Pittsburgh could be next stop for Indy Pitchers

(From Minorleaguebaseball.com)

Duke, Snell stay on track by keeping hitters off balance

DURHAM, N.C. -- One is a small right-hander with a lightning bolt of an arm. The other is a lefty who epitomizes pitchability.

One is a guy who rings up strikeouts, who's constantly proven people who don't think he can be a starter wrong. The other is a fast-tracker who's gone from A-ball to Triple-A in less than a year.

Somehow, despite these differences, Ian Snell and Zach Duke have become close friends. Snell is the ying to Duke's yang. Duke is the zen to Snell's zing. The immediate beneficiary of this odd couple is the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians. The long-term rewards could go to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and soon, because the one thing Snell and Duke have done similarly is get International League hitters out.
More at Minorleagebaseball.com

Name the Team

The Altoona Curve are holding a "Name the Team" contest to name the A-Short Season team that they will own and run in State College PA starting in 2006.
To submit a name go to State College Baseball.com and click on the link for Name the Team.

Bucs take 1st 2 against the Fish

The Pirates are off to a good start to their current home stand taking the 1st two games against the Florida Marlins.

Monday afternoon they managed to come back to tie the game and force extra innings to win in the 10th 3-2. The Pirates were down 2-1 in the 8th until an error by the 1st baseman allowed Jack Wilson to arrive safely at 1st, scoring Castillo to tie things up. Then in the bottom of the 10th the Pirates scored the winning run with a Sanchez single to right field off Marlins reliever Todd Jones.

Tuesday it was more of the same with the Pirates coming back from one run deficits twice during the game to hold on for the win 5-4. Medows earned the win for his 1st of the season and Mesa held things steady in the 9th for his 14th save of the season.

The Pirates will try for 3 in a row Wednesday as they take on the Marlins again at 7:05.

Weekly vs 2004 for May 30th

Each Monday I will look back and see how the Pirates are doing in comparison to last year in wins vs losses and calendar date in compairison to wins. Just thought it would be interesting to track this as the season progresses.

The Pirates as of Monday at noon were 48 games into the season:

21 - 27 = Current W-L at this point
23 - 25 = W -L at this point in 2004

Date that it took to reach number of wins in 2004: May 28th

So we were two games worse at this point then we were in 2004.

Best Rivalry

Best rivalry in Baseball? Not the Yankees - Red Sox according to one writer. Which rivalry does he favor? Pirates - Reds of course! Read his opinion on the matter.
ESPN Page2

M&M, Mackowiak hot in May

Comming into last night's game Rob Mackowiak owned a Major League-leading .412 batting average in May. He is batting .333 this season and has nearly as many walks (14) as he does strikeouts (22).

For More on this go to
Pirates.com

Great to be at Great American

Seems the Pirate's good luck at Great American Ballpark continues as the Pirates stoped there skid with a 8 to 4 win over the hapless Reds. Ward and Lawton both hit home runs in the game, Lawton's being one of his 3 hits for the night and Rob Makowiak's bat remained hot as well with 3 hits of his own. Perez's comeback tour continued last night as well being strong in 5+ innings of work.

The Pirates hope to make it 2 in a row tonight as they face off for game 2 at 7:10 with a chance to pull into a tie for 3rd with the Cubs with a win and a Cubbies loss.

Power Outage

Seems like the Pirates have reverted back to their hitting but not scoring ways while in St. Louis. Kind of bad when you get atleast one hit in all but one inning but only get one run out of them. Hopefully things get turned around here quickly before they backslide too much in the division and makes it harder to keep the idle fan interested

Weekly vs 2004

ach Monday I will look back and see how the Pirates are doing in comparison to last year in wins vs losses and calendar date in compairison to wins. Just thought it would be interesting to track this as the season progresses.

The Pirates as of Monday Afternoon are 41 games into the season:

19 - 22 = Current W-L at this point
20 - 21 = W -L at this point in 2004

Date that it took to reach number of wins in 2004: May 22th

So we are one game worse at this point then we were in 2004, and won our 19th game basically on the same date.

Packing them in.

