The Pirates' game this afternoon was a pretty wild, but I feel like I'm obliged to start this recap off by mentioning the incredible blast from the past that is the Charlotte Knights. The White Sox affilliate was playing in Durham tonight. Starting at shortstop; Brent Lillibridge. Starting in left field; Michael Restovich. Staring at first base; Daryle Ward. I don't need to tell you that this team lost to the Bulls tonight.

The Pirates' game today featured one thing in common with the Bulls game tonight. There was a rain delay. Actually, there were two in the Pirates' game, and the fact that there were two may have cost them the game. After the first rain delay, the Pirates went out, Paul Maholm got warmed up, pitched to two batters, and the tarp went back on for the second rain delay. After the second rain delay, Maholm came back out and completely hit the wall in the fourth inning, blowing the Pirates' 5-0 lead and putting them in an 8-5 hole.

There were some good things about the game. Obviously there was Adam LaRoche's huge homer and Garrett Jones' near cyle (how is that big dude so fast?), but it's also good to see Andrew McCutchen pick up a hit for the third game in a row. Hopefully he's coming out of the first slump of his big league career. That said, it would've been really nice to steal a win today.

The Pirates and Mets revisit their silly feud from earlier this season where Carlos Beltran whined about getting thumped by the Pirates, Adam LaRoche took offense, and Beltran laughed at him. Today at 12:35, they make up the game rained out in that series in a one-shot series before the Pirates jet to Miami for a weekend series with the Marlins.

Paul Maholm gets the start for the Bucs and Brandon Moss and Freddy Sanchez are getting their regularly prescribed JR off-day, which means Ramon Vasquez, Garrett Jones, and Delwyn Young are all in the lineup. This lineup probably offends Gene Collier so deeply that I imagine he's off screaming at someone who probably doesn't deserve it.

UPDATE: Lotsa rain, but I'm sure they'll play this one eventually. Until then, enjoy this video of at least two of the Pirates' three Taiwanese signings today.

I had a really long post written out as an examination of the relationship between fans and bloggers and players as a result of this story about Ian Snell from an Indianapolis TV, and somehow when I went to copy and paste a line in the last paragraph, I somehow kicked open Baseball Prospectus and my post was gone. I of course hadn't even saved one draft and I don't have time to redo all of it now. What it boiled down to was this; it wasn't fair of me to assume that I knew what was going on in Ian Snell's head and essentially pasting a personality on him to match what I thought he was like from his interviews and behavior on TV. It's easy to assume that as fans, we can talk about athletes and they won't hear us and we won't affect them, but that's clearly not the case in 2009 and no one should know that better than me. This is exactly why I think we have to give Lastings Milledge a chance before bravding him as a bad egg.

Writing the Pine interviews Ross Ohlendorf.

Rinku and Dinesh will pitch for the GCL Pirates if it ever stops raining in Bradenton.

Today, as you likely know, is July 2nd. This isn't the deadline for signing Latin American prospects, as I think some people seem to think it is, but rather the first day the market is over. Lots of teams work out deals ahead of time that are announced today and other players sign immediately today, but Miguel Angel Sano isn't expected to be one of those players. If something does happen today, I'm sure Chuck Finder and DK will be all over it at PBC. Beyond that, keep an eye on both Kiley McDaniel and Jorge Arangure, who are watching this closely and posting updates on Twitter today.

Tonight was my first real chance to see Virgil Vasquez after missing his start against the Royals over the weekend, and I saw about what I expected; a guy with stuff that's maybe a little better than Jeff Karstens, but certainly not a long-term rotation option who also happens to wear Demetri Martin's hair on the mound. This isn't a bad thing. There's always a role for guys like this on just about everyone's roster, whether it's in long relief or at the back end of the rotation. Last year, it was painfully obvious that the Pirates didn't have that sort of guy.

