Alternate home uniforms

The Bucs wore the red, gold, & black unis tonight, the alternative home jerseys I think they are called. Today I wore my 1997 gray crown cap - a short-lived alternate road cap - and my wife, who more often sees me in this or this, liked it a lot. This is ironic since I bought it only to wear around a friend who ridiculed the gray hat every time it showed up in the highlights on SportsCenter. Around him (and only around him), I defended it as the height of good taste. I wouldn't let him talk any smack on the gray hat. (He's a Braves fan with very different feelings about Francisco Cabrera.) Like a lot of things from the late 1990s, the gray hat was phased out pretty quickly and quietly and no one mourned its passing. This thing is so rare these days, I can't find a picture of it for a link. I doubt Mitchell & Ness will be on it any time soon.

Here's a great but not too recently updated website on the history of the Pirates uniform. A lot of people think the red in the alternate unis is a new thing, but in ye olden days when I walked to school uphill both ways in the snow "Pirates" was written across the chest in red script.

Rally parrot

Didn't think it would take too long for one of these to show up on eBay. Not a bad way to try to make something of an otherwise forgettable interleague matchup.

Tonight's lineup

Facing John Lackey, a 25-year-old righthander who has been pretty mediocre for the last month or so:

Kendall
Wilson
Ward RF
Wilson LF
Mackowiak 3B
Simon 1B
Hill 2B
Redman

Wilson played right when we had Mondesi, because left is deeper and bigger in PNC. So Craig Wilson appears to get the nod as the superior fielder over Daryle Ward. Mackowiak starts at third; yesterday he didn't start since the team faced a left-hander and he probably needs some rest for his shoulder and knee. Simon gets another chance tonight, and so does Redman. Hill could see more time at 2B if he plays and hits well tonight & it's true as some have reported that the Pirates are leaning toward returning Castillo to Nashville.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a big night from one of Simon, Hill, and Redman. Here's hoping that Fogg throws six good innings, too.

Jason Bay started yesterday against the lefty Washburn and struck out four times. He's out tonight probably because of that and probably because he's a right-handed batter and lefthanded batters have gobbled up Lackey this year. Hence Ward, Mackowiak, Simon, Hill, and Redman all get in tonight's lineup. With Hill a switch-hitters the lineup runs R, R, L, R, L, L, S, L. McClendon has to feel good about his matchups.

Meet Joe Blog

We're not totally biased. Just a little drunk. Sometimes.

Oliver Perez

Has that Amish beard look going on again.

Do the batters find that intimidating?

Sanders a class act

Photo here.

...Brian D at Cardinalate compares Reggie to Barbie's Ken and has this link to Sanders' modest home. Yowza.

Zach Duke

Clay writes to tell us all to check his K/BB ratio down at Lynchburg. Good eye, Clay. His pro career stats here. His career record as a pro is now at 25-10. Paul Meyer answers a question about the 6'2" 200-pound lefthander in today's Q&A. A little Google finds this gem that we missed in early May. Here's what Graham said about him then:

"He's throwing a lot of pitches for srikes, and more improtantly, he's commanding his fastball and throwing his curve for strikes at all counts," Pirates farm director Brian Graham said. "He's definitely pitching the way we hoped he would. It's still early in the season. You certainly don't want to get too happy in April and you definitely don't want to be sad in August. You want to teach a pitcher to perform through 24-25 starts in a season. He keeps doing things we hoped he would, and he's certainly doing it very well."

Winston-Salem Manager Ken Dominguez had this review after Duke beat his Warthogs earlier this month:

Zach Duke started for the Hillcats. Duke, a left-hander who improved to 7-2, entered with a league-leading 1.15 earned-run average. Duke has struck out 68 and walked 11 in 602/3 innings this season, and is 3-0 against the Warthogs.

"He commands both sides of the plate with his fastball and he gets his breaking ball and changeup over effectively and in situations," Dominguez said. "He didn't have his best stuff tonight but you have to give him credit. He battled. I've seen him pitch a lot better against us but he kept his team in the game."

They will move this guy once this year and maybe next year he can come to Spring Training and compete for a job at Nashville.

...Dayn Perry at Baseball Prospectus adds that Duke pitches in what might be "the best hitter's park in the Carolina League." He continues: Duke "rarely reaches 90 with his fastball, but it has good movement and has been more than enough to complement one of the best curveballs in the minors." There's more in his report, check it out if you have a subscription.

