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Stuff’s gonna happen.

Monday, August 16th, 2010

So, Um today was Monday. I think. My feet are a little sore and I’m tired and I need a shower and more beer and yeah.

Today, the Pirates signed their first two draft picks and their 15th rounder. The first two picks were ranked #2 and #15 by Baseball America before the draft. Allie fell to the 2nd round for some dumb reason. Mostly cheap teams (like the Cubs and Yankees) passing up on him to get cheap picks. The Pirates jumped on him and was able to get him to sign for $2.25 million. Taillon was the 2nd overall pick after Bryce Harper. And according teh twitterz, he’s getting $6 million. Throw in the $485,000 that Drew Maggi got and the Pirates signed three guys for less than $9 million when everyone was saying the Pirates would get Taillon and Allie for no less than $9 million. They might go out and get someone else before the deadline, but who knows?

Then to top it off, the Pirates won the game tonight. James McDonald continues to do well in Pittsburgh since coming over from the Dodgers in the Dotel trade. I’d just like to thank Ned Colletti for developing a player for the Pirates. It always sucks when you’re GM and you have to do all the work yourself. It’s nice to have Ned around to get him to do the work for ya and then give you good players for the baseball equivilent of stale table scraps.

Finally, the Pirates lost former General Manager great Joe L. Brown yesterday afternoon. He was the General Manager who made the Pirates in the 60′s and 70′s. He was the archetict behind the 1960 and 1971 World Series wining Pirates. He retired after the 1976 season. When the Pirates won the 1979 World Series, his fingerprints were all over that team. Most notably Stargell, Park, Kison, Don Robinson and such.

While the Pirates were going through a major drug scandal and a 100 loss season, Brown took over as General manager on an interim bases in 1985 and drafted Barry Bonds and was able to get Syd Thrift to take over on a full time fro the net three season. Retired again, he went back to California where he became a scout for the Pirates and helped scout Jason Kendall back in the early 90′s.

Other than that. Somedays are just way too short.

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Beautiful Day.

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

In honor of Pedro Alvarez, I’m playing Beautiful Day by U2.

Pretty much this video’s equal.

Too bad Steve Blass and Greg Brown made such idiots of themselves tonight on the radio side….

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Pirates Trade Deadline Day: FTW!

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Paul Maholm was the Pirates biggest name that should have been available on the trading block. He didn’t go anywhere. Some teams were asking about Hanrahan, he’s still with the Bucs.

Instead, the Pirates traded DJ Carrasco, Ryan Church, Bobby Crosby, Javier Lopez and Octavio Dotel for Chris Snyder, Pedro Ciriaco, John Martinez, John Bowker, James McDonald and Andrew Lambo. Essentially the Pirates traded their 3-5th best relievers and two older bench guys for a Catcher who can play everyday and not be as sucky as Doumit has been this year, another middle IF that has a limited ceiling, an average bullpen arm, a Crash Davis type player, a starter who needs playing time and an OF with big potential and some marijuana “problems”. Not a great haul, but a good one for what they had.

Of course every fan of any team that makes a deal likes to say “We Won on trade deadline day!”

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Game 3 and stuff.

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Game 3 was awesome. I loved it and stuff. Basically, I was kind of worried going in because it was Paul Maholm vs. Roy Oswalt. Maholm hasn’t been the most effective pitcher lately for the Pirates and Oswalt shut down the Pirates a few weeks ago in Houston. Basically, everything flipped around and Maholm was just down right dominating. Meanwhile Oswalt get hit in the foot by a Pedro Alvarez liner and pretty much was off his game the rest of the afternoon. Then in came the Astros bullpen who basically handed the game over to the Pirates. Maholm pitched the whole nine innings, it was pretty awesome.

So overall, a very good season for me (or at least a very lucky one). I went 3-1 at Pirates games this year. So this is the first winning season for games I was at since 2004 (when I went 2-1). So yeah, yah for me.

As soon as the game ended, I was out of the ballpark and in my car not too long after that. Since I had everything packed and was checked out of the hotel that morning, I just started driving. And I drove from about 4:30 until about 10:00 at night. I stopped at Elkhart, Indiana. Never heard of this place before, but apparently it’s only a couple thousand people smaller than Dubuque. I can now understand how some people have never heard of Dubuque before. Even though Dubuque rocks the fucking house.

