I can't pretend like I watched a lot of this game, but I can say that everytime I flipped over, it looked to me like Ross Ohlendorf was in complete control on the mound and I'm happy that the box score and the highlights bear that out. It looks like he did a great job mixing in his slider and changeup with his fastball/sinker. Just like in that Marlins game, he got a few more strikeouts tonight and it seems to me that this is the difference between him being a middling starter and maybe a good one.

On the flip side of things, Brandon Moss chipped in another big night, the bullpen held down a lead, and Adam LaRoche lost the first home run to instant replay since replay was instituted last year. I guess the fact that it was an RBI double sort of dampened the blow.

This is the great thing about baseball; two days after we were mired in an eight game losing streak, we're seeing some of the good things that we liked so much in April again. I just wish we could've piled on one more run and matched the Pens' final. That would've been cool.

Ross Ohlendorf and Joel Piniero go at it at 7:05 at PNC park tonight, but you won't be able to watch on TV in Pittsburgh because it's been preempted by Game 7 of the Penguins/Captials series. I think we all agree that this Pens/Caps matchup is sufficiently epic to boot a May baseball game from the airwaves. In fact, I'd encourage to watch this hockey game, even if you're not a hockey fan. It's certainly what I'm going to be watching tonight.

But I will say that a win for the Bucs tonight would be huge. We need to put some space between us and that eight-game losing streak and the only way to do that is to win baseball games. I think we've got a chance of Ohlendorf can get a bunch of grounders and keep the Cards' bats in check. I guess we'll have to see. Or at least read about it.

After reading Tony La Russa's comment about Zach Duke last night (according to DK, he told reporters, "You saw Duke pitching, right?" when asked why his hitter struggled last night), I decided to go in to the PitchFX and look around a little bit to see if I could find more of an explanation than "he's throwing a little harder this year" to attribute his turnaround to. I mean, he is throwing a little harder, I think (I haven't really compared, but last night Pitch FX spots his fastball right around 89 all night), but there's got to be more to it, right?

The first thing I noticed on the graphs from last night is how nasty his curveball looks against right-handed hitters. I pulled up the full chart with pitches and outcomes and sorted the changeups. There are two that are misclassified fastballs (I think), so that leaves us with 12 pitches, all thrown to righties. He threw ten for strikes (both balls were to Pujols) and of those ten strikes, two were fouled off, four were hit for ground outs, three were swinging strikes, and one was a called strike. That's a really good pitch.

Next up is the curve, which he threw 30 times for 19 strikes. Those 19 strikes resulted in four foul balls, seven called strikes, two swinging strikes, two groundouts, a flyout, and a single. In total, he went to his change or curve 42 times with only 13 balls. Of the 29 strikes, only six were put in to play and only one of those went for a hit. I don't have time to compare this with a start from last year (I will at some point soon, I hope), but those numbers strike me as being really, really good.

Still, we at least partially have an answer; it's not just an improved fastball that's making Duke better. He's throwing some really good off-speed stuff as well.

When I came home at 8:30 tonight and turned the TV on I expected a lot of things, but not a 7-1 Pirate lead. That's just what I saw, though. It stayed that way, too. I don't mean that that was the final score of the game; I mean that I wasn't hallucinating it. The Pittsburgh Pirates did indeed rack up a win tonight, and they did it in pretty convincing fashion.

First credit for the win goes to Zach Duke. When you pitch eight innings, your night-terror-inducing bullpen only has to throw one. When you hold the other team to one run, your overmatched offense only has to score two. We're now officially in to mid-May and Duke's ERA is 2.53 and he just picked up his fourth win. Tonight's line was pretty typical for how he's pitched this year: 8 innings, 4 hits, 5 Ks, 1 walk, and just one run on a first inning Albert Pujols dinger. I'm still expecting some backsliding from Duke, but I'll admit it; the guy looks good this year.

Is it strange that I feel like we wasted all of these runs tonight? We scored by stringing a bunch of hits together in the second, then by stringing a couple homers together in the fourth. And not just any homers, Brandon Moss and Adam LaRoche homers. The two coldest guys on the coldest team in baseball homered in the same inning tonight. Baseball is a funny sport, isn't it?

Look, I remember the epic 13-game losing streak of June 2006. That was a terrible, terrible time to be a Pirate fan. I would really, really like to not have to go through such a thing ever again. We're just five games away from that, so let's nip this in the bud now before things start getting ugly.

