One night after Ross Ohlendorf shut down the Marlins bats, Jeff Karstens came out tonight and did the same thing, holding them to one run over six innings. That combined with one run in each of the first three innings from the offense was just enough for the bullpen to hold on to the lead and bring home the Pirates' eighth win of the season.

I didn't catch much of this one (I usually try to flip between the Pens and Pirates on nights like tonight when the Pens have playoff games, but I had a couple friends over tonight that were more interested in hockey, so we also spent time watching what I think had to be the first ever buzzer beater in an NHL playoff game ... talk about an unreal finish), but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what was different for Karstens tonight when compared with his first start. Last week against Houston, he only got 47 of 87 pitches over the plate and walked five runners in four innings. Tonight, he threw 54 of 87 for strikes and only walked two in six. It looks like he changed speeds pretty well, and the Marlins just don't seem to be able to handle that at all.

The only run I saw the Pirates score live was Freddy Sanchez's home run when Anibal Sanchez couldn't quite get his high fastball high enough to run it past Freddy and he crushed it in to the seats. I see that the LaRoches figured prominently in the other two runs which is good; they're the two that I think need to pick up the slack for Doumit the most.

One final note: the game tomorrow is at 12:30, so don't forget. I'm going to go write a gamethread to autopublish at 11:30 right now just in case.

Jeff Karstens and Anibal Sanchez take the mound at 7:05 tonight. It's certainly not a favorable pitching matchup for us with the way Karstens has opened his season, but Sanchez has a deceivingly low ERA given his high WHIP and walk rate. The Pirates haven't strung two good offensive performances together yet this year and they'll be pressed to do it against Sanchez tonight without Doumit in the lineup, but they're going to have to get used to that. If they're going to beat him tonight, they're going to do it by drawing some walks and making him throw a lot of pitches. If we're swinging at everything, we're probably going down with much of a fight again.

Ryan Doumit needs wrist surgery and will be out for 8-10 weeks, the Post-Gazette is reporting. I don't need to tell you how lame this news is. Get ready to figure out whether Robinzon Diaz or Jason Jaramillo are MLB-quality catchers.

G**************t.

Now that the season's going full speed, I'm going to try and be better about having regular polls. I just put one up in the left sidebar asking how the awesome start by the rotation affects your outlook for 2009. I of course encourage everyone to vote, but I'd also like to see some discussion about this (and in fact it's already started in the thread below).

Is it too early to attribute this to anything but luck? Can we give Joe Kerrigan any credit at all yet? Seriously, what are the chances this lasts any longer? What do you expect over the rest of the season?

Through thirteen games this year, the Pirates have now thrown four shutouts. All four have come in the team's last seven games. Certainly I expected the pitching to improve this year, but I didn't think there'd be any stretches like this, let alone one so early in the season. Tonight, Ross Ohlendorf turned the same trick that Paul Maholm and Ian Snell did against the Braves by tossing seven shutout innings and leaving the last two to the bullpen, with Tyler Yates and Jesse Chavez closing the door.

It was interesting to watch Ohlendorf work tonight, because as a huge guy that we know can ramp his fastball up to the mid and upper-90s, that's just not the way he approaches the game at all as a starter. Tonight he mixed his fastball and sinker together nicely to get 10 groundouts in seven innings, and he pulled the string on a few nice changeups that I think played a big role in his five strikeouts. He's an interesting pitcher to try and figure out from the PitchFX; the algorithims can't distinguish his fastball from his sinker at all and that makes it hard to compare one outing to another (at least for someone like me who's not that into statistics). Of course, I imagine this is where a good deal of his success this year is coming from; hitters are having a hard time telling the difference between the fastball and sinker, too. I was really impressed with his changeup tonight, it looked to me like he was picking his spots with it really well as a change of pace pitch to compliment the fastball/sinker mix that makes up most of his pitches. The Marlins really seemed like they had no idea what pitch was coming, and that's pretty well reflected in the two hits he gave up in his seven innings.

Of course, it's only fair that I mention that I was completely underwhelmed by the Marlins. They looked awful at the plate, they looked awful in the field, and it seems like they either don't teach their pitcher's how to hold runners, or their pitcher and catcher communicate with two tin cans and a string. Nyjer Morgan and Nate McLouth are going to steal bases this year, but how often is Jack Wilson going to steal third? And how in the world did Logan Kensing let Adam LaRoche get 2/3rds of the way to second base before he even started his delivery? Maybe this was one bad game for them, but they looked so fundamentally poor tonight that I have a hard time imagining how they're going to stay out in front of the NL East for long. The Nationals must be really, really awful.

I hope that at some point, Andy LaRoche playing well is going to become such a regular thing that I stop noting it on a nightly basis. I don't think we're quite there yet. He had another hit tonight and he also did a nice job going with a breaking pitch from Miller and sharply lining it the other way, though it was hit right at the right fielder for an out. He also turned in two really nice plays in the field, including a gem of a diving double-play, and he showed off a really good throwing arm from third base. It seems like he gets better and more confident every night. I hope this trend will continue.