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Game 2 and stuff.

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

After starting out the 2nd half with a real downer game yesterday, the Pirates came back tonight and kicked some series Ass-tro. Ohlendorf sucked the big one tonight, which was very disappointing for me. I wanted to see him go for a while tonight and notch the W. Instead, he was out and Carrasco was in after less than 2 innings. He did a pretty good job for a few innings but got in a jam later on. Then came Lopez who coughed up the lead. It looked pretty grim going to the bottom of the 5th.

Then the Pirates bats came alive for seven runs the last four innings. It was amazing. It seemed like whenever they got a hit suddenly another guy would be getting a hit. Meanwhile, the four pitchers that ended the game the last four innings (Donnelly, Meek, Hanrahan and Dotel) kept the Astros quiet. In fact, I took a look at the line-up in the 7th when Meek was on the mound and wondered if Bourn would be the last out because that would mean that Meek, Hanrahan and Dotel pitched a perfect 3 innings. Turns out it went just like that. Those three guys are like going to the bank. They always have da good stuff. And Lopez, who gave up the lead in the 5th got the W. Wins and Losses are not a real stat! Just like RBI!

Then came the awesomest fireworks show I ever saw. It really put the Dubuque and Cascade ones to shame with the sheer awesomeness of it all. I always sort of wondered why people would bother with Fireworks shows because the ones where I live just aren’t that impressive. But these ones certainly proved to be otherwise.

Before the game there was the meeting of a gang of guys from the BucsDugout website and hanging around with them. There were also people there from a Pittsburgh message board site called “Pittsburgh Sports Tavern”. Much like high school, the two websites later on sort of divided off in the two cliques. Since the two websites have different formats, it kind of made sense.

Another cool thing is that the Stats Geek guy from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette must have got wind about the gathering and came over and talked to us for a while. He was a very cool guy. He told me about the book he wrote and I told him about the farm and Iowa and he explained why the drinking laws in Pennsylvania were so insanely prohibitionist.

Everyone was very impressed that I came here all the way from Iowa, as though that was some sort of huge achievement. The next furthest away guy came from Chicago.

The most exciting part was meeting WTM, a guy who is basically a guru-know it all when it comes to minor league players. I was shocked by his age, because I thought he’d be a younger guy about my age and he turned out to be a lot older than that, probably about my father’s age. The only disappointment was not having the BucsDugout “editor in-chief” Charlie there. Charlie is a Pittsburgh guy who now lives in San Diego, so that would be a huge trip for him to make and he was just in da Burgh a few weeks ago. But for most everyone else, it was nice to put names on the blog to faces.

One guy, CaptainAwesome kept calling me Cave Man. It came from the fact that my screen name is IAPiratesFan. I thought it seemed pretty obvious that it meant Iowa Pirates Fan. He thought it was some sort of cave man talk “I a Pirates fan!” because he couldn’t fathom someone from Iowa being a Pirates fan.

Oh, something stupid at this hotel. It doesn’t have ice machines in the hallways. Instead, the brilliant guys who run this place have fridges in the rooms that produce ice. But if you want a lot of ice, you have to turn it on several hours before you can get any ice. Stupid! People need lots of ice for their coolers if they’re driving a lot. But otherwsie, great hotel. Lots of nice parking and nice rooms and uh, yeah. Cool.

So tomorrow afternoon is game 3. If it’s turning in to a huge blow out by the Astros (which seems possible since it’s Maholm vs. Oswalt) I might duck out a bit early and start to head on home. Otherwise by this time tomorrow night I’ll be somewhere in Indiana or Ohio.

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Game 1 and other stuff.

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Well that game sucked. Basically, the Pirates made a lot of fuck ups and it cost the Pirates the game. If Carrasco and the pen was able to hold the Astros down, maybe the Pirates could have taken the game to extra innings and won it.

