Early this afternoon,

The easiest and probably most accurate way to describe the Pirates' 3-1 loss to the Cubs on Opening Day at PNC Park is probably this: it was cold out and when it's cold out, hard-throwing pitchers seem to do well, and as a result AJ Burnett and Jeff Samardzija combined for 19 strikeouts between them […]

There is something amazing about the beginning of a baseball season. After a winter spent projecting and predicting and hypothesizing, guessing, and wondering, today is the day that we finally start building towards something. Today will give us 1/162th of what the final 2013 Pirates will be. That seems like a little impossible nothingth, but […]

She looked at him, seeing him again, and the future be damned, since all possible futures ever envisaged are — rusty sinks, two-week vacations and bombs or collective fraternity or harps and houris– endlessly, sordidly dreary, all delight being in the present and its past, all truth, too, and all fidelity in the word, the […]

Really nice story by Brady McCollough in the Post Gazette today about Andrew McCutchen. I'm not just saying that because it quotes a certain handsome, beer-brewing, science-oriented blogger from North Carolina. I'm saying that because it's a really nice story. It is a rare occasion that we, as Pirate fans, have the ability to say […]

Not my words.  If

It feels like a lifetime ago, but last April was a brutal month for the Pirates' position players. The Pirates scored 58 runs in 22 games (2.6 runs per game). Andrew McCutchen didn't hit a home run, Pedro Alvarez went 0-for-the-first-two-weeks-or-so, Neil Walker continued a power outage that had started in the middle of 2011, […]

Being a Pittsburgh Pirate has an unfortunate side-effect: what you've actually accomplished on the field never really matters, because all that's important is what you're going to do on the field whenever it is that the Pirates actually get around to being good. Andrew McCutchen's 2012 season was an amazing thing for Pirate fans to […]

With a few announcements today, the Pirates have all but set their Opening Day roster for 2013. As expected, Jeff Locke will take the last unannounced rotation spot (I'm hesitant to call him the "fifth" starter whether the team does or not because he's not really the fifth best starter) while Kyle McPherson and Vin […]

When word leaked out yesterday that the Brewers had come to a three-year/$33 million agreement with Kyle Lohse, a lot of Pirate fans immediately started wondering why the Pirates didn't make more of a push for Lohse given their current rotation woes. There are a lot of fairly straightforward answers to this question: Lohse is […]

Michael Sanserino is tweeting out a bunch of news today, but the most important points are here:

Here are the pitchers that I'm comfortable with in the Pirates' pitching staff (in order of confidence), one week before the 2013 season begins: 1. AJ Burnett 2. Wandy Rodriguez 3. James McDonald That's not a great trio, but it's a pretty good one. Burnett had a strong year last year in the National League […]

Breathe in. Can you feel it? In one week, real live baseball will be here. We're going to be getting answers to all of our Pirate questions in seven short days, whether we like them or not. To kick your week off, here are two season preview posts I wrote at other sites:  I did […]

With the Pirates on a two-day hiatus from playing baseball anywhere near where I am in Florida, I've been trying to take a break from the internet because that keeps me from worrying about work and, believe it or not, there aren't a lot of fun things that surround your sixth year in grad school. […]

I'm heading down to Florida tonight to take in some Pirate games and possibly some time at Pirate City this week. As in the past, I'll put up plenty of posts and pictures and the like. Real-time updates and pictures can, as always, be found

With Jerry Sands' demotion earlier this week, it became pretty clear that Jose Tabata will start 2013 out in Pittsburgh, most likely as Travis Snider's primary backup/platoon partner in right field. Tabata's only 24, but this is almost certainly his last chance to play regularly for for the Pirates. If he can't hack it in […]