Many of you will recall that in April, we held a contest to see who could come the closest to guessing the Pirates' record, runs scored and runs allowed. Well, the winner of the contest is Scoreboard, who predicted the Bucs would go 69-93 (they actually went 68-94) with 717 runs scored and 791 allowed (actual totals: 724 and 846). Pat from Whygavs and DSchmitz3 also predicted the Bucs would be 69-93, and the latter almost nailed the Pirates' runs scored, predicting 721. Scoreboard was closer on the runs allowed, though. Literally everyone was too optimistic, but that's nothing new - last year, everyone was too optimistic except one person. Which is strange, because this isn't what you'd call a Pollyannaish fan site at all. It seems that even the more "negative" fans are too positive about this team. (Scoreboard, by the way, is a guy named Ryan who contributed some of the first posts on my old blog VORB, way back in the day. He isn't even a Pirates fan. He roots for the Orioles.)
For winning the contest, Scoreboard gets an autographed Zach Duke card. Congratulations. Amusingly, Scoreboard explained his guess as follows:
Substitute Matt Morris for Helling, and that's pretty close. And Duke really did implode. Still, I bet the autographed card is worth at least the price of postage.