This past weekend the Pirates had over 90,000 in attendance for the 3 games against Colorado. While it was mostly due to Fireworks on Friday and Oliver Perez Bobbleheads on Saturday, they did also manage to get over 20,000 to show up for Sunday's game, traditionally a day that they average somewhere in the mid teens. Another Promising sign was that on Saturday people while getting their bobbles actually stayed around for the game, not the usual "its a sell out but you can see there are 8,000 empty seats" that the promotion games have been lately.

Is this a sign of good things to come crowd-wise if they stay fairly competitive and hovering in the 2nd to 4th place area in the standings? Let’s hope so!

Attendance Figures
Fri: 31,656
Sat: 37,504
Sun: 20,853

Two Outta Three Aint Bad?

The Pirates managed two wins out of three games with the Rockies this weekend winning Friday, 9 to 4, and Saturday, 8 to 3, but lost a close one today 4 to 3. Overall things went well all in all this weekend mainly because this was one of the few times that when presented with a large home crowd they performed well. Friday night's game had over 31,000 and Saturday was a sell-out and the Pirates hit and hit often in both games.

The Pirates fell behind 4 to 1 in the middle of Sunday's game and staged a comeback in the 9th inning but came up short only being able to cut into the 3 run lead by 2 runs. The Pirates are on the road all this week with games against the Cardinals and the Reds before returning home on Memorial Day to face the Marlins.

Pirates Prepare

The Pirates will try to put the two game series against the Cubs and the two blown saves behind them as they will host the NL West Colorado Rockies (12-26) this weekend for a 3 game series. They open Friday night at 7:05 where Jamey Wright (2-3 6.31) will go up against Mark Redman (2-3 3.44) as they both will attempt to even up their record for the season.

Blown Saves

Just my thoughts about the blown saves by Mesa here so bear with me. While yes Mesa should not blow 2 saves in a row, one had to assume that at some point he was bound to at least blow one. Additionally the fact that a large proportion of the Pirates wins this year have been due to a save significantly raises the odds of a loss due to a blown save.
We can point a finger at Mesa and try to blame him for the losses and yes in a technicality he is responsible for the two losses, he entered the game in the top of the 9th with the Pirates ahead. But it also masks the greater problem that being the Pirates, while they have improved some of late, having problems with run production thus far this season. Case in point, Weds, bases loaded bottom of the 9th one out.... and Jack Wilson hits into a double play, one of many that game. So a good way to eliminate the worries of blown saves is maybe to try to not make every win attempt be a save as well.

From the Writer

I apologize for the lack of postings the past 2 days. I had intended to update last night but I did not get home from work untill after 8:30. Stay tuned tonight for updates.

Weekly vs 2004 Status

Each Monday I will look back and see how the Pirates are doing in comparison to last year in wins vs losses and calendar date in compairison to wins. Just thought it would be interesting to track this as the season progresses.

The Pirates as of Monday Afternoon are 36 games into the season:

17 - 19 = Current W-L at this point
17 - 19 = W -L at this point in 2004

Date that it took to reach number of wins in 2004: May 16th

Yes you read that right we at 36 games in are equal to last year's record at this point, the win number on the 16th was with 18 losses it took the Pirates untill the 19th last year to get 36 games in due to the high number of rain outs in April and May.

A Good Weekend in the End!

The Pirates, thanks to 2 wins in a row over the Brewers, are now in sole possession of 3rd place in the NL Central with a game up on Chicago and just a game behind Milwaukee. It was good to see them string 2 wins together at home for the fans and hopefully they will gain some distance over the Cubs this week with their 2 game series staring on Tuesday. I apologize for the skimpy post but was having some computer issues today and I am going to go back to getting things all back to normal here.

Plans Final for new Ballpark

The Penn State Board of Trustees on Friday gave approval to the final plans for the new ballpark to be built on campus that will be used by both the University and also a new short season A minor leage team to be owned by the Altoona Curve.

The team is more then likely going to play in the NY-Penn leage and one would think if owned by the Curve would then become the Pirates Short-A affilate as well.

For the full story read more at PSU Live.com


Artist Rendering, Click to Enlarge

Confines not so Friendly

The Pirates home woes continued Friday night as the visiting Brewers downed the Bucs 4-3. The loss was charged to closer Jose Mesa, who surrendered an RBI double to Geoff Jenkins after two outs in the ninth that put the Brewers up by a run.

