The Buccos' kick off the second leg of their Chicago trip with the ever-so-rare night game at Wrigley. Hopefully, they can keep the momentum from the last two innings of their series on the South Side of the city rolling and forget about the first 25. Paul Maholm and Ryan Dempster are taking the mound at 8 tonight in bright red caps for Memorial Day.

Speaking of which, I hope you've all had a fantastic Memorial Day so far and celebrated those that've served this great country by grilling some meat and drinking some beer. In fact, I think I'm going to go do that myself.

I had this recap mostly written in my head after seven innings this afternoon. I'm sure you can figure out what it was going to say. "One run in 27 innings, three losses, interleague play sucks, wasted a decent start by Karstens again, blah blah blah." I recap every game, but all recaps are not created equal and the loss we seemed destined for today was certainly not one that was going to be particularly interesting.

Right around this point, Eric Hinske blasted a homer to right field. When that happened, I did the little shrug that Pirate fans do that means, "Meh. We've scored two runs in the first 26 innings of this series and we still need two more to win. I am not getting my hopes up." Of course, Jack Wilson homering off of Bobby Jenks with two outs is a more of a perception-changer. It was Jack's first homer since August 15th of last year and only his second since the start of the 2008 season. You can say what you want about the guy (I usually do), but he really picked his spot against Bobby Jenks today. That left the Bucs a Nyjer Morgan double and a Delwyn Young single away from somehow stealing a win from the White Sox today.

And it's great that the Pirates won, because there are some positives to take from this game. Morgan had a nice game with three hits and Freddy Sanchez broke out of his slump a bit with two. Craig Monroe and Eric Hinske both gave the Bucs two hits, which is a nicely highlights just how good the Pirates' bench has been this year, and the bullpen was great, shutting out the White Sox for 3 2/3 innings to keep things close enough for a dramatic comeback. Matt Capps was particularly impressive, striking out the side on just 15 pitches. Since the fiasco against the Rockies and the resulting bullpen session with Joe Kerrigan, he really looks a lot better.

This certainly wasn't a great series for the Bucs. The White Sox were reeling from their pounding at the Twins' hands last Thursday and the Pirates' offense helped their pitching staff reboot itself. Somehow, though, they scraped out a win, and that's a lot more than any of us were expecting after seven innings today.

First things first today; we have to score a run. After we score a run, then we can worry about whether or not we can actually win a baseball game. Of course, this is the game that we draw the worst pitching matchup of the series (for us) with Mark Buehrle and Jeff Karstens on the mound.

Our chances are not helped by the fact that John Russell is continuing along on his "I know my team is full of well-conditioned athletes in the prime of their lives, but I still think they need rest, dammit, and so we're going to follow up two straight shutouts by benching the best hitter on the team because ... I'm not sure why." Yeah, this is going to go well.

I'm going to the Penguins game in Raleigh tonight. I'm excited. I haven't been to a playoff game of any sort (besides high school sports) since Game 4 of the 1992 NLCS when John Smoltz crushed my seven-year-old heart. It probably goes without saying, but I am really, really excited. And that means I'll probably have no idea who even wins the Pirates game until I wake up tomorrow.

But the Pirates will play on anyways, with Ross Ohlendorf and Clayton Richard on the mound. Don't forget that they're starting at 7:05 even though they're in Chicago.

Sometimes, when the Pirates are playing terrible baseball teams like the Nationals, it's easy to forget that the Pirates are really not a very good team in their own right. It doesn't take much to be reminded of that, though. Getting two-hit by a club that lost by 19 runs just the day before is a nice quick reminder of that, though. It's an especially good reminder when the pitcher that throws the shutout at you has a 6.54 ERA after throwing eight shutout innings.

The shame in last night's loss is wasting another great outing from Zach Duke, who struck out seven in eight innings while holding the White Sox to two runs on six hits and two walks, using just 88 pitches to cruise through those eight innings. I see some rumblings about the umpire in the comments and John Russell was clearly frustrated by this loss, but then again he's the one that removed his starting third baseman from the lineup for reasons that only he understands.

OK, so the Pirates have made it through (approximately) one quarter of 2009 with a 19-22 record. This is a nice start towards evading the horrors of being the worst professional sports franchise in history. But now? Now interleague play starts. The Death Star to the Pirates' Alderaan. Nothing ruins a good old fashioned run at .500 like interleague play. We get most of the AL Central this year, which is the division that olbiterated us in 2006 while catapulting WHYGAVS towards minor internet fame.

And yet, I don't feel all that worried. The White Sox are not very good. They got pasted 20-1 by the Twins yesterday. Jake Peavy wants nothing to do with them. Bring it, interleague play.

