I Feel Sorry for Clint Hurdle

I’m really feeling bad for Clint Hurdle these days. He has to be sitting in his office just wondering what he is going to do. He has so many decisions to make. He has to find a way to get his third baseman to hit better and to provide a power source. That guy, Alvarez, he hit miserably the first couple of months. Hit an occasional Home Run here and there and just could not seem to get untracked. He’s got to be a big source of concern for Clint. I haven’t looked at his numbers for a while so let me just pull them up. What? 21 home runs, 58 RBIs. I must have read that wrong. Let me look at another stat site. 21 HRs, 58 RBIs. 17th in the league in HRs. That’s a shocker, I guess Clint doesn’t need to worry about 3rd base as much as I though. Phew! One less worry for him. That’s makes me feel a little better. But, he still has to worry about 1st base. The Pirates really need some power from there. That’s one of the big problems they have, no power from the spots that are traditionally supposed to generate it. McGehee and Jones just have not been doing their job over there and I know it’s really aging Clint worrying about it. Let’s check their stats. Garrett Jones is hitting .264 with 15 Home Runs and 47 RBIs, hmm..not too bad. Casey McGehee has 8 HRs and 35 RBIs. Together they total 23 HRs and 82 RBIs. Granted, Jones has played some outfield and McGehee has played other positions, but those numbers aren’t too bad for a first platoon of the primary 1st basemen. 23 HRs put them right above Pedro in the HR category. I guess I can’t feel too bad for Clint at First Base. That catcher’s position has been a real sore spot offensively for them this year. I’m sure you can see the extra wrinkles just from worrying about that position. Rod Barajas started off awfully. Fans were calling for his release and that signing looked like a dismal failure. Michael McKenry isn’t really backup caliber for the big leagues, right? Let’s take a look at their stats. Barajas has to be just plain horrible the way he started. 8 HRs, 19 RBIs, yeah, that’s not too good. But some of those HRs have been in big game situations for the Pirates and the pitching staff has reacted well to his play at catcher. That McKenry can’t have more than a few HRs I’m sure. Shocking, 8 HRs, 20 RBIs, and a .250 average. Together, they have16 HRs and 39 RBIs. Defensively, they’ve lacked in the caught stealing category and Barajas could hit for a higher average, but the power numbers aint too bad. With all those bad starts Clint must be really worried about consistency. There’s nobody on the team that has played great from the start of the season. It seems like everyone on the team started off poorly and has gradually climbed their way above Mr. Mendoza. Oh, wait a minute, there’s that McCutchen guy and that Walker guy. McCutchen is leading the league in average and high up there in the HR category. Walker is in the .290s and is there at second every game. Both provide sound defense up the middle. Poor Clint, I know he’s worried about his outfield beyond McCutchen. He’s got no speed and the guys in right and left field are pretty much your typical backups that can’t hit, the ceiling is low for them. I better check this out just to make sure I’m not off on that statement too. Let’s see, they just called up some guy named Star Marte. Interesting…oh, it’s Starling Marte. Wonder what his numbers at Indy were. 21 doubles, 13 triples, 12 Home Runs, 62 RBIs. Wow, that looks like someone with a lot of upside. I must have been under a rock when he was promoted. A home run on his first pitch. Can’t wait to see this guy play. He’s a center fielder that can play with two other center fielders in the outfield. I forgot how that Presley tore up the league at the end of last season. Maybe, he’ll revert to that form yet. Then there’s Tabata. If he overcomes his fear of injury and lives up to the contract he signed the Pirates will have plenty of depth in their outfield. They’ve got that Gorkys Hernandez that can cover ground with the rest of them and come in for defensive help late. I don’t know why they’d need defensive help late with those other guys but if they need it they got it. Man, I guess I was too concerned about Clint Hurdle he has got a pretty good team in the field and they can get on a roll and provide some power. Now if the pitching staff could just do their job. What am I talking about, these guys have kept the Pirates in games from the beginning of the season. If they can stay healthy, forgot .500, the Pirates will be shooting for the playoffs. Clint, I think you’ve got a pretty good team there. I don’t know what you’re worried about. Just coach your head off and you should be fine. Go Bucs

Pirates Acquire Left Handed Hitting Outfielder

Yesterday the Pirates acquired a Travis Snider, a left handed hitting outfielder from the Toronto Blue Jays for Brad Lincoln.

