Yes! It's time to whine incessantly about there being a Thursday afternoon game with a pitching matchup that I really, really want to see!

Anyways, Ross Ohlendorf, who dominated the Grapefruit League, and Chris Carpenter, who also looked quite good this spring in his return from Tommy John surgery and more nerve problems in his arm, take the mound at 1:40 today in the final game of this odd season-opening four-game set. Things to watch for Ohlendorf this afternoon are how well he can maintain velocity, something he had trouble with once he got into the Pirates' rotation last year, and how effective any pitch other than his fastball is. I'll certainly have the GameCast up this afternoon in lab to try and keep an eye on those things.

The big story out of this game will be Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson leading the way for the Pirates with four hits apiece as the Bucs rattled off 17 hits and seven runs against the Cardinals to earn at least a split in their season-opening series. Whenever the Pirates have an offensive game like this one, it's going to turn some heads because few expected many games like this this year. As nice as the offensive explosion was to see, much of the offense (12 hits and four runs) came off of Todd Wellemeyer, who pretty clearly had nothing on the ball from the outset. If he looked familiar to you tonight, he should have. He was about on par with Ian Snell's ugly Tuesday start. So 11 hits from Sanchez, Wilson, and Moss is great to see with two more from Nyjer and a homer from Nate, but it's not what's most interesting about Wednesday's win.

No, that honor belongs to Zach Duke. You know I've been harping on Duke's short-comings constantly for about two years now, so let me say this: if Duke pitches the rest of the season the way he pitched Wednesday night, he's going to be the most improved pitcher on the Pirates and probably in the NL Central and maybe even in the entire National League. Yes, that's a strong statement, and yes, I'm standing behind it. For two years, we've been saying that Duke's problem is that he doesn't miss bats. Too many balls get put in play, he doesn't fool anybody, etc. etc. etc. Tonight, his fastball was constantly popping the glove at 90 mph or more and in his first five, his four-seamer was actually averaging 92 mph. That's a far cry from a guy who's been sitting at 88 since his rookie year. With a little more zip on his fastball and some great pitch placement, he struck out four hitters in 6 1/3 innings and looked as good as he's looked in the last few years. All told, he only allowed five hits and one earned run in those 6 1/3.

It's just one start, but it was dramatically different from the Duke that I'm used to seeing on the mound. I don't like to make snap judgments and that's not going to change now, but Duke's start impressed me just about as much as anything that could've happened this week. It wasn't perfect, but it's a huge step in the right direction for a guy that's been lost in the woods for a few years.

Before I forget, I also wanted to add that I thought that John Russell managed his patchwork pitching staff very well tonight. He got Duke through six, but didn't push him after that. That's always the right thing to do early in the year, especially with a big lead. He went to Grabow after that and when he cruised through the rest of the seventh, he stuck with him for the eighth. That left him with a four-run lead in the ninth, so he tried to squeeze the inning out of someone other than Matt Capps. When it became clear that Tyler Yates didn't have it, he yanked him right off the mound and used Capps to close out the win. I'd rather he didn't have to use Capps, but I'm sure he feels the same way. You have to win tonight before you can win tomorrow.

Just two games in to the season, Andy LaRoche is on the bench tonight in favor of Ramon Vazquez. You know, normally I think this is the sort of thing that would upset me, but screw it. If Andy LaRoche is so emotionally fragile that he can't handle the pressure of the big leagues, we're going to have to find some other plan at third base. After a great spring, he's completely disintegrated in front of our eyes in the first two games of the season. It's like he's an entirely different player. He's not just a deer in the headlights when the games start counting, he's freaking Bambi out there. I'm not giving up on him, but jeez, it's really hard to fault Russell for giving him a night off, even this early in the year.

Anyways, Zach Duke and Todd Wellemeyer take the mound tonight at 8:15. The story's the same for Duke and Maholm; he's got to get through six or seven innings to give the Pirates any chance in this one. Given little LaRoche's Dr. Strangeglove impression the last two nights, he's probably happy to see anyone else on third base tonight since bad defense is one of his main downfalls. Even if it's ultimately meaningless in the long-run, I'd love to see the Pirates rebound from last night's disaster with some kind of life. Even if it's only to get above .500 for one more day.