The Pirates hope to get a rare home win tonight as they face the Brewers for game 2 at 7:05. Its umbrella night at the ballpark and as it seems right now, that might be very apporpriate with the weather as hopefully they manage to get the game in.

Road Worthy! 2 of 3 against SF!

These late games followed by a day game make it hard to write about them in a timely manner here! But I am in a good gushing type mood so this will be less newsy and more opinion like. Well that and also I am a tad worn down from work today, staying up for 2 west coast games takes its toll on one, well that and not going right to bed when they are over, that did not help either.

Seems that this road trip is what the Pirates needed, they got good pitching most every night and the hitting has picked up as of late too. Sure there were a few down games, like the Monday night game in SF where we could not get runs, but all in all it was a good road trip. Heard on the radio today that we already have over 20 home runs for the month, which when you consider we had 11 in ALL OF APRIL, thats a good improvement.

Hopefully the Pirates winning ways will continue when they get back home for their Friday night game against the Brew-Crew. Thursday is an off-day so I will try to catch up on things here and have some additional reflections and info-bits.

Perez to Miss Start

Pirates Pitcher Oilver Perez will miss his next sheduled start on Wednesday due to tenderness in his arm. Details about if its from a specific injury or a use issue are not clear at this point.

Bats Silent

Another outstanding outing by Pirates pitcher Mark Redman was for naught as the Pirates managed but one run on 6 hits against Brett Tomko in a 2-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants last night. Redman had the 1st complete game of the season for the Pirates giving up just 6 hits and only 2 walks but the Pirates were not able to get him the win.

This game closely mirrored the last game he pitched against the Giants last week in Pittsburgh where a lack of run production doomed an otherwise good performance to earning him an L and not the W. The Pirates hope to even things up in the city by the bay tonight when they take on the Giants for game 2 of 3 at 10:10PM.


Mark Redman and Brett Tomko both
pitched complete games Monday night.

C Wilson out 6-8

Looks like Craig Wilson will be out a little longer then just the 15 day DL. Wilson suffered an injury to his hand in Friday's game in Arizona and after further examination will need surgery on it. Wilson tore tissue in his middle knuckle of his left hand and will be operated on by Dr. Mark Baratz at AGH hospital.

The Perez Issue

A Little something to think about on a Monday:

The current consensus out there is that the problem Perez is having currently is that he is trying to be something that at this point of his career he is not. The Pirates have had him change his style some to be less of a bring-the-heat-all-the-time pitcher and more of a finesse pitcher so to try to get more innings out of him to a start. While this is a good idea on paper, more innings out of a start, where is the good in getting an extra inning out of him, but giving up 3 or 4 more runs?

Perez currently is a strike-out pitcher, not a pick at the corners and work the count pitcher and the Pirates need to take that into consideration. Its almost as if the Pirates want to achieve changing everything all at once, more innings, less walks, more targeting of pitches, all right now all at the same time. The problem being of course is that where in the past he relied on just blowing the ball past a batter, now they are asking him to try to work a 3rd pitch into his pitches and paint the corners of the plate with some sweeping curve balls. Which don’t always sweep, and don’t always curve and then tend to end up about 450 feet away in right-center.

The more prudent thing for them to do would be to maybe accentuate one area, maybe less walks if they wish or slowly developing a 3rd pitch. But in genral the control will come with age as he matures, he is after all still a young pitcher. And this approach will aid him then when his speed trails off some as he ages and he can't simply blow the ball past batters all the time. But to try to make him into a low walk and control oriented pitcher almost overnight is simply not working.

Weekly vs 2004 Report

Each Monday I will look back and see how the Pirates are doing in comparison to last year in wins vs losses and calendar date in compairison to wins. Just thought it would be interesting to track this as the season progresses.

The Pirates as of Monday Afternoon are 30 games into the season:

13 - 17 = Current W-L at this point
13 - 17 = W -L at this point in 2004

Date that it took to reach number of wins in 2004: May 11th*

*I know that the date that a win total is achieved does not really reflect alot, just thought it might be interesting. That and handy and seeing how many rain-outs one year might have over another.

Pirates Broadside DBacks 16-2

In one game the Pirates managed to put up on the board a number that looks more like a 3 or 4 game running total then a single game output as they managed to 16 runs of 17 hits Sunday afternoon in Arizona. Aided by a 5 run 8th and a 7 run 9th.