Need help with pick 'em pool

Picking NFL winners SU & ATS is one of life's great joys around here. We'd like to do a big pool this fall and invite all our readers to compete against us. Can anyone recommend a good free service? Yahoo? USAToday? CBS Sportsline? Anyone tried various free options & have wisdom to share? If so, leave it here in comments or send an email to honestwagner at yahoo dot com

Sometimes it takes two bottles

John Perrotto seems to anticipate some kind of roster shake-up though he was not successful at getting a bunch of quotes supporting that expectation. Still, the Pirates will have to make some kind of move when J.J. Davis is finished his rehab assignment, and they may decide they've seen enough of Tike Redman, Chris Stynes, and/or Randall Simon.

Quote of the day from Mac:

McClendon said he spent most of Monday's off day considering ways to improve the team after a 1-8 road trip to Chicago, Texas and Oakland.

"I looked for answers," McClendon said. "Unfortunately, they weren't all in the same bottle."

Big Ben looks ready

From the Sounds recap of yesterday's doubleheader:

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ top prospect has posted a 1.99 ERA (9er/40.2ip) over his last six starts after logging an 8.13 mark over his first six outings this season."

Sean Burnett and John Van Benschoten will have a chance to surprise in PNC this year.

My finger

The Bucs will learn more about Kip's middle finger today when he flashes it to the medical staff.

Big J.J. Davis, rehabbing his crooked finger at Nashville, hit a bunch of home runs.

Bobby Hill

From Paul Meyer's Pirates report:

Bobby Hill has played second base and third base for the Pirates -- and his role might be expanded in the future. There's some sentiment in the organization for working out Hill in the outfield. "His bat is valuable," manager Lloyd McClendon said.

Are they thinking centerfield? That's a good place for a high-OBP leadoff-hitting-type guy.

Meyer today

Ernest Hemingway Paul Meyer answers the is-he-incompetent question about David Littlefield.

When we judge the most recent crop of offseason signings, we can't forget Jose Mesa and Daryle Ward and Ruben Mateo and Chris Truby and Terry Shumpert and the other minor-league contracts. I'm not sure (& it's too early) to say if that's evidence for or against, but the recent free-agent signing record goes beyond Simon and Stynes and Mondesi.

Craig Wilson likes the nickname "Joe Dirt," if that fan is to be trusted.

Best stats geek ever

OK, I'm easing my way into the beat reporting after taking the weekend off to listen to Ray Charles and feel warm and fuzzy when the man sings about going down to the river to drown himself.

Brian O'Neill served up his best SG article to date today. It goes over the defense with the Zone Rating stat and makes a hell of a lot of sense if you've been following the team.

Not discussed is the possibility that moving all the players around so much contributes to the shoddy defense. Brian can't write about the sun and the moon in every article so that's not said as if I'm finding a fault with the essay. Still, I have this image in my mind of Craig Wilson and Rob Mackowiak looking at each other as a fly ball falls between them for a big hit. That kind of thing starts to happen less often as players get comfortable not just with one position but also with the irritating but predictable shortcomings of the dudes who play the neighboring positions. Is it harder on Craig Wilson when it's Bay, Redman, and Mackowiak taking turns in center? Maybe. Will he get over there and catch the ball after this happens two or three more times? For the love of God, I hope so.

Anyway, that's my case for expecting the defense to improve as the season wears on. One of these days, the Pirates will make some moves with the position players. There will be less giving a guy two more starts just to see if he can't get his OPS up over 600, and there will be more playing the same people in the same positions.

I don't know why I expect this to happen--I just do--we can't play the whole season like an exhibition for 2005. Or can we? Does Chris Truby get a long look once the Pirates discard Chris Stynes? I dunno.

...P.S. Truby is doing his part to look like he deserves a chance. After tearing it up in March, I wrote that the Bucs should send him to AAA to prove his improvement was for real. So far so good for Truby at Nashville.

Mateo picture

Here is a picture to download, print, frame, and hang in your drinking room.

Shorter version of today's posts

I put up two posts today - one on the pitching, one on the hitting - and took them down because the tables were breaking the blog in some browsers.

Send an email to honestwagner at yahoo dot com if you'd like to receive them as an email.

Here's the shorter version for those who missed it: Pitching bad, defense bad?, hitting good.

Prediction

Bucs win tonight.

