Game 63: Pirates at Giants

Ian Snell vs. Noah Lowry at 4:05 PM EST. Craig in RF batting fifth vs. the LHP. Average age of today's offenses: Pirates 27, Giants 36. Today's game is huge, as the Bucs are only two games out of fifth place.

Game 62: Pirates at Giants

In progress. Jason Bay just homered to put the Pirates up 3-2 in the top of the fourth. Santos gave back his first lead of the game; here's to him and others holding this second lead until Mike "I don't read the standings" Gonzalez can come in to slam the door.

All-Star Voting

Jason Bay currently leads all NL OF with his 1.056 OPS. Despite this statistical domination, as of the last voting results, Bay is 9th in NL OF All-Star voting. Freddy leads the NL with his .351 batting average, but is 7th in NL 3B OPS. I still wrote in Freddy, and voted for the supremely deserving Jason Bay, 25 times earlier today. It doesn't take long to vote 25 times with the online ballot, which can be found at the Pirates official web page. If you have ten minutes and haven't already, do the right thing and at least vote for Bay (25 times).

Distaste for Failure

Steelers wrapped up minicamp today, with players off until July 28th for training camp. Joey Porter should be ready to participate fully in drills during training camp.

Cowher also spit out that the Steelers need to remain focused on the season ahead. "I don't like losing," Cowher said. "You develop a distaste for failure and I think that drives you more than wanting to be recognized for your success."

I wonder if Cowher is a Pirates fan, and if so, how he'd describe the taste the Bucs leave behind.

Game 61: Pirates at Giants

Duke and Cain, ten o'clock. The Pirates have lost their last two series. Like the Padres, the Giants choose this series to rest their best player. Bonds, who had been playing through pain, will sit and let the JV handle his usual duties. Hopefully the Bucs can make them pay for that.

Bones note (10:10 PM): The game thread and comments at McCovey Chronicles are interesting. They're not talking at all about the Bucs, but instead are talking about drinking. And haikus. My favorite is:

Pirouette Barry
Like a dancer with the stars
Shake it, shake that ass

Game 60: Pirates at Rockies

Day game - three o'clock start. Oliver Perez and Josh Fogg.

Long-term love

Can someone explain the end of this comment by Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus:

Given a second chance at a Craig Wilson type with Ryan Doumit, they pushed him to switch positions and ended up with a recurring hamstring problem for the promising youngster. The team continues to push for Kip Wells’ return after vascular surgery this spring despite a wealth of pitching. Sure, some of the pitching is problematic and inconsistent, but the addition of Wells isn’t going to change much besides adding numbers. With this and the Jody Gerut and Chris Duffy situations, the Pirates aren’t going to get a lot of long-term love from the players they’ll need to turn things around in the future.

I'm all about the long-term love, so I want to know.

Game 59: Pirates at Rockies

Maholm and Francis (sporting a surprising low ERA for a Rockie) at nine.

...aw shit, Stats Geek predicts what? Only if they read the standings every day.

...saw this coming. I admit, my man-love for Sean Casey clouds my judgment of this proposed extension.

Brad Lincoln

Jim Callis of BA reports:

A source familiar with the negotiations says the teams and the players that will be picks at Nos. 2-3-4 have agreed to financial parameters. The Rockies will give Stanford righthander Greg Reynolds $3.25 million; the Devil Rays will pay Long Beach State third baseman Evan Longoria $3 million; and the Pirates will dole out $2.75 million to Houston righthander Brad Lincoln.

Keep your fingers crossed.

UPDATE (2:00 PM): It's official. Welcome aboard, Brad. The Phils took Kyle Drabek with the 18th pick.

Draft Today

Bucs pick fourth overall. Who will we take? The consensus opinion as of a few days ago was that Andrew Miller, Evan Longoria, and Brad Lincoln will go 1-2-3, leaving the Bucs with a college pitcher like Greg Reynolds. However, that sequence is far from set as the Royals have been rumored to be considering RHP Luke Hochevar and possibly even OF Drew Stubbs.

Perhaps it's along these lines that Paul Meyer is predicting that the Pirates "almost certainly" will take RHP Brad Lincoln from the University of Houston. I hope Meyer's right.

Baseball America predicts Bullingtonesque RHP Greg Reynolds of Stanford, Cal's RHP Brandon Morrow, or high schooler Clayton Kershaw. SI is predicting RHP Daniel Bard from UNC.

Draft starts at 1 PM EST.

On Hope

Admittedly, it's tempting to succumb to the learned helplessness that the past 14 years has reinforced and hope the Pirates don't draft anyone good. Then we'd be spared future pain (e.g. losing the good players in the Rule V draft while the 40-man roster lists only 37 men, trading the good players away for a Matt-Herges-type who will inexplicably be released later, etc). But with all the winning of late, I dare to dream. By 2010, perhaps DL will: be terminated by a new owner that values winning, graciously resign, or have his severed head (on stick) jubilantly hoisted above a lawless mob that has overtaken PNC. Anyway, there's a chance that by 2010 the Bucs could be contenders, and that a new ownership group and GM could coach this year's draft to a championship. Never surrender your dreams. All hail hope!

Doumit's torn hammy

Out six to eight weeks. Hammy "completely torn". Ouch. Get well, Ryan.

Game 58: Pirates at Rockies

Snell and Cook in about an hour.

