Game 13: Brewers at Pirates

Morton and Bush at seven. The delirium of this mid-April wild card race makes it hard to know who to trade.

Game 12: Reds at Pirates

Arroyo and Maholm at 1:35pm. Bucs are a game out of first and a half-game back for the wild card.

Forecast high around 50 with a chance of sun toward the end of the game.

Game 11: Reds at Pirates

Burres and Cueto at seven. Bucs must win to stay in the thick of the wild card race.

Game 10: Reds at Pirates

Cy Young candidate Zach Duke vs. Leake at seven. Bucs need a win to stay in contention.

Game 9: Pirates at Giants

Morton and Sanchez at 3:45. The Bucs are 4-4 and just 1.5 games out of first.

Game 8: Pirates at Giants

Maholm and Cain underway. Bucs up 2-0 in the third after the Iwamura jack.

Game 7: Pirates at Giants

Ohlendorf and Zito after your bedtime. Rain likely, rainout possible.

Game 6: Pirates at D'backs

McCutchen and Jackson at 4pm EST.

Wild-card berth could be on the line here.

Game 5: Pirates at D-backs

Duke and Haren starting soon. After only a two day exposure to ALD (Adam LaRoche Disease), the Bucs are starting to appear symptomatic.

Game 4: Pirates at D-backs

Morton and the first-place Bucs vs. Rodrigo Lopez at 9:40.

Game 3: Dodgers at Pirates

Maholm and the undefeated Bucs vs. Billingsley at 12:35. Given the events that have transpired, it doesn't seem too early to start entertaining the notion of Jonezilla, 2010 NL MVP.

Game 2: Dodgers at Pirates

Ohlendorf and Kershaw at seven. Bucs need a win to stay undefeated.

First Place

Nice view up here.

Game 1: Dodgers at Pirates

Duke vs. Vicente Padilla in the season opener at 1:35.

HW 2010 Readers' Poll

It's time. Please humor us in the comments with your predictions for:

1. How many wins?
2. Who gets traded first?
3. 2010 Whipping Boy?
4. How could the Bucs win 82 games?

Feel free to share any other predictions as well. I'll start.

1. A variety of other sources have predicted shades of suck ranging from 62 to 75 wins. Walking the earth, not tied down to any beer fort, I'm optimistic for a significant improvement over last year's effort: 67 wins.

2. Vazquez. Then Doumit, Dotel, Crosby and Church.

3. Tougher call than most years. LaRoche? Clement?

4. Milledge, Cutch, Jones, LaRoche, then Alvarez all go berserk. Ohlendorf gets the team hooked on some kind of secret PED made for farm animals? MLB surprisingly announces that the season will be extended to a 262 game format?

End of spring training

Pretty exciting stuff maybe.

Morgan Ensberg

Best baseball stuff I've read in a long time. Kudos.

the ZiPS

I held out as long as I could, hoping to prevent May burnout and disappointment. But now I am reading the ZiPS and starting to look at this team more critically.

They don't look good or likely to be good but the entertainment factor looks higher than in previous years.

Spring Training continues

They keep playing those spring training games.

Realignment

I read Tom Verducci's report about realignment talk with great interest. I had my own ideas about realignment not long ago.

Something has to be done. Baseball is broken as it is, and it's dying a slow death I think.

Realignment in tiers makes a lot of sense. I like the idea. I could see a league where teams move up and down levels based mainly on last year's win/loss records. The players are already doing it; the better ones graduate to the same few teams. Divisions could be more balanced at the start of the season to reflect the reality created by baseball's lack of a salary cap.

Baseball being what it is, it's quite possible that the playoff winner in the junior circuit could beat the playoff winner in the big-bucks circuit. For a game or two or even a best-of-seven series if, say, the junior circuit champion has a pair of ace starters. People would like that. If the old highly paid guys can't fend off the upstarts, they don't deserve the ring.

Realign the divisions based on geography and payroll, reduce the amount of interdivision and interleague play, and come September there will be a variety of teams with winning records. Young upstart teams and old highly-paid teams. There would be great interest in the playoffs. And no market would need to suffer through 20 consecutive years of losing seasons.

One more thing. For the love of God, get the Pirates out of sharing a division with Houston. There is nothing I hate more than all those games in Houston. It's friggin' stupid. Bismarck, North Dakota is closer to Pittsburgh than friggin' Houston.