Should Bedard Be in the Pen?

Wandy Pitches the Pirates to Win

McKenry's Big Game and a Late Comeback

I've Been Waiting for This Guy

Correia Stifles Cubs

Is McDonald Losing It?

Karstens in Control

Big Fourth

Seen It Before

Watching the game yesterday and thinking, oh, this is all too familiar. A comedy of errors and the team falls on its face with just another loss piled up on top of all the rest of those losses in other games during the season. The pitcher throws wildly and the other team takes advantage. In this case the other team doesn’t even get one hit in an inning, but manages to send 10 batters to hit and plates 4 runs. Now, the surprise, the team with the comedy of errors, is not the Pirates, not this season. It is the Marlins and Carlos Zambrano, no surprise there. You never know what’s going to happen with Carlos Zambrano, you may get a well thrown game, but more than likely you’ll get a poorly thrown game and probably some tirade after. That was a normal occurrence with this pitcher in Chicago and nothing short of that is expected of him with his change of address. On this day he gift wrapped a 4 run inning for the Pirates. They have not had a present like this since Brian Cashman said, can you take this ace pitcher from us and we’ll give you most of his paycheck. It’s a gift that keeps on giving and the Pirates will take those presents any day and all day. Oh yeah, do you know who the pitcher is that faced Zambrano? It was that ace pitcher that Mr. Cashman generously donated. Hmm….7 2/3 innings pitched, 8 hits, 1 earned run. I mention this ace pitcher’s (AJ Burnett if you are a Pirates fan living under a rock and didn’t know who I was talking about) stats because, obviously you need good pitching to win, great pitching to accomplish greater things. You can’t always take advantage of gifts like the Marlins gave yesterday with bad pitching. That’s the difference between the Pirates of pre-2011 seasons and the current Pirates. Even with this gift the Pirates with their second half pitching meltdown last season may not have come up with the win in the second half last year, but this year the pitching has been strong, the starters and bullpen have equally contributed to that strength. This year the Pirates take full advantage of gifts from other teams. I’ll also point out to the Pirates management that the official attendance was somewhere around 39,000. I don’t know how many people of those 39,000 paid to see the game, but I can be pretty sure that if you have 39,000 people at the game, that more people are paying to see it than if you have 10,000 or less people at a game. That’s what happens when you actually put a competitive team on the field in this City. To borrow a famous line from a great baseball movie, “If you build it, they will come.” This is not Iowa though, it’s the Burgh, and this is not Shoeless Joe Jackson and Moonlight Graham it’s Andrew McCutcheon and Neil Walker. The people will come from all around Pittsburgh to see this team compete. They Pirates fans that became sick of management incompetence will come to see this team play. ‘Nuff said, go Bucs.

Burnett shows his approval of a Barmes to McGehee Double Play.