I heard that Dave Parker was going to be in the HOF Club after the game for 1/2 hour. It was cool meeting someone so famous. Sure he’s not the most famous ballplayer ever or even the most famous Pirate ever, but had he controlled his weight and not done so much cocaine, he might be a Hall of Famer these days.

After that, Rocco DeMaro was doing his post-game show in the HOF Club and there was Neal Huntington getting interviewed. I wanted to go back to the hotel, but I stayed and listened to Neal talk about draft signings and that 15 year old pitcher in Mexico the Pirates might sign. When I decided to leave, Neal was coming back and so I basically walked right past him.

Also, during the game, hung out with another guy who hangs out at BucsDugout. I ended up getting really kick ass seats near RF for the two of us. They were awesome seats because we were pretty much right next to the field and they were only $26 each. Take that you idiots at Yankee Stadium paying hundreds of dollars per seat. You people are suckers. Almost as big of suckers as the guys who waste time watching the Pirates these days.

In the ticket line, I heard two guys complain about how bad the team is. If they suck so much and you hate them so much, why are you here? Then there was a guy in front of me saying that he can’t stand the people who have given up on the Bucs because the day in the distant future when the Bucs start winning, then all those people will be back and taking up all the good seats at PNC Park.

The stadium tour was nice. We got to sit in the pressbox, the dugout and saw the batting cage. The guide told us that the turf in the cage was left over from TRS. Saw all sorts of stuff. I’d say it’s about the same as the Busch Stadium tour.

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Pirates stuff.

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

First of all, Dejan over at the Post-Gazette just wrote that Jeff Karstens was the first half’s MVP. That activates the hilarity unit. He had a few lucky starts and that makes him a MVP? The guy certainly has the mental attitude to be a starter but not the stuff. He’s only a starter because someone has to start and it might as well be him. But I’m not really sure who would be a good first half MVP for this group. Maybe McCutchen. Also, Neil Walker ending up at 2B and doing a good enough job to get rid of Iwamura is a gaffe as well while the whole Dana Eveland mess was a good move by the Pirates. And his logic for it seems kind of convoluted. Also a guy who spent half the first half of the season out with an injury shouldn’t be a goat.

Then there’s Arthur Rhodes. He was part of the Jason Kendall trade mess. Kendall was traded to the Athletics after the 2004 season for Mark Redman and Arthur Rhodes. A few weeks later, Rhodes was flipped to Cleveland for Matt Lawton. Lawton was traded later that summer for Jody Gerut who played less than 10 games with the Pirates before getting injured and then leaving the team. Anyways, Rhodes is going to be playing in his first All-STar game this year at 40 years old. Pretty cool.

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1/2 over.

Monday, July 5th, 2010

I remember a few weeks ago thinking there was over 100 games left to the season. I couldn’t believe that there was so much left. Now that it’s past the half way point it seems like it’s time to get ready for 2011.

So how’s everything going? I’d have to say worse than I expected. Although the past week was pretty good, the Pirates were playing the Cubs and Phillies, two teams in huge declines. Then the rest of this month there are a lot of games against the Astros and Brewers, so the next few weeks shouldn’t be too terrible. After a very rough start for Pedro, he’s started to turn things around the last week. Milledge has picked things up, although he still lacks power. Tabata is doing as well as can be expected for a 21 year old and both McCutchen and Jones continue to do well. What’s really killed the team this year is the starting rotation. The team is getting killed by the 5th inning a lot and then they’re wearing down the bullpen. So clearly, pitching is a problem that needs to be addressed by the start of next season.

I think that JR actually made a good point last week. The Pirates are making a lot of mistakes due to youth and inexperience. If they can avoid that, then maybe they can have a decent second half.

Meanwhile, like I predicted before the season, the Reds and Cardinals are leading the division, although both the Brewers and Cubs aren’t doing as well as I thought they would and the Astros are doing better than I thought they would.

The big problem with the Cubs is that they’re old. Looking at their starting 8, only two are under 30 right now, Geovanny Soto and Starlin Castro. Besides Castro, they are an aging team that’s only going to get worse as they get older. And even worse, they aren’t going to be able to trade most of the guys on the team as a lot of them have huge contracts that last a long time. The Cubs went all in for 2007 and 2008 and now they’re reaping the consequences of not planning long term past 2008. Also Carlos Zambrano is being a bit of a jack ass, which doesn’t help anything. However they did get lucky with Carlos Silva, but that isn’t going to last forever either.