If Monday's opener offered up many of the good things that the 2009 Pirates bring to the table, Tuesday's defeat showcased most of the bad. Ian Snell was bad from the start giving up nine hits and six earned runs in four innings, walking three and striking out just two. His start tonight was everything that was wrong with him last year; he got hit hard (Pujols pounded a 400+ foot home run to go with Duncan's homer) and he didn't fool anyone. I honestly wasn't sure why he was allowed back out on the mound in the fourth inning.

On top of Snell's bad start, the Pirates only mustered five hits (just three after the first two batters of the game) and Andy LaRoche made another bad error (that's three in two games) that lead to two unearned runs. Donnie Veal then came in to relieve Snell and started his career with the reverse Jordan Schaefer by allowing a home run to Yadier Molina on the third pitch of his career. He then struck out two batters, walked the bases loaded, and struck Chris Duncan out looking. Is there such thing as a three true outcomes pitcher?

One night after wishing I was watching the Pirates instead of a basketball game, I wanted to turn the Pirates off in the sixth inning tonight. I have a bad feeling that there are going to be more of these games this year.

After not being able to watch last night's game at all, I'm probably going to miss the beginning of this one as well, as I have some stuff in Durham to take care of tonight that'll hopefully make its way into a FanHouse post by next week.

After winning an emotional opener last night, the Pirates now have to go out and play another game. Nyjer Morgan is only hitting .600 for one day, Adam LaRoche is only a good April hitter for one day, and Jack Wilson is a hero for one day. Now they all have to go out and do it all over again tonight. Ian Snell gets the start and as always, I'm interested to see exactly what he's got in store for us. There's really nothing he can do that would surprise me.

I'd also like to see Andy LaRoche do something good tonight. I know that usually I can be statistics heavy, but damn, I'd hate to see this guy get in a mental rut after a few bad games and have that wash away his great spring. A hit or two tonight and a nice play in the field could go a long way towards getting his head back on straight after a bad start last night.

I'm going to have to start this recap, which I can already tell is going to be an unconventional one, with a confession. For the first time in I don't know how long, I didn't watch one pitch of the Pirates' opener. At 5 o'clock, I was hoping to nip home and catch the end of the game while my friends attempted to find a spot in a bar on Franklin Street for the National Championship game. I fully assumed that it was too late to find anything resembling a good spot and I'd be safe to watch baseball until someone told me that we were going to someone's apartment to watch the game. Literally, just as I began to pack my computer up, my phone rang. My friends had found a fairly empty bar, they had spots saved, and if I made it down quickly they thought they'd have a seat for me.

After some quick mental considerations, I realized that the only thing I could really do was go to the bar (this is the way great stories always start, isn't it?). This was, in all truthfulness, the right decision. As hard as I try to prolong my scholastic career, there are only so many chances a person gets that are on par with a chance to be in downtown Chapel Hill as UNC plays for a National Championship. As a sports fan, it's not the sort of opportunity I can turn down.

And so I went downtown, sat in a bar, drank beer, ate pizza, and joined in the massive crowds that took to the street after the UNC victory. And do you honestly know what made me smile more than anything the entire night? Having my eye on the bottom line and seeing the score of the Pirates game click from 4-3 Cardinals to 6-4 Pirates, then quickly realizing that Jack Wilson had hit a bases loaded double that brought in the go-ahead runs.This probably sounds a little bit insane.

As soon as the buzzer sounded in the basketball game tonight, people rushed out of the bar and in to the streets. Despite having been in this situation before on Carson St., I was almost immediately and hopelessly separated from my friends. This really wasn't such a big deal; I'm not a six-year-old lost in a supermarket and really on nights like tonight, everyone had several thousand friends. I moved with the crowd and headed for the main intersection in town, assuming I would eventually find someone I knew there (and I did). During my walk, me and a few hundred others surged around past a college-age couple, locked in a victory kiss, like they were stones in a stream.

