Frank Coonelly said this afternoon that Neal Huntington and his front office staff (plus Clint Hurdle, depending on how you read the statement, which mentions him with Huntington and Stark and Smith once and doesn't a second time) would be retained for the 2013 season, which puts most of the questions about Huntington's immediate future […]

The Pirates and Mets play again tonight, as the Pirates gun for their second straight win, which is apparently something that baseball teams are capable of doing from time to time. Jeremy Hefner is starting for the Mets. You may remember him as that guy that was on the Pirates' 40-man roster for no reason […]

My complete disinterest in Pirate games these days and my rising level of lab work to do have put me way behind on the news cycle lately, but yesterday long-time Pirate and Jack Wilson announced that as soon as the 2012 playoffs end he'll be retiring from baseball. Wilson was released by the Braves at […]

I want you to imagine, just for one second, that on April 1st someone would've told you that by September 26th, Pedro Alvarez and Andrew McCutchen would both have 30 home runs and Garrett Jones would have 25. After you had some time to process that information, that same person would tell you that Wandy […]

The Pirates play a game tonight against another baseball team. Two guys will pitch. The game is probably at 7:05, or thereabouts. If you are watching the Pirates right now, you are clinically insane.

While I started gathering thoughts for my post about Neal Huntington's future with the Pirates over the weekend, I kept getting stuck on the idea of how much blame a front office (or a coaching staff, or the players, or anyone really) should get for a collapse like the one the Pirates have endured this season. […]

Since Dejan Kovacevic first broke the story about the Kyle Stark-lead Navy SEAL training last week, I've been thinking about the whole situation and trying to figure out how much I really care about it. Last night, DK put up a second column that goes into more detail, and I was able to corral my […]

You were surprised by this? I wasn't. 

The Pirates are 74-74. They haven't been under .500 since they were 24-25 on May 29th. Given the way things have gone of late, this may be the very last moment that the 2012 Pirates were an above-average baseball team. That … is pretty sad.  The first pitch today is at 4:05, with Wandy Rodriguez […]

The Milwaukee Brewers' seven stolen bases last night exposed the worst-kept secret in baseball: the Pittsburgh Pirates do not care about throwing out base stealers. They haven't all year, really. Runners have stolen 84 bases in 90 attempts against Rod Barajas and they've stolen 53 bases in 61 attempts against Mike McKenry. That's 137 stolen […]

One of my very least aspects of being a Pirate fan is the sliding scale of expectations that comes with hopelessness. When a team enters a season with no real expectation to contend, win values are more or less meaningless. It sounds strange to say, wins and losses are meaningless distinctions once you separate out […]

Once upon a time, however briefly, the Pirates were the favorites to win the second wild card in the National League. Then, they slipped and for a little while, they were a team that was frustratingly failing to take advantage of their competitors poor play. Then they collapsed. Now they're still playing pretty poorly, and […]

Kevin Correia turned in a gem of a performance in a game in front of about eight fans that took place almost entirely after midnight last night, as Bud Selig's Playoff Scheduling Fiasco mandated that the Pirates play the Cubs last night come hell (or literally) high water*. That meant all kinds of strange things […]

The Pirates have been above .500 since June 3rd. That streak will be put to a serious test whenever they play next, but the weather is giving some doubt as to whether that will be tonight or not as it's apparently pouring in Chicago and the tarp is on the field past the 8:05 start […]

Writing recaps for these games is getting depressing, but damn, that second Pedro Alvarez home run was sure majestic, wasn't it? Just for like ten minutes there, I had this vision of Pedro hitting 10 homers in the last 17 games and dragging the Pirates kicking and screaming to a respectable finish. And then the […]

The Pirates (barely) won a game yesterday. If they win today and win tomorrow, they will be 1 1/2 games out of the last NL wild card spot. That is, of course, getting ahead of ourselves. One day at a time, right? Today, Jeff Locke makes his seventh big league start, still in search of […]

There are 20 days left in the Major League baseball season. The Pittsburgh Pirates have 20 games left. Largely, the way that we remember this 2012 season will be dictated by these 20 games. The Pirates need 10 wins to clinch their first winning season since 1992; I don't think that finishing 19-33 is an […]

This is the final off-day of the 2012 season. The next time the Pirates don't play a baseball game, the season will be over and we'll all be sitting around picking up the pieces of this wreck. This is the fourth consecutive Thursday the Pirates have not played. The first Thursday was the Pirates' first […]

I don't even care who wins. The Pirates just tried a squeeze with a runner on third and one out in the top of the sixth inning that was so predictable the Reds pitched out and Alex Presley slid right into an out. Nick Leyva was literally whispering to Alex Presley on third base, as […]

About a week ago, after the Pirates lost their first game to the Cubs, my dad made a comment about how far 82 wins seemed from 72, even with a lot of the season left. My response was that even 74 or 75 wins would seem a lot closer. The Pirates obviously haven't won a […]