Tell me which of the following things seems the most improbable to you.

• The Pirates are 11-7 after playing on April 26th.
  
• Andy LaRoche has a ten-game hitting streak.
  
• Adam LaRoche has five home runs in April for a .288/.373/.621 line in the worst month for him.
• Zach Duke has three wins in April.
  
• Ross Ohlendorf has two.
  
• The Pirates won a game started by Eric Hinske, Brian Bixler, Ramon Vazquez, and Robinzon Diaz.
  
• The Pirates have the best ERA in the league.
• The Pirates have the second best defense in the league.

I can barely wrap my mind around any of these things at the moment, even if I'm still not convinced they're going to last.

Today, Ross Ohlendorf pitching seven innings and held the Padres to five hits over those seven. Two of those five were home runs by the Gonzalez brothers, giving the Padres their three runs, but what Ohlendorf did was more than enough for the Adam LaRoche-lead offense to stake the Pirates out to their seventh win in nine games this afternoon.

That said, I'm still not certain what to make of Ohlendorf. His peripherals today (three walks and three Ks, only 55 of 95 pitches for strikes) were not great, but today he managed to get 13 ground balls and only 5 flyballs (a considerably better ratio than he had been delivering). Compare his pitch selection from today with the the pitch selection from six days ago against the Marlins. Keep in mind that PitchFX has a hard time distinguishing fastballs and sinkers and considering that Ohlendorf seems to be throwing his power sinker almost exclusively instead of a straight fastball. Against the Marlins, Ohlendorf threw 51 sinker/fastballs, 16 changeups, and 20 sliders. Today, he threw 71 sinker/fastballs, 10 changeups, and 14 sliders. So why the dramatic change in pitch selection? I thought the combination of his off-speed stuff with the power-sinker was devastating against the Marlins, so why pare it down in this game? Is this part of a Joe Kerrigan game plan, or is Ohlendorf still not that confident in his off-speed stuff?

In each of his three good outings, he's given a little bit of a different look each time out. Is this something we can expect from Ohlendorf, or is he going to settle into more of a style? Whatever the case, he's certainly interesting to watch this year.

Jake Peavy and Ross Ohlendorf at four. Jack Wilson to the DL, Brian Bixler into the lineup. Can the Bucs win a third straight series?

I haven't seen many wins as complete as the Bucs' domination of the Padres last night. Five hiters (Freddy Sanchez, Craig Monroe, Andy LaRoche, Eric Hinske, and Jason Jaramillo) had multiple hits while the Pirates scored in six of nine innings last night. Zach Duke went a strong 8 1/3 innings and if not for a horrible route to a ball in the outfield by Nyjer Morgan that became a Scott Hairston triple, he would've been gunning for his second shutout of the young season. When Duke did finally hit the wall in the ninth, Evan Meek came in and threw two pitches to record the last two outs and nail down the win. After getting hit hard last Sunday against the Braves, Duke only allowed two hits in the first eight innings, striking out five and walking two.

After a tough extra-inning loss on Friday, it was just what the doctored ordered in every way for the Pirates. Facing Jake Peavy on Sunday, they really needed a win last night and even without Nate McLouth, the offense gave them what they needed. Duke provided some much-needed rest for the bullpen with a strong start that we all needed to see from him after his bad start last week, and Meek bailed him out without blinking an eye.

One other thing I noticed last night during the game: the FSN cameras got a good shot of Joe Kerrigan in the dugout, studying some incredibly detailed batters' charts. Who remembers Andrews or Colborn doing any such thing? The most impressive thing about the pitching staff to me this year is that they just seemed much more prepared to exploit hitters' weaknesses. Last night, Duke was great at catching Padres' hitters off balance just like Ohlendorf did against the Marlins. Maybe we should stop being so surprised when we see this sort of thing.

Zach Duke gets tasked with following up last night's 11-inning marathon, meaning he's got to do his best to keep the bullpen out of the game. He'll have a little help in Evan Meek's arrival in San Diego, as Craig Hansen was placed on the DL earlier today and Meek has apparently made it to Petco with plenty of time to be ready for tonight's game. That's good news because Donnie Veal was the only other reliever not used in last night's game.

Duke's facing Shawn Hill and the Pirates are again without the services of Nate McLouth, as they're playing it safe with his oblique injury and hope to avoid the DL. That means Craig Monroe in the outfield tonight and batting in the three spot. Gulp.

