to the plate and launched at 458 bomb to right center that bounced into the Allegheny River from a part of the riverwalk that you rarely see balls landing. An inning later, […]