A Four Homer Night

Burnett, McCutchen, Walker Have Big Day Before All Star Break

McDonald is Masterful

It's been a Rocky Road for the Offense

It’s been a rocky road this year for the offense. The plans that were set by the Pirates “braintrust” did not fall into place as is usually the case when we’re talking about the Pirates, but slowly and surely the offense has started to click on most cylinders. With the pitching staff the Pirates have put together this year that is enough on most nights. The hope for the Pirates pitching staff was that it would continue the quality pitching of the first half of last year. That was not a surety considering how the pitching fell apart in the second half. Correia, Maholm and Karstens were shut down and the options to replace them were not as successful, causing the bullpen to be overworked. Between the second tier of starters and the overworked bullpen the downfall of the team was as dismal as a 19 season losing streak. Flash forward to this year. The Pirates had Charlie Morton, Kevin Correia, James McDonald, and Jeff Karstens returning to start fully back up to speed. Gone was Paul Maholm and his erratic effectiveness to a perfect place for that type of pitching, the Chicago Cubs. Management signed Erik Bedard to potentially take one of the five starting slots. It looked like that might have to be how the rotation was going to look until Huntington came through with a gem of a deal for the Pirates. The Yankees had grown weary of AJ Burnett’s lack of winning and thought their staff was strong enough to do without him. They were even willing to pay a large part of his paycheck. A package gift wrapped for the Pirates. It isn’t very often someone will come to you looking to get rid of an ace and also say we’ll pay you to take him. As I indirectly mentioned, the Pirates don’t seem to have much luck on many deals. Fortunately for them, though, they struck gold on this one. Burnett was traded to the Pirates and other than a short injury issue at the beginning of the season Burnett has been incredible this year. You don’t win 8 games in a row by pitching poorly. Add to the addition of Burnett the fact that another pitcher has stepped forward with “ace” quality stuff. The Pirates staff has 2 pitchers that quite a few teams would give up a king’s ransom for. That second ace pitcher is James McDonald. He has held other teams to 2 runs or less in almost all of his starts. He has been nothing short of magnificent when he has been on the mound. Throw in quality pitching from Correia and Bedard and the bullpen staff and you have a pitching staff that is among the top pitching staffs in baseball and very tough to score on. The only thing keeping the Bucs from piling up more wins this year is the lack of offense. The Pirates did have a plan this year for their offense. They signed a group of new infielders to infuse some offense in positions that were lacking, as well as 2 new infielders to provide defense up the middle to go with the pieces they already had in place. Rod Barajas was signed as a steady influence from the catcher’s position who could also provide some power. Barajas started slowly and could not climb above the Mendoza line, but as most streaky hitters go, once he started to hit, he started cranking out home runs. Clint Barmes was signed to take over for the inconsistent Ronny Cedeno. The hope was that he could hit .250 and be a steadying force on the left side of the infield. Barmes spent the last month also trying to climb over the Mendoza line. Maybe by the end of the season he’ll reach .230 or .240, but after such a slow start that’s a difficult climb. He has provided the defense and a HR here and there. The Pirates also counted on Pedro Alvarez to continue to develop and start hitting HRs frequently. He has contributed HRs and driven in runs, but he has not been patient at the plate and has struck out frequently. Pedro is in his second full season and is still developing. If the Pirates are to break that season losing streak and compete for a playoff spot they will need to count on the bat of El Toro. Casey McGehee was signed as a backup plan for 1st and 3rd base. If Alvarez continued to struggle or if Garrett Jones could not provide any offense Casey McGehee could step in and replace either and would get to show he can provide the offense. GJ has provided similar offense to what he had contributed the previous few years, a towering HR here and there with some singles and doubles thrown in. Basically, most of the offense has struggled to produce runs. The one exception to that has been the play of Andrew McCutcheon. McCutcheon has been outstanding. He has provided magnificent play in the field and at the plate. He and Pedro Alvarez have competed for the lead in Home Runs, while McCutcheon leads the way for the Pirates in batting average somewhere in the .340 area. Can you see why the Pirates wanted to lock McCutcheon up for as long as they could reasonably do. If a poll was taken to ask the Pirates what one player was the cause of the Pirates finally ending their streak. The answer will undoubtedly be Andrew McCutcheon. The other player that the Pirates are depending on for stability is the Pittsburgh boy, Neil Walker. Walker doesn’t have the numbers that McCutcheon does, but the fans love him simply because he is from Pittsburgh and he has also been a dependable fixture at second since being inserted there. Walker is still young and still has room for growth in his position and at the plate. Throughout travels through the system he hit for average and when he becomes thoroughly comfortable at his position there is no reason to expect he will not have a breakout season at the plate. For now, though, he is providing consistency above the average of most of the team. From John Wehner to Neil Walker the Pirates fans love their homegrown talent. If nothing else this is why Walker will be a fixture at 2nd for years to come. Will the Pirates make this their first winning season in 19 years? We will find out in a few months. Something tells me this guy

will do everything in his power to end it, and he has a lot of power.For now, though, the fans are enjoying being in the chase. We can only hope it will last into October.

Sutton Signing Pays Dividends with Walk off HR