It's never officially baseball season until the Pirates leave 10 men on base, Ian Snell walks 5 hitters, and something improbably bad happens with the bullpen to allow the Pirates to lose a game that they probably should've won. Last night, it all happened with Matt Capps walking two batters in the eleventh inning. When does Matt Capps ever walk two batters in an inning? It's like the universe is trying to level the Pirates out all by itself or something.

Of couse, Nate McLouth being out with a strained oblique didn't help things, as Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez combined to go 0-for-10 in the two and three slots in the lineup, leaving a ton of guys on base. I don't have much else to say about this one since I didn't see it, but Snell's five walks are never a good sign. He's now struckout 15 and walked 14 in 22 innings, giving him a whopping WHIP of 1.73. If he doesn't do something about his control issues, his 4.50 ERA is about to balloon big-time.

There is no Pirate more divisive than Nyjer Morgan right now. Some people see his speed and enthusiasm for the game and can't think of a more exciting player. Others see players like him as relics of a bygone era where Omar Moreno could bat leadoff with a .310 OBP because he was fast. What's interesting is that there doesn't seem to be any common ground between the two sides. Nyjer apologists seem to think that Nyjer haters can't possibly see any value in a player like Morgan, while Nyjer haters seem to think that Nyjer apologists are blind to the fact that he might not be a good player.

I'd guess that most readers think I fall into the "Nyjer hater" class, but I don't think this is entirely fair. I think there's room for a player like Morgan on a Major League team, provided that he can be productive. The problem, at least in my eyes, is that I think that Morgan has to be better than people realize to be productive. Without much power and with much of his OBP tied up in walks, Morgan probably has to hit .320 or .330 to be a productive leadoff man, whereas Nate McLouth can be a productive 3-hitter with .270 average so long as he shows some pop and takes his walks.

While trying to think of a way to address this gap, I came up with a new stat that I'm going to call NewlY adJusted Efficiency Rating, or NYJER. We'll start with a simple tweak to a familar formula; adjust on-base percentage by subtracting caught stealings from times on base and adjust slugging percentage by adding stolen bases to total bases. Then add them together like OPS. It's more or less a hacked version of raw equivalent average and it's certainly flawed, but I think it's a good start.

It's not quite perfect, though, because it seems like an OPS analogue and it's not because it strongly overvalues stolen bases. This is because caught stealings count against plate appearances, while steals count towards at-bats. For example, if a batter is hitting 30-for-90 with 10 walks and 45 total bases (.333/.400/.500), and has stolen 10 bases in 20 chances, his NYJER adjusts to .300/.611 = .911. Thus, he's gained on his OPS for stealing bases at a very poor rate.

I'd much rather this stat be used mostly for comparison purposes, especially with leadoff hitters. To avoid confusion, let's just set a baseline by determining what would be a good number for a leadoff hitter. For the answer to that question, let's look at the two guys I find Morgan to be compared to the most, Juan Pierre and Willy Taveras. Pierre is a great example of a Nyjer Morgan style player; he was a good hitter with the Marlins when his batting average was high, but since his average has started to drop, he's been a black hole of outs in lineups all across the country. In both 2003 and 2004 with the Marlins, his equivalent average was above .270, which is pretty good (league average is always .260). I think that's about the level Morgan has to reach to be a good enough player to consider keeping him in the lineup. Anything under that, and he should be headed to the bench.

In 2003, Pierre hit .305/.361/.373, stealing 65 bases and getting caught 20 times. His OPS is .734, but accounting for his steals adjusts that to .319/.470 = .789. In 2004, he hit .326/.374/.407 with 45 steals in 69 attempts. That adjusts to .323/.473 = .796. Using those numbers as a guide, we'll set the NYJER baseline for a productive season at .790 and divide any number we get by that. A NYJER of 1.000 is a good number for a leadoff hitter, while one of below 1.000 isn't.

NYJER = [(times on base - caught stealing)/plate appearances + (total bases + stolen bases)/at-bats]/.790

To test that baseline, let's look at Willy Taveras last year. He sucked something awful for Colorado, hitting .251/.308/.296, but he was awesome on the basepaths, stealing 68 bases in 75 tries. Does NYJER skew his line too heavily? By my adjustment, he's at .276/.438 = .714, which gives him a NYJER of .903. It's not perfect (if I wanted perfect, I'd just use equivalent average), but it's easy to calculate and most importantly, it's easy to understand, so while you won't see it on BP, THT, or FanGraphs anytime soon, I think it works for our purposes.