Anyways, Vasquez did a nice job keeping the Pirates close in this one, but that just wasn't enough tonight. I didn't think Randy Wells was particularly overwhelming or impressive, but we batted Garrett Jones third tonight. If Wells and Vasquez switched places tonight, the outcome of the game would've been the same.

The only other thing from this game tonight that I think is worth commenting on is Joel Hanrahan's Pirate debut. Despite being generally positive about acquiring him, I've heard a lot of negative things from a lot of smart baseball people about him in the past two days. When he gave up the leadoff single to Sam Fuld, I was a bit worried. It was good to see him bear down and get the double play, then the strikeout of Derrek Lee to end the inning.

When this series started, I mentioned the Pirates' home record and the Cubs' away record as proof that the Pirates might have a chance in this series. What I neglected was the Pirates' 11-24 (now) record against the NL Central. There's a reason we're in last place and there's a reason that Huntington's pushing the eject button when we're "only" six games out of first place.

Joel Hanrahan and Jeff Salazar should be in the house at PNC tonight, giving the Pirates a full 25-man roster to battle Randy Wells and the Cubs with tonight. Virgil Vasquez gets the start for the Pirates. Garret Jones will make his Pirate debut in left field and Brandon Moss will move back to right (I would've kept Moss in left, personally), but other than that the lineup is unchanged for the Pirates tonight.

Jack Wilson, meanwhile, is sorry for his critical comments after the trade yesterday. I'm happy to see that, because they were pretty unprofessional and while Jack can be a bit self-righteous from time to time, he is a class act and it's nice to see him take this upon himself without any prompting from the organization.

I feel like I didn't quite cover all the bases yesterday on this trade yesterday, so I'll put together one more post here about the things I feel like I missed.

As sad as a lot of people are to see Morgan go, I always liked Sean Burnett. I saw his first win back in 2004 as I guess because of that, I always had a special place for him as a fan. He went through a lot of stuff with his arm injury and got really frustrated with the Pirates when they kept sending him back to Triple-A despite a couple of great spring training performances, but he never let that get in the way of things and he worked hard to get back to the point he was at this year. Certainly, a lot of his good ERA was lucky (his BABIP was only .218 this year, so despite a big raise in LD% he was having success on the mound) and we won't really miss him in the long-term, but I'm still a little sad to see him go as a fan.

That leads us to Hanrahan, who I haven't really talked a lot about. My gut reaction when I heard he was included was that I know he's been pretty terrible for the Nats this year, but that doesn't even start to tell the story. Look at these numbers:

• 2008: 9.92 K/9, 4.48 BB/9, 0.96 HR/9
• 2009: 9.64 K/9, 3.86 BB/9, 0.83 HR/9

His strikeouts have dropped a bit, but his walks and homers have both improved this year, and yet somehow his ERA has jumped to 7.71. His Fielding Independent stats at THT are about this same from last year to this year, and his BABIP is a ridiculous .451. So really, the Nationals defense is bad and he's getting unlucky, and that's the only thing different between last year, when he was a promising young closer in the making, and this year when he's been terrible enough to be a toss-in on this sort of trade. He's a lot better than some Pirate fans think, and I'm not even sure there's anything to "fix" with him. A new uniform and a better defense behind him might be enough to get him back on track.

In terms of defense, since we're kind of on the subject, I know I've assumed that Milledge will be plugged in to left field when he's ready, but I wonder if right would be a better fit for him. He's supposed to have a cannon for an arm, and at least with the team configured as it is now, Brandon Moss seems to make a lot more sense in left. He's not as fast as Morgan, but he's been quietly very good defensively this year. It might not hurt Milledge to put him in right field and keep some of the pressure off of him at least during his first few months as a Pirate.