I also want to quickly note that each of the three shutout wins in the last four games have come in pretty similar fashion. Good starting pitching complimented with a slim early lead that's broken apart by big hits late in the game. Nate McLouth got the big hit again tonight with a monstrous three-run home run to right-center field. I think this is worth mentioning, because I feel like the Pirates lose 50 games a year in this exact fashion; by hanging close early but getting out-sprinted to the finish. It's just nice to win a few games like this, however long it lasts.

The Marlins roll in to PNC with the best record in baseball tonight, sitting pretty at 10-1. There's been a lot of the inevitable discussion about whether the Marlins are really this good or not and how playing them will tell us a lot about a Pirate team that's sitting at .500 and been relatively untested to this point. Of course, with Ross Ohlendorf and Jeff Karstens going in the first two games of the series, maybe we won't learn that much about the Pirates.

When looking at the Marlins' record, you have to remember that three of their wins just came after three National bullpen meltdowns that were so bad that they decided that maybe Kip Wells will solve all their problems. They're good and they're young and they'll be interesting if that young pitching staff holds up, but they're not this much better than the rest of the NL.

Anyways, Ohlendorf and Andrew Miller take the mound tonight, though the big story for the Pirates is Ryan Doumit, who's been scratched with a wrist problem and is getting an MRI at AGH today. DK doesn't make it sound serious at all, but I'm always a little wary when it comes to Doumit's health.

Nate at Sixty Feet, Six Inches went to another Indy Indians game on Friday and came away impressed with both Andrew and Dan McCutchen. His post has a lot of details, so check it out.

Andy Van Slyke talks to BP's David Laurila.

The Pedro Watch: .250/.375/.528 with three homers and sixteen RBIs in eleven games.

Paul Lukas steps away from the realm of uniforms to do an interview with Frank Coonelly and Lou DePaoli on how the Pirates are dealing with the economy. The line from DePaoli about fans not comparing the Pirates and Steelers either shows an incredible disconnect between the front office and the community, or it's an outright lie. It still sounds like the team is prepared pretty well, all things considered.

DK's game story for yesterday's game has some interesting stuff from a reader about Zach Duke and first pitch strikes yesterday.

One more to add (11:19)- Kip Wells is called up by the Nationals to shore up their bullpen. Yeah, I know. It looked funny to me when I typed it, too.

We all knew that Zach Duke's shutout streak couldn't last forever. And we all knew the Braves would score runs against us eventually. No one is going to argue either one of these points. Unfortunately, both improbable streaks intersected this afternoon and the Braves had a three-spot on the board before the Pirates even came to the plate.

During the broadcast, Bob Walk kept saying that he thought that Duke had a stretch of bad luck in the first inning and that had a lot to do with the three runs the Braves scored. I saw something different. I saw a team that had read a scouting report. In his first two starts of 2009, Duke showed a little more snap on his curve and couple with a little more zip on his fastball, he was able to pick his spots and surprise hitters, I think. In the first few innings today, the Braves looked like they were just sitting back in the box and lining whatever Duke threw at them right back up the middle, be it curve, fastball, slider, whatever. They weren't hitting him hard in the first few innings, but they were seemingly doing exactly what they wanted to be doing.

This is where the challenge comes for Duke and Joe Kerrigan. They made some adjustments in the off-season that took the Cardinals and Astros by surprise; now what do they do when teams start adjusting to the changes that Duke has made? This is what's going to decide what kind of year Duke has, I think.

Of course, it doesn't help that the Pirates gave him no offensive support. It's been a roller coaster with both the offense and the pitching so far this year; the Pirates have scored one run or less four times while they've thrown three shutouts and held their opponent to two runs in three other occasions. I'll admit that I'm more than a little worried that the brief offensive outbursts we've seen are part of the unevenness that dominates baseball in April and that by the time mid-May rolls around, we're going to be scoring 1-2 runs a night a lot more regularly. Maybe we'll find out more about this club with the red-hot Marlins in town next.

Zach Duke and his 0.59 ERA take the mound against Javy Vazquez and the Braves at 1:35. Both Jack Wilson and Chipper Jones return to the lineup today, which is probably a bigger boost for the Braves than the Pirates even though Jones has struggled this year. To John Russell's credit, he's going with his every day lineup here on Sunday, even with the series win already in the bag. It would've been easy to give Craig Monroe another start after his hot day yesterday and give Ryan Doumit the day off, but Monroe's on the bench against the righty Vazquez and since Doumit gets a full day of rest after yesterday's afternoon game, Russell's going for the sweep at full force.

At some point, Zach Duke is going to start coming back to earth. He's been practically invincible in his first two starts and we're talking about a guy who could put up a full-season ERA of 4.00 and we'd all agree it was a giant breakout year. The hits are going to start falling at some point and he's going to start looking human again, though I'm not sure that day is going to be today. The Bucs pitchers have had some good luck against the Braves in this series without racking up a ton of strikeouts and they've gotten some pretty good defense behind them. That's what Duke needs to have another good start, and I think he's probably got another one in him today. He's going to have to be good, because I think Vazquez's start is going to resemble the one that Jurrjens on Friday and he might not have a lot of run support this afternoon. That and, well, the Braves have to score at some point, right?