The Pirates and Cardinals close out their long season series with PNC Park’s last getaway day and the Pirates last very early afternoon game (in the Eastern time zone) of 2011. Edwin Jackson and Charlie Morton take the hill at 12:35 today. Break out the radios because we don’t get to do this much longer this year. 

Q: Who’s a bad pitcher for the Pirates to face after spending two days making Kyle McClellan and Kyle Lohse look like Chris Carpenter? 
A: Chris Carpenter

The Pirates have their first mid-week getaway game today in St. Louis with Kevin Correia and Chris Carpenter taking the mound at 1:45 ET this afternoon. As before, the key to Correia being effective is keeping the ball on the ground. He may have an easier or tougher time getting good results from that with Josh Rodriguez at shortstop instead of Ronny Cedeno, depending on what you read and what you believe about each player. None of it may matter today with Carpenter on the mound.

But still! Fire up the radios and keep a browser window open! Mid-week afternoon baseball is here!  

Traveling today to Detroit for a wedding. Should be there at some sort of reasonable time to do a post, but just in case, here’s a thread for Clemente/Cangelosi picks and any other sort of game-related miscellenia.