Zach Duke and Todd Wellemeyer take the mound at PNC tonight as the Buccos try to end this eight-game streak. Jack Wilson's back in the lineup and Brian Bixler is far, far away from the field, which is good both for the defense and the offense (Bix struck out an insane 15 times in 22 ABs with the Bucs). JR is also giving Robinzon Diaz the start behind the plate, which makes it three starts in four games for Z. He's certainly been killing the ball, but Jaramillo's still acquitting himself well both at the plate and behind it. Still, seeing Diaz in the five slot tonight is a pretty good indication that Russell's confidence is growing in him.

Is the futility of Pirate games ever more obvious than when the Bucs are playing awful and the Penguins are locked in an epic playoff battle? I'd say no.

I've noticed a pretty strong wave of negative sentiment focused towards minor league performance recently both in the comments here and on other sites. I'm not sure if this is a reaction to the Pirates' ugly play, Pedro Alvarez's terrible start, or the fact that three of the four affiliates currently playing have losing records. Probably, it's a combination of all three factors, but whatever the case, there are some pretty common misconceptions about the minor leagues (both the Pirates' system and in general) that I think could use some clearing up.

The fact that three Pirate affiliates currently have losing records is meaningless. Somewhere in my old closet back in Hermitage, I have a 1995 or 1996 vintage On Deck magazine with a big story about how both the Jason Kendall-lead Lynchburg Hillcats and whoever the Pirates' AA affiliate was at the time (the Carolina Mudcats, I think) won league titles the previous year. And don't forget the several years in the earlier part of this decade that Dave Littlefield would trump things like, "All of our minor league affiliates are in the playoffs" or "Our minor league affiliates have the best combined record in baseball." These teams exist to get players ready for the big leagues and nothing more.

That's not to say that we have a great system because we certainly don't. And it's certainly frustrating to see the strikeouts rack up for Pedro Alvarez in Lynchburg and to see Jose Tabata hurt again in Altoona and there's certainly way too many "downs" in Charlie's rundown of how his top 20 prospects have performed. And when all of those things start piling up, it's easy to lose sight of the long-term picture. There's still a lot more talent in the system than there was at this time last year, and many of the guys that aren't underperforming are picks from 2008. Rebuilding a minor league system doesn't happen overnight and even when it's done well, there are large portions of it that are going to be hit or miss.

As frustrating as things are right now, just think back to last May. Behind McCutchen there was Walker, Steve Pearce, and Brad Lincoln, who hadn't even thrown since his Tommy John surgery. That was the entire system. Now there's Alvarez and Tabata, who are still blue chip talents despite their early struggles this year, Grossman, Lincoln is healthy and throwing well, Chase D'Arnaud and Jordy Mercer both seem at least worth keeping an eye on, and there are a handful of other guys from last year's draft (Quinton Miller and Wes Freeman at the top of the list) that are interesting as well. It seems to me that that's a pretty big step forward for just one year. Let's see where we are after the draft and trade deadline this year.

Just for fun, here are the velocities of Ian Snell's fastballs from his last three starts, with data obtained from Brooks' Baseball and replotted. Right click and choose "View Image" to see it at full size.

Can we conclude anything about his 130 pitch outing on April 29th from this chart? It's not easy to say, though it does look like his velocity yesterday was pretty similar to his velocity on the 29th. It certainly seems like there's more red dots (from his start on the fifth, the start after his 130 pitch effort) down around 87 or 88 mph than yellow or blue. To my casual eye, he did seem to look better on the mound yesterday. But let's please not push him to 130 pitches again, OK?

It is late at night as the weary blogger tries to find something interesting to say about the Pittsburgh Pirates after their eighth straight loss. He reads over his past recaps, seeing that they have gotten progressively shorter and shorter. He begins typing about himself in the third person. But then, how does one make a team that repeatedly loses games in the same fashion interesting?

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Decent start. Bad bullpen. Not enough offense. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The redundancy of the words drive home the inaninty of following the Pirates. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Are the Pirates driving me insane, or are they created by my insanity? When did John Grabow revert to John Grablow? Will the Pirates ever win again?

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Livian Hernandez vs. Ian Snell this afternoon. I really hope we don't lose to Livian Hernandez, who I didn't even know was still in the league before looking at the pitching matchup for today. In the comments on the last post, Handsome Sam provided the ultimate, "this is what it's like to be a Pirate fan" clip. If you are offended by PG-13 language or incredibly juvenile humor, don't click play.