Right now, Morgan's hitting .323/.371/.415 with six steals in seven attempts. That's .343/.508 = .851, which is a NYJER of 1.077, which is pretty good. But the point is that there's not a ton of leeway. If we just drop 20 points of batting average (not an absurd proposition by anyone's standards, I don't think) and put him at .303/.351/.395 and throw in one more caught stealing, he drops right down around the 1.000 mark. So if Nyjer Morgan's going to be a good player this year, he's got to continue right along at the rate he's playing at right now and he doesn't have a ton of room for error.

I've got kind of a backlog of thoughts about the Ryan Doumit injury that I've been meaning to post since the news broke yesterday, so I'm going to get them all out there right now.

I have no idea what to make of Doumit's injury history. None of his injuries are related. He's torn his hamstring, broken his thumb, and hurt both of his wrists on separate occasions. His injuries don't happen in a logical progression; they just keep happening. This means that either Doumit is the unluckiest baseball player in history, or he's genetically inclined to injury. Honestly, I really think it might be the second one.

Whatever the case, it's clear that the Pirates can't bulid around Doumit. Maybe that sounds harsh, but a player that can't be counted on for more than 110 games isn't a cornerstone. He's a nice enough hitter when he's healthy, but that's all he is. It's a hard truth to face, but I just can't see any other conclusion to come to right now.

So what do the Pirates do about the catcher position? That question popped up all over the place after Doumit's injury and and it hasn't gone away. The answer right now, as hard as it is, is that the Pirates shouldn't do anything in the immediate future to fill the gap left by Doumit. Remember 1999? Cam Bonifay decided to carve up his lineup in the wake of Jason Kendall's gruesome ankle injury because he thought that his over-achieving team had a shot at .500 that year. The Pirates won 79 games, but gave up Jose Guillen for Humberto Cota and Joe Oliver in the process. It's hard to accept with the team playing well early in the season, but this is far from a finished product. Unless we're going out and trying to pry Max Ramirez or Jarrod Saltalamacchia or Taylor Teagarden from Texas (which isn't a bad idea, though we don't match up well with them for a trade right now, I don't think), there's just no move to make that's particularly

The other thing that's come up a lot in the past two days (even in some searches that have brought people to WHYGAVS) is the idea of moving Neil Walker back to catcher. This is a bad idea. When Walker was drafted, there was immediate speculation that he'd have to move out from behind the plate. He was never particularly strong as a backstop in the minors, and the switch was finally made. Now, by all reports, he's excelling defensively at third base. I realize we have a glut of third basemen at the moment, but why would we want to move him from a position he is good at to one that we know he's not good at? If we're moving Walker around the diamond, I think we're probably better served by moving him towards the middle infield.

So, yeah. Doumit's injury sucks. There's a very good chance that Jaramillo and Diaz are nothing but career backups. Maybe Doumit's injury problems mean we refocus our shopping list at the trade deadline. Maybe it means we scout the draft a little differently. But for right now, there's just nothing the Pirates can do that's going to be worth it in the long run.

At first, this seemed like it was going to be an easy one. Paul Maholm absolutely cruised through his first three innings, throwing only 15 pitches in the first two, and the Bucs raced out to a quick 3-0 lead. Maholm hit a bit of a snag, though, and started to give runs back until suddenly it was 4-4 in the top of the sixth. "Uh-oh," I thought to myself, "I guess it's time for this again."

But it didn't happen today. The Pirates kept scoring runs behind Adam LaRoche's four hits (yeah, that seems strange to write in April), Andy LaRoche's two RBIs and the bullpen, particularly John Grabow, stopped the bleeding at four runs. Suddenly, we have ourselves a winning streak.

You know what? Maybe the Marlins 11-1 record was inflated by the Nationals and the Pirates can't keep this sort of thing up, but I've enjoyed the hell out of these first 15 games.

Paul Maholm and Ricky Nolasco take the mound at 12:35 today as the Pirates go for the sweep and ensure that you'll have something to keep you from getting too bored at work this afternoon. It certainly looks like an interesting pitching matchup that I'd like to actually be able to watch myself if I weren't in lab this afternoon, but such is life, I suppose.