Overall, right now, I think the Pirates have a much brighter future than the Cubs do at this point.

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Alvarez is in the ‘burgh.

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Exciting day, Pedro Alvarez has made it to the majors. It’s unlikely that we’ll see any more big call ups this year. And Alvarez isn’t gonna tear it up right away, but like most players not named Andrew McCutchen he’s gonna have a period of adjustment. Also they released Akinori Iwamura so it would appear that Neil Walker is the 2B of the future, for now. Damn shame with Iwamura though, he probably just hasn’t gotten over that knee injury and I can relate to that.

But the game is being sort of ruined by the White Sox dumb ass announcers. Did you know that Alvarez was drafted second after Stephen Strasburg? I didn’t know that either. I guess Baseball-Reference.com is just wrong about that. And so is my own fucking memory. I mean, I remember the 2008 First Year player draft and Alvarez was selected 2nd after Tim Bekcham. The 2009 draft had Strasburg followed by the Mariners taking Dustin Ackley, the Padres taking Donovan Tate and the Pirates taking Tony Sanchez. Ok, they made a simple mistake, which a lot of fans could make. But these guys are announcers, they should know more than the average fan sitting at home.

Hawk is constantly losing count of how many outs there are or what the count is. “And that’s two outs. Oops, I mean 1 out.” and “That’s a 3-2 count, I mean 2-2 count.” It’s really funny when it’s the first batter of the inning. How the hell is he losing count already? Is he sitting in the booth reading the newspaper or something?

Also Duke fucking sucks tonight. I guess last year really was a fluke and they should have traded him when his value was high. He stated out well this year, but lately he’s been terrible. I mean he’s not Charlie Morton awful, but he’s just not good. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the 2006, 2007 and 2008 seasons.

I went to the Hay Expo today. I saw a robotic machine that can milk cows for the farmer. It can analyze for problems with the milk and dump it if it’s no good. It’s really an amazing piece of equipment. It made me think of this poster. Also, the mixer wagons they’re making these days are so much better than the ones they used to make. The cool thing is that you can dump all the feed out in one trip along the feed bunk instead of how we have to make about 10 or 11 trips back and forth these days.

But I hate the way some person kept telling me how to drive today. Don’t follow that car so closely. I’m about 60 yards behind him. I’m not following him closely. Or like complaining that I’m driving over the center line. Um, you’re sitting on the right side of the truck, it might look like I am, but I’m not.

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Bring up Pedro?

Friday, June 11th, 2010

With the Pirates quickly falling towards last place in the NL Central, there has already been cries to the front office to bring up Pedro Alvarez. I don’t think it really matters when he comes up, he’s gonna be here soon enough and the team will still be bad. He will probably provide that middle of the lineup bat that the Pirates desperately needs.

The thing that sucks the most is that Andy LaRoche has been terrible this year and it seems like he had a pretty good April and hasn’t done anything since early May. After almost two seasons with the team, he just hasn’t lived up to the hype that he once had as one of the Dodgers top prospects. I don’t know if the Dodgers just didn’t develop him right or if the Pirates just aren’t the right fit or whatever, but he has probably been the biggest disappointment the last three seasons.

And I also wonder why the Pirates didn’t trade Duke last summer. He was having a fairly decent summer last year and they probably could have got something for him. This year, he’ll switch between brilliant and terrible. He’ll be brilliant for a game and then stink things up for four or five games in a row. Maholm is the only decent starter left and I wonder if he’s gone in late July through a trade. Ohlendorf has declined a bit, but we all knew he wasn’t as good as he was last summer.

Overall, the season has sucked. McCutchen, Meek, Hanrahan, Maholm and Walker are the only guys who are really living up to their ability. So really, the only thing that matters is getting those draft picks signed and getting guys in the minors to show improvements. Those will continue to be what really matters for the Pirates. Until they are ready to compete, they’ll have to develop the players in the minors and add more talent through the draft. It’s the only thing that truly matters at this point in time.

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