Freddy

DK brings the good news:

"We're going to keep [Sanchez] there at third," Littlefield said... "If Freddy's going to hit .350, I think he should be playing third base"

Me too. Duh. Randa's 2006 OPS is .559 vs. Freddy's .896. All hail Freddy!

Game 57: Padres at Pirates

Former Pirate prospect Chris Young faces Victor Santos in today's rubber match.

The Pirates are 21-35 with a .375 winning percentage.

... expect the trade rumors to be going more as we move through June. Also, check out the numbers for Alex Rios. The Jays offered him for Paul Maholm this offseason. The year before, the Jays declined to send Rios to Pittsburgh for Craig Wilson.

Game 56: Padres at Pirates

The Padres rest Jake Peavy and send instead a 25-year-old right-handed rookie named Mike Thompson. Peavy has some kind of shoulder owie that causes pain without affecting his ability to dominate. This may or may not be a case of an opposing club starting their JV against the 20-35 Pirates. If the Friars were in San Francisco, perhaps they would also skip or push back Peavy at this point in the season. There's no way to tell. Regardless, the Bucs catch a break here.

The Pirates send Zach Duke to the mound. Game on at seven o'clock.

Wins and losses

Dejan Kovacevic, PG beat writer, has found the problem underlying all our Pirate woes:

Sean Casey opened his morning newspaper yesterday and turned to a page he previously considered off limits.

"Yeah, I actually checked out the standings," he said with a big laugh. "I get the feeling that, hopefully, we're climbing up and wanted to see where we were. Hopefully, I'll get back into checking them every day."

Casey and others in the Pirates' clubhouse acknowledged avoiding the standings for most of the opening two months.

"It wasn't something I wanted to look at," reliever Mike Gonzalez said. "We were losing and losing, and it would bring you down to see it."

. . .

"The standings are something I don't even concern myself with," [Craig Wilson] said. "You've still got to go out and play the game the same way. I guess you could say that, later in the summer, if you're still in it, the standings become more interesting."

So, how long has this been going on? The Pirates must be one of three or four teams made up of players who do not look at the standings every morning. They have no good understanding of why they are 20-35 because they do not know (a) that they are 20-35 and (b) what it means to be 20-35. You can't know 20-35 without knowing 20-34. You have to study these things to learn.

That said, it should be easy enough to fix.

If I'm an owner, the GM, or a coach, I call Mike Gonzalez tomorrow morning and have a nice long talk about exactly where the Pirates stand. Then I call him the next day and talk about the standings some more. There is so much to learn from the standings. I talk about why Colorado is 27-27. And why they are in last place. "Do you think they will go up, Mike, or do you think they will go down? Do you think we are as good as Colorado? If you do not know today, I will ask again on Tuesday, after you play them." I talk about why Detroit is 36-19. I talk about why the Pirates are 20-35. Every day I talk about the standings.

Some days I talk about the schedule too. "How can we get four wins next week, Mike?" I demand specific answers.

There's nothing else worth talking about. No individual accomplishment merits any respect in the context of 20-35. If the players are serious about improving their won-loss record, they should, you know, study the won-loss records. If the coaches are serious about improving the won-loss record, they should, maybe, lecture about the won-loss records.

It's not going to fix itself. If the team is going to fix it, the team has to look at it.

Game 55: Padres at Pirates

Chan Ho Park and Oliver Perez at seven. Weather permitting.

I'm headed out to the mall to buy some more Steelers Super Bowl XL merchandise. Enjoy yourselves, everybody. It is a Friday in June.

Lasorda's dove

Gene Collier wrote a gentle, dovish lecture urging Tracy to not spare the rod and spoil the children.

People regard loyalty like it's a prime good. Not so. There is good loyalty and there is bad loyalty. The Pirates have a bad loyalty problem. They curl up in their little cocoon of a mutual admiration society. They don't come out. They remain far too comfortable while the team falls far, far below .500. Oddly patient in many wrong places, they stand in the pouring rain for a week or two expecting sunnier weather.

Now they've won six of seven after losing four straight. And they swagger like conquering heroes. Is that right?

Not 26-28

All hail the sweep of the Brewers, who are falling apart as management debates the old shit-or-get-off-the-pot question with Carlos Lee.

The Bucs scored some runs in a hurry the last week or so, raising their "RPI" index to .483. You'd think they'd be a 26-28 team, in other words, with this many runs scored and that many runs allowed.

It doesn't work that way, however. We can't expect any kind of one-run luck to "even out." They have fallen, and they have to get up.

The record is more like a bank account, and the Pirates are heavily in debt. They are 14 games below .500 today. 20 wins, 34 losses. No amount of playing great lately changes that.

Can they get back to .500? It's going to be like watching a young man pay off his student loans while making $500 a week. I have no doubt this group of players is capable of playing .500 ball for a long stretch of time, especially if they start that stretch as a doormat. But can they win 14 straight? And I've said before, in my most angry and bitter April moods, that we could expect them to win 9 of 12 at some point. Even the worst teams do that from time to time. What happens afterwards? How soon, for example, do they go out on the road and get swept in a series?

The individual games are great fun, but the sober second look at the morning standings suggests the illusion of playing better baseball is just that, an illusion. The RPI is horseshit. Freddy Sanchez's batting average is horseshit. Jose Castillo's and Jason Bay's home runs are horseshit. All that matters is the real standings.

On June 2, and they are 14 games under .500. That's heavy in debt.