Finally, in light of Lasting Milledge's dad's defense of his son, I wanted to post a reminder that it's not really fair for us to judge whether these players are "good guys" or "asshats." I need this reminder as much as anyone, given some of the assumptions I've made about some players (OK -- Ian Snell) in the past. He's surely did some stupid things in the past, but it's incredibly unfair to say that he'll never learn from those mistakes. I'm not saying that he necessarily will, mind you, but I certainly wouldn't want to be judged for the rest of my life on the stupid things I did when I was in high school or 21 or 22. For better or worse, he's a Pirate now.

Tonight, Ross Ohlendorf went out and made it clear why people like me who say he'll probably end up in the bullpen in the long run might be entirely full of crap. On most nights, it seems like he lives and dies by his fastball/sinker/whatever and his off-speed pitches are secondary pitches that he has very little faith in to get hitters out. Tonight, he mixed in his breaking pitch (Bob Walk and Greg Brown called it a curve but it shows up as a slow slider on Pitch FX) and changeup in beautifully with his fastball, catching Cub hitters off guard the whole game in seven shutout innings. I was particularly impressed with the velocity change between his fastball and breaking pitch (about 10 mph), which really seemed to disarm hitters on more than one occasion. The last time I remember him mixing his off-speed stuff in so well was his early season start against the Marlins. If he can do this more consistently, we really might have something in him that we didn't count on.

Ted Lilly was almost as good as Ohlendorf, but Freddy Sanchez had a great game with two RBI hits and scoring the first run from second base on a strikeout/wild pitch in the fourth. The bullpen was great as well, with Grabow getting two big strikeouts after a rare Jack Wilson error really put him in a pinch int he eighth.

In the end, I know a lot of players are upset over the Morgan trade and to be honest, I would be too, if I was in their place. Nothing quite heals that pain like a nice, easy shutout win, though. Remember that there was a point in time where people were upset that the Penguins traded Colby Armstrong because he was Sidney Crosby's best friend on the team and supposedly a great clubhouse guy. I know this situation isn't exactly the same, but man, doesn't that seem silly now?

The 24-man Pittsburgh Pirate roster takes the field tonight against the Chicago Cubs. Ross Ohlendorf goes against Ted Lilly as the Pirates try to keep going in what's gotta be a pretty rough stretch for the guys on the field. I certainly like the Morgan trade and what it does for the organization, but seeing your friends traded can't ever be easy.

Anyways, if you're looking for Morgan/Milledge stuff, it's all down below.

I see that the trade is confirmed now, so I thought I'd share my thoughts quickly before the gamethread goes up. What this trade comes down to is this: a rebuilding team can never turn down a trade that offers a net talent gain as big as this one does for the Pirates. I'm not trying to knock Nyjer Morgan here, either, but Morgan is what he is; he's a great defensive player that doesn't offer much at the plate. In left field, that's not really an option for any team. Some people will try to spin this trade as speed for power, but Morgan's speed on offense is incredibly overrated. His OBP hovers around .350 and he's been thrown out in 10 of his 28 stealing attempts.

Lastings Milledge is a risk for any team at this point. He's hit OK in his Major League career, but questions about his attitude have overwhelmed everything. The thing to remember is that if he turns out to be a bust and we give up on him in two years, we still ventured very little to get him here in the first place. Morgan isn't a long-term starter in left field; he was fun to watch, he was funny, and he probably would've been awesome to grab a beer with, but he wasn't a long-term answer. Milledge, quite simply, might be, and that's a risk that we have to take.

For everyone that's worried about Milledge's character, remember one of the most crippling moves that Cam Bonifay made as a Pirate. He called Jose Guillen up way too early, got frustrated when he was immature, and shipped him out for cents on the dollar. Eventually, he became a solid every day player. Milledge is easily as talented as Guillen was and we're on the receiving end of the deal this time. Now, instead of being the future of the Mets or the savior of the Nationals, he can slide into Pittsburgh behind Andrew McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez in the spotlight. The Pirates will give him a chance to play and he's not going to be expected to save the world here.

Maybe Milledge will be a star and maybe he won't, but I'm glad that we're the team that's going to find out.