Pirates Send Jose Bautista to Minors
Weird: The Pirates' starting third baseman most of the past two years was visibly stunned after general manager Neal Huntington and manager John Russell had informed him last night, in Russell's offi...
Pirates 14, Cardinals 4
If last Wednesday's game was one of the worst of the season, tonight's had to be one of the best. Luis Rivas, for example, hit a grand slam and a triple. (The triple was actually more like a single th...
Pirates 6, Cubs 5
This has been a pretty exciting weekend of baseball so far. This game featured two homers by Luis Rivas, which... wow. It also featured a couple of very good defensive plays by the Pirates, a pretty f...
Jack Wilson's Return: How Much will it Help?
A lot, obviously, but how much? I'm going to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. I'm no mathematician, and I'm making a fair number of assumptions here, so what follows shouldn't be taken to be...
Dear Managers, Please Stop
In the gamethread today, users Bad Andy and Hitman Easler raised the question of why in the world John Russell is letting Jose Bautista bat second. It's an excellent question. Lineups don't gen...
Cardinals 5, Pirates 1
This one didn't go so well, but don't blame Paul Maholm, who gave up four earned runs despite racking up strikeouts and flashing good stuff all night. The Bucs' defense left a lot to be desired, parti...
Cubs 3, Pirates 2
First, an apology. Last Friday, I wrote: Today, [Nyjer] Morgan tried to run down a ball in the outfield that appeared to bounce off his knee, then tried to compensate with a ridiculous off-balance ...
You Can't Make This Stuff Up
New Pirate hire Dan Fox's recent research - and by "recent," I mean "published last week" - suggests (if I understand it correctly) that Luis Rivas is something like the fourth-worst defensive second ...