Seeing those two and looking around myself, it suddenly dawned on me that all of the people around me were much, much happier than I was. That's not to imply that I was unhappy, because that was certainly not the case. It's just that as a grad student, I don't have the same connection to UNC that an undergrad that's a Carolina native is going to have. For a second, I looked at all the people around me and kind of scoffed; Carolina had just won a championship in 2005 and certainly every person in the streets with me was old enough to remember it. Thinking on it for another minute though, I realized what I was missing. This win was their win. Most of the kids in the street were in high school in 2005. Just like the Steelers' Super Bowl XL win resonated deeply with people my age because we finally had a Super Bowl of our own to celebrate, this win is one that the students at UNC now don't have to share with anyone else.

Walking home from the celebration, I attemtped to somehow put all of this into context in my head. Most confusing of all to me was why my reaction to seeing the Pirates score changeover in the bar became even more positive when I realized it was Jack Wilson who'd gotten the game winning hit. I certainly don't wish anything ill on Jack, but any long-time reader knows that Jack's not exactly my favorite player and a lot of it has to do with him just rubbing me the wrong way on and off the field.

The reality is that for the same reason that a UNC National Championship means more to some people than it does to me, I was happy for Jack Wilson yesterday. You can say what you like about Jack Wilson, but very few people understand the unique frustrations of being a Pirate or a Pirate fan as well as Jack Wilson does. The true joy in sports is derived from building a connection with a team so that when that team wins, you somehow feel a part of it. For the most part, this connection is built through common suffering. The pure joy that Super Bowl XL brought to Steeler fans my age came not just from the stories of the Steel Curtain in the '70s, but also from the numerous near misses of the 1990s and early 2000s. Jack Wilson isn't my favorite player and he'll never be close to my favorite player, but he's also the one player on the team right now that's been through nearly as much crap as the fans have.

While everyone on the streets in Chapel Hill reveled in Tyler Hansbrough's win, I was sort of wishing that I'd been able to see the end of the Pirates game. I realize that makes me weird, but I'm OK with that.

What is it that makes Opening Day such an awesome day, even when there's no hope for the coming season? It's got to be because baseball's offseason coincides almost perfectly with winter, stretching from the first brisk days of November through the last bit of snow melting in early March. Then, the weather breaks, the sun comes out, and baseball starts. This is perhaps a bad analogy since today's game is being played in a snow storm, but hey, I don't make the weather.

I've made a couple of appearances on the UCB Radio Show this week and the Cardinal bloggers there have been asking what I want to see from the Pirates in this opening series. The answer is always the same: I want to see seven good innings from the starters every night. The back end of the bullpen can hold down the last two innings, but any starts shorter than seven innings are going to invoke the adventurous first half of our bullpen way too early. The weather in St. Louis is probably going to make that tough, at least this afternoon, but it's really what I want to see.

Anyways, the early start time is going to make it hard for me to liveblog since I'll be at work for the beginning and I'm going to be going home sometime during the game (hopefully), but I'll be in the comments as much as I can and would of course encourage everyone else to join for the gamethread. I'm going to stick with the comments for the thread for now, but if they prove to be unwieldy, they may migrate to the forum for future games. Let me know which method you would prefer.

With the first pitch coming at 4 PM this afternoon (hopefully), it's time for some predictions for the 2009 season. If I remember, we'll revisit these in September and see how I did.

1. Craig Monroe will not hit 8 home runs in the regular season after hitting 8 in spring training.
2. Paul Maholm will pitch well, but his ERA will go up and people will complain about a Pirate pitcher never having two good seasons in a row.
   