We have "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley" on in the Honest Wags clubhouse this afternoon. The Bucs can sneak this one past the Angels.

...aww, rats. I should have realized the guy gets caught sneaking Sally through the alley in that song. The Pirates hung around until the end, but not so many fans left the park wondering how soon they could come again.

It's the Pirates

I reject this line of thought unequivocally.

This is the Pittsburgh Pirates. The national media want to make the franchise into some kind of Arizona Cardinals of MLB. That's bullshit. This is more the-sun-will-never-rise talk. It's pure bullshit.

Every team goes through a losing streak at some point in the season. And of course Mac needs a day or two off right now to listen to eight solid hours of Ray Charles. But none of this means that the Pirates are now synonymous with futility.

5 World Championships, 9 Pennants, and 14 Playoff Appearances. Even a team like the Philadelphia Phillies can only claim 1 World Championship, 5 Pennants, and 9 Playoff Appearances. The Pirates are not the Arizona Cardinals of baseball.

They will win again. They will have winning streaks. And they will finish a season above .500 before anyone outside Pittsburgh predicts it or expects it.

Find some other franchise for your pollyanna, existential driveling. I'd suggest the Colorado Rockies if you national media types must indulge in this kind of gloating. In the meantime, know that we resent your piling on in this way. It's not original, it's not accurate, it's not interesting, it's not helpful, and it's not welcome. Send your paparazzi to some other car wreck.

The Bucs lost eight in a row. So what? The season isn't over by a long stretch.

Sunday's game

OK, the Bucs were destroyed again yesterday as Mark Mulder took Kip Wells to pitching school. Mulder used less than 100 pitches to go eight innings. Wells threw 113 in four and a third. He walked two, which is not good for four innings' work, and gave up eleven hits and two home runs. From the box score, I can't tell if he was nibbling again or just throwing the ball where the A's could hit it hard. He must have faced about 25 batters. Either way, he's now up to 19.1 pitches per three outs. This, for those of you keeping score at home, sucks. If the Bucs are fortunate enough to get 3300 pitches out of Wells this year, at this pace he'll give them 172 season-destroying innings. When you think of "present and future ace," hopefully your expectations are a little higher than Brett Tomko. The Pirates had one error and what might be their best infield defense (with Stynes-Wilson-Castillo) on the field. Unless the outfield defense was clumsy or porous, Wells probably can't hang any responsibility for that outing on his defense. I'll go out on a limb now and predict that Kip Wells is not getting another one-year, $2.5M contract from the Pirates, not when Tomko will be available for $1.5M. I'm not saying the Pirates should give up on Wells. Hell no, just the opposite. And I'm not endorsing any kind of punishment for Wells. That's stupid and would make the situation worse. The coaches have to work with him and see if they can help him to pitch better. The fans should back off and give him time and space to find himself again. Meanwhile, everyone should know that he's not pitching like an ace and the Bucs obviously are not getting much ROI on the deal they gave him at the beginning of the year.

Other observations: No one got hit by a pitch. Maybe that nonsense will stop before someone gets their forearm fractured. Rotowire tells me Mackowiak left with a bruised shoulder. Hopefully he can relax today, listen to eight solid hours of Ray Charles, and feel well enough to play some tomorrow.

The A's put 34,000 fans in the seats. No doubt every one of them left thinking, "How soon can I get back to the ballpark?"

Can't say I look forward to catching up on the beat writing.

Three months from yesterday the Steelers host the Raiders in the NFL season opener. Mmm, Steelers.

More later on the fact that the Bucs are 5-14 over the last three weeks.

Ray Charles today

No Pirates today for me ... I'll catch the box score Monday morning.

I spent the day listening to Ray Charles. I set the iPod to shuffle through all the Ray Charles tracks and we listened for half the day. Genius + Soul = Jazz, Legends in Music, Modern Sounds in Country and Western, the Essential Collection, and four or five beaten old LPs that I ripped several years ago with a turntable and a strawberry iMac.

At the end, we heard "Alone in the City" - with that haunting refrain, "Won't you help me, yeah, tell me / What will become of me" - and then it went silent. For some reason I thought there would be more but we had listened to everything we have. I got up to re-start the playlist but sat down. Of course it was right that the music would stop before we were ready, and it was appropriate to let the stereo go silent. We were half an hour or so from a thunderstorm. We sat out on the porch, watched lightning bugs, and listened to the wind in the trees.