The Pirates had 3 home runs during the game with Wiggington getting his with his 1st of 3 hits in the game in the 2nd inning and Ward with a 3 run shot in the 9th. By far the most impressive was Lawton's grand slam in the 8th inning that put the game away for the Pirates.

Wells pitched 7 strong innings giving up just 2 runs and 4 hits and was relieved by Grabow and Torres who pitched a scoreless inning each to close out the game. The Pirates play the Giants tonight at 10:00 where they hope to continue their winning ways.

Pirates Release Santiago

Today the Pirates released catcher Benito Santiago, who had been on the 15 day DL after getting a viral infection. Read about it and also the call up of outfielder Ray Sadler from Double-A Altoona at pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com

Pirates Edge Past Arizona and into 3rd

The Pirates last managed just 3 runs on 13 hits but that was enough to get the win as the Diamondbacks were only able to get 2 runs and 2 hits during the evening. The win brought the Pirates into a tie for 3rd in the division with Chicago and their record to 12-17. Josh Fogg pitched an excellent game giving up but one run, a solo shot homerun by Chad Tracy in the 5th inning, which was also the 1st hit of the game for Arizona. Gonzalez came in to pitch a scoreless 8th inning and Mesa earned his 11th save of the season while giving a run in the 9th.

While the Pirates did not manage to scrape together many runs there were some bright spots for the Bucco's bats as Lawton was 3 for 4 with an RBI and Mackowiak was 2 for 4 with a walk and a RBI. Lawton has managed to bring his average up to 286 and Makowiak is now batting a healthy 310 with a 755 on base percentage for the season. The Pirates close out their trip to Arizona today with the 4th game of the series.


Fogg Delivers in the 2nd

Streak Snapped, Perez Struggles

Oliver Perez's struggles continued Friday night, as he was responsible for all 8 Diamondback runs in the Pirate's 8-4 loss. Four of Arizona's runs were off home runs, a 3 run shot by Troy Glaus in the 3rd and a solo shot by Shawn Green in the 3rd.

There was some good news for the Pirates as Ward went 3 for 4 with one run and Lawton hit a solo home run in the 9th, so while not enough to win the Pirates did manage to scrape together some offence. The Pirates will try to make it 2-1 tonight when they play the 3rd of 4 games at 9:40.

Pirates win 3rd in a Row

The Pirates downed the Diamondbacks 6-2 tonight to run their win streak up to 3 games and improve their record to 10-16. Jack Wilson hit is 2nd homerun in as many nights, Bay and Castillo also added homeruns Bay before and Castillo after Wilson. In his 1st game back from injury Castillo was 3-4 with 2 RBIs.

This was the 1st win for the Pirates this season that did not involve a save situation for Jose Mesa as Mike Gonzalez pitched the 8th and 9th innings. The Diamondbacks had gone into the night with the best home record in baseball but the Pirate bats put a dent in that record tonight with 11 hits 6 runs and 3 home runs. The Pirates try to make it 4 in a row Friday Night at 9:40.


Bay's HR puts the
Pirates up 1-0

Castillo to be activated Thursday

Second baseman Jose Castillo is likely be activated from the 15-day disabled list on Thursday. Castillo's activation will require the Pirates to remove a player from their 25-man active roster, exactly who the Pirates are not commenting on as of yet.

Read more on this story at the Pirates website here.

Pirates out of Cellar

As of now, now being 11:25 Wednesday night the Pirates are NOT in last place. With their win and the Reds loss to the Cardinals the Pirates now have a half game advantage over the now last place Reds.

10s All Around

The Pirates got their 10th win of the season and Jose Mesa got his 10th save tonight as the Pirates beat the Astros 6-4 winning 2 in a row in Houston. The Pirates were efficient tonight getting their 6 runs with just 9 hits. The Pirates scored 3 runs in the 9th inning all off home runs with Ward hitting a one run HR and Bay a 2 run HR.

Other notable Pirates tonight were Robb Mackowiak who was 3 for 4 and Torres who pitched 2 scoreless innings and got the win. Houston closer Lidge both blew his first save of the year and also was credited with the loss.