3. Craig Hansen will be a good reliever (I don't know why I think this).
   
4. Freddy Sanchez will finish the season in a Pirate uniform.
   
5. So will Jack Wilson.
   
6. Adam LaRoche will not.
   
7. The Pirates will not lose 100 games.
   
8. Nor will they win 70.
   
9. Andy LaRoche 2009 OPS: .811
10. Andrew McCutchen 2009 Major League OPS: .742 in 82 big league games

When you look at the offensive disaster that the Pirates could be in 2009, you don't necessarily register that the team is actually pretty well set on the offensive side of things for the coming future. Still, if Andy LaRoche finds his bat this year and the Bucs' prospects progress like people generally expect them to, the Pirates could be fairly well set at every position on the diamond save the middle infield spots for the forseeable future. The big long-term question mark for the Pirates right now is the pitching staff.

Rotation

For as much complaining as some have done about Jeff Karstens receiving the fifth slot in the rotation, there shouldn't really be any doubt that the Pirates' starting five this year are much better than the mess that took turns on the mound last year. All you have to do to see that is look at the back end; Karstens isn't going to be worse than the Matt Morris/John Van Benschoten/Yoslan Herrera monstrosity in the five slot, Ross Ohlendorf should offer some improvement over Tom Gorzelanny's disaster last year, and Ian Snell was much improved in his last few starts in 2008 and there's reason to think that if he doesn't find his 2007 form again in 2009, he probably won't be as bad as last year.

This isn't to say that these guys are good per se, simply that they're not likely to be as bad as last year. Similarly, the Pirates do have at least some kind of depth with the rotation this year. If Karstens struggles, Jason Davis, Dan McCutchen, Jimmy Barthmaier, and even Virgil Vasquez all offer some kind of insurance that should keep the back end of the rotation from being a disaster area like it was last year.

There's not really any part of the rotation that's headed anywhere else this year and so that sort of makes the goal for the season to determine how many of about eight guys (Paul Maholm, Ian Snell, Ross Ohlendorf, Dan McCutchen, Jimmy Barthmaier, Jeff Karstens, Zach Duke, and I guess even Tom Gorzelanny) can be productive pitchers at a Major League level in the future. Not one of these guys are good enough to be a true ace, but I think several of them have the potential to inhabit the back end of a good big league rotation.

The other important thing to keep an eye on this year is how the top two pitching prospects fare in the minors. Both Brad Lincoln and Bryan Morris are entering their second season after Tommy John surgery, and by now their recoveries should be complete. Both pitched fairly well in 2008, but both need to show more now that they're out of the shadow of their surgeries. There's a bit more potential in both of these guys than anyone currently fighting for a big league rotation spot, and it'd be nice to see them start to fulfill that potential.

Bullpen

There was a big stink raised over Jesse Chavez getting the last bullpen spot, but I can't really figure out why. Evan Meek needs to get healthy before he takes a bullpen spot, I think it was obvious the Pirates wanted to keep Jason Davis starting, and as well as Chris Bootcheck pitched, he's a known quantity and Chavez isn't. At least there's some potential based on his minor league rates for Chavez to be a useful big league reliever.

Right now, the Pirates' 'pen is terrifying to think about as a fan or a Pirate starter. Chavez, Craig Hansen, Tyler Yates, and Donnie Veal all have control problems and while Meek improved last year after going back to the minors, his control is likely going to be a question mark as well. Throw in Sean Burnett, who can't pitch to righties, and we've got one of the worse bullpens I can remember, especially if (when) John Grabow is traded.

That doesn't mean it's all bad news. Hansen actually pitched well down the stretch after his well-publicized meltdowns and Yates was lights out in September. I really like Meek after seeing him pitch in person last year and I think he's going to make a good big league reliever once he gets healthy enough to stick with the team this year. Veal's a very interesting pitcher if he can stick with the team, even if the team probably has him marked for the rotation in the long-term. Which is all to say that Huntington's MO of acquiring pitchers with electric arms and not much control is the source of a lot of laughter, but I'm not ready to say that it's not going to work. If you look at Capps, Meek, and Hansen, then mix in Veal, Ross Ohlendorf (who I think ends up in the bullpen down the road) and Danny Moskos, I think that could be a good bullpen in two years. At the very least, it's got a pretty nice ceiling.