Sometimes I wonder what a Brewers season-ticket holder must think of the fact that the Pirates have actually played pretty well most of this year. That fact must seem so at odds with their experience of the Pirates as to be nearly unbelievable.
It looks like the Bucs at least got a good start out of Charlie Morton today - his line was nearly identical to Shaun Marcum's - so at least things looked respectable. Joel Hanrahan came on to get the last out in the eighth with the Bucs ahead 1-0 and struck out Nyjer Morgan, but it was on a wild pitch and Morgan made it to first. Then Ryan Braun singled in the tying run, and Chris Resop gave up the winning run in the tenth.
Not much news otherwise, but the Pirates have promoted Vince Payne and Orlando Castro to West Virginia. Castro looks like the more interesting of the two right now - he dominated the Gulf Coast League and pitched reasonably well in State College. He's also 19 years old and is from Honduras, a country that doesn't produce a ton of prospects, so it's a little surprising that he's his far along.
I'll put up a draft signing thread tomorrow, but in the meantime: I'd put the over-under on the number of players the Pirates will sign between now and then at about 2.9. One of those will almost certainly be Gerrit Cole. What do you say - over or under?