The Pirates next travel to Arizona for a 4 game set against the Diamondbacks, starting tomorrow night at 9:40


Ward's HR in the 9th
puts the Pirates up 4-3

Mesa gets Delivery from DHL

Jose Mesa of the Pittsburgh Pirates was selected as the winner of "DHL Presents the Major League Baseball Delivery Man of the Month Award" for April, it was announced today. For the Full story follow this link to mlb.com

Perez is among the top says SI.com

SportsIllustrated.COM Top 20 Young Pitchers

Oliver Perez is 12th out of the Top 20 Young Pitchers according to SI.com. Granted if he does not start to have some better outtings he may not be in such a list for much longer. But neverless its one of the rare occasions that the Pirates have someone or something in a "top" list thats not a negative list.

Pirates Even it up in Houston

The Pirates bats came alive tonight, more specifically the Wilson's bats came alive as the Pirates beat the Astros 7 to 4 tonight with 14 hits. Both Craig and Jack hit their 1st home runs of the season and Craig was 4 for 4 with the homer a double and 2 singles. Mackiowiak was hitting well tonight as well going 3 for 5 and getting one RBI. With the win the Pirates have the 2nd highest run total of the season so far.

The win improves the Pirates to 9 -16 on the season and keeps them within 8 games of St. Louis who have broken from the pack for a 5 game lead over the 2nd place Cubs and Brewers.

The Pirates will face the Astros again tomorrow at 8:05 for the rubber match. Hopefully tonight's hitting is more of a sign of things to come and not just a freakish outburst of power.

Outage

I apologize for the lack of a post about yesterday's game, was having internet problems earlier tonight and then had to watch the game. That and wouldn't we all just like to pretend that the game on Monday never happened?

Pirates visit Astros for game 1of 3

The Pirates start a three game series against the Houston Astros tonight at 8:05 and try to put an end to their three game losing streak and end the Astros's winning streak at 2. Josh Fogg and Andy Pettitte both are trying to even out their 1-2 records, Fogg having missed his last two starts due to an ear infection and currently with an ERA of 2.45.

Houston while horrible on the road with only one win is 9-3 at home thus far this season and the Pirates are hoping for a reversal of the offensive slump that they were in for most of April. Here is hoping that May brings more then just flowers to the Bucos fortunes.

Additions to the Page!

With the Pirates playing not until later tonight I was able to make a change to the page and add a handy little window that puts up the standings frame from MLB.com for your convenience. The links all work in it too so when you click "Full Standings" it takes you to the MLB.com page. Also clicking AL or NL or Central, East and West toggles the standings in the window just like they do at MLB.com.

If the standings start to become too too depressing I may remove them later, but just wanted to amaze you all with my html skills!

Also I think the ebb and flow of the page is going to start to settle out some here. The game reviews and team news will continue to be written more news like and the other posts, like this one about changes to the page and also ones pertaining to faults with the team more conversational and informally written.

Pirates Swept by Giants

The Pirates were swept today by the Giants losing 8 to 3 with scoring again being hard to come by for the Bucs. Ward hit 2 homeruns, one in the 1st that brought Jason Bay home and another in the 6th that was a solo-shot. Unfortunately for the Pirates those 3 runs were all they managed to score today as the Pirates managed only 6 hits durring the game. Here are some info-bits about the game that about sum the day and the weekend up.

• Alou, hitting only .149 on Friday, went 5-for-8 with five walks in the series and scored four runs while boosting his average to .265.
• Perez gave up six runs and seven hits in five innings to jump his ERA to 7.11. He walked five and struk out only one, and left the game trailing 6-2.
• With this game the have Pirates failed to score more than four runs for the 13th time in their last 14 games

The Pirates leave for a 3 game set with Houston starting Monday where they hope to end this losing streak at 3.


Alou Rounds 3rd after
hitting a 2 run home run

Both Sides of the Game

The Pirates dropped 2 in a row Friday and Saturday to the Giants Friday and Saturday dropping their record to 8 and 14. While Friday was a continuation of their scoring woes with a 3-2 loss Saturday was a different story. The Pirates scored more then 5 runs for only the 3rd time so far this season only to lose 6-7. More to come later today as the Pirates are about to start the final game of the series against the Giants here momentarily.