Sunday night

John Perrotto rolls out the good rambling voice for his Sunday plog. He tries pretty hard to rag on the fans, but he can't do better than to complain about guys who holler for beanings. Still, the ball in that game goes back to Dejan.

Dejan Kovacevic writes up that thing we saw in the opening series, namely, that teams are going to take away Jason Bay and make the rest of the lineup beat them.

The Pirates continue to handle the Duffy / McLouth platoon in center stupidly, as evidenced by the team stacking the deck against McLouth and continuing to play Duffy--while McLouth continues to outproduce Duffy. It's idiotic. At some point, a grown-up has to tell the child to stop jamming the square peg at the round hole.

Another gem. Read this:

The Astros' Lance Berkman offered one eyebrow-raising theory as to why offensive numbers are up around the majors: The pitchers had to get off steroids, too. "Everybody wants to talk about the hitters being juiced. Nobody even really thinks about the pitchers," he said. "Before, they were throwing 95 mph, but now they're throwing 90. It's going to be a whole different feel."

I think it's safe to assume that some players around the league think Oliver Perez has dropped from 95 to 90 because he's no longer "juiced." Well--maybe not "some players." Lance Berkman would appear to believe this theory deserves consideration.