Zach Duke and Gavin Floyd get the starts tonight while JR has chosen to sit Andy LaRoche for Ramon Vazquez. He says it's just to get him a night off, but it looks awfully suspicious in light of last night's pinch-hitting episode. Did LaRoche react to that as poorly as the fans did? Is there something running even deeper than that? Or are we reading too much in to things?

Haven't done one of these in a while, so let's check in on the farm clubs.

Indianapolis

Andrew McCutchen broke out of his slump nicely and is sitting at .284/.350/.466. It's not quite the "domination" that some wanted to see, but his increase in extra base hits make for an improvement over his line with Indy last year. (.283/.372/.398). Hard to complain about that. Steve Pearce has also woken up in a big way after his slow start and is now hitting .271/.373/.451 with six homers. Not much to write home about in their rotation, but Virgil Vasquez could make decent rotation filler and Dan McCutchen is off to a decent start. Both are allowing a lot of homers (10 for Vasquez, six for McCutchen), and that might not be a great sign if either is called up this year.

Altoona

Brad Lincoln threw a complete-game two-hit shutout last night and looks really good in general. His ERA is down to 2.31, his WHIP is 1.05, and he's struck out 40 hitters with only 11 walks in 46 2/3 innings. He turns 24 on Monday and he might not ever be an ace, but he looks like a pretty good prospect right now. Brian Friday is still hitting well and Danny Moskos has made a few nice starts in a row, though his ratios aren't terribly promising right now.

Lynchburg

Very slowly, Pedro Alvarez seems to be coming around. He's hitting .282 in his last ten games and his OPS is almost back up to .800. I'm going to go ahead and predict a breakout month of June for him. Kris Watts (.466 OBP, 1.103) is begging for a promotion to Altoona right now, as his hot start hasn't cooled off much, and Jordy Mercer (.667 OPS) is starting to struggle. On the pitching side of things, Ronald Uviedo has been impressive (3.27 ERA, 35/6 K/BB in 41 1/3 innings over eight starts), but 2008 fifth rounder Justin Wilson is struggling a bit (6.46, 1.66 WHIP, 24/13 K/BB in 30 2/3 innings).

West Virginia

Chase D'Arnaud (.885 OPS) and Calvin Anderson (.945) -- both 2008 draft picks -- are raking at the plate and Robbie Grossman's .366 OBP is pretty impressive for a guy that was in high school last year. Beyond that, a lot of the State College disaster from last year has just moved up a level. It's clear that Huntington still has his work cut out for him.

Bad Gorzelanny bullpen meltdown, wasted start, loss to a team we should've beaten, blah blah blah whatever. I've written the post-mortem for this loss countless times the past four years. Tonight, I want to talk about John Russell.

I'm going to be up front. I like John Russell. I know a lot of people don't. I don't bring it up because I don't think the manager is worth fighting over. People get worked up over batting order, I don't. Sometimes JR loves the bunt a little bit too much, but I've accepted that just about every manager does. Sometimes I think he hooks the pitcher too soon or too late, but I'd think that about anyone that managed the Pirates. And sometimes, it drives me insane that he's so maddeningly low key, but by all indications the players respect the hell out of the guy that and ultimately, I think that's all that matters. Unlike the two managers that preceded him, Russell very rarely makes anything about himself, and I think that's a great quality in a manager.

All that being said there's nothing that bugs me more than a manager that takes the bat out of the hands of a young player. One of the worst sins the Pirates have committed in the last ten years was relegating Craig Wilson to pinch-hitting duty for the first three years of his career while a parade of faceless stiffs played instead. And so, there's very little that makes my blood boil more than seeing Ramon Vazquez called upon to pinch hit for Andy LaRoche in the ninth inning of a one-run game. Russell did something similar last week and I censored myself. I won't this time. It's complete bullshit.

I could run out splits that support my point, but there's no reason. Andy LaRoche is one of the most important Pirates on the team going forward and since his awful start, he's been one of the best hitters on the team (.304/.381/.461 since April 17th before Friday's game, in which he added another hit). His awful stint with the Pirates last year combined with his hitless streak this year would've been enough to make some managers give up on a guy. Russell didn't, and while the front office certainly deserves some credit for that, Russell's a part of it as well. But my god, there's nothing more emasculating for a hitter than to be pinch-hit for with the game on the line and there's just no way to justify trotting Vazquez up there tonight (or any of the nights that it's happened recently) instead of LaRoche. You want to give LaRoche a night off to get Vazquez some swings against a tough righty? Be my guest. But Andy LaRoche is the starting third baseman. He's making a good case for himself as the third baseman of the future. Ramon Vazquez is a utility guy that can't hit anything right now. Honestly, I can't think of one thing that Russell could do right now that would piss me off more.