After his electric debut on Thursday, everyone was talking about Pedro Alvarez. Since Thursday, there's been very little said about Pedro. This is because he's 0-for-13 in his last three games and he hasn't even reached base once in any of the three. I'm not here to say anything negative about this mini-slump for Alvarez or even try to read into it at all. What I do want to do is try to quiet all the talk that broke out Friday morning about Alvarez making it to Pittsburgh this year.

Last year, Matt Wieters entered the season with no professional experience save the Hawaiian Winter League. He started the season with Frederick of the Carolina League, which is the exact same league Alvarez is starting in, and went on to have what is being called one of the best seasons in the history of minor league baseball (I'm not kidding), hitting .355/.454/.600 across two levels. He was almost certainly ready for the Majors by the All-Star break last year, but he's still not in the big leagues because the Orioles prefer him to play a bit at every level and don't see the need to rush him to the bigs. He'll make it to Baltimore soon enough.

Alvarez, for all of the hopes we have pinned on him, is not going to match Wieters' minor league numbers this year. Wieters' numbers in 2008 were a once-in-a-generation breakout. It's not fair to Alvarez to compare him to that, just because Pirate fans are still upset that the Bucs didn't draft Wieters. Alvarez could well have a great year in Lynchburg and Altoona, but there's just no reason to put him on a super-fast-track with the Pirates likely foundering in the NL Central this year. And even if he does break out of this little slump and put up insane numbers this year, don't expect to see him in Pittsburgh before May or June of 2010.

I want to say, "Hey, there's nothing you can do when a guy goes out there and has a day like Aaron Harang had today," because it's certainly hard to say much when a guy spins a three-hitter at you with 9 Ks and only 103 pitches for the whole game. But then it's also hard to think it's an isolated incident when you were one-hit just three days ago, especially when the one-hitter was tossed by a guy who hadn't won a game since the 2006 World Series and the three-hitter was thrown by someone coming off of the worst season of his career.

Of course, me saying that the Pirates' offense is bad would be like me saying, "It's Easter" or "Tiger Woods drops f-bombs left and right on live TV when he misses putts." It's just re-stating the obvious. Sure, Harang and Carpenter's gems were aided by the Pirates' offense, and you shouldn't assume that games like these are going to end in April.

What makes for much more interesting discussion from today's game is Ian Snell's start. After he gave up a double to Willy Taveras and a homer to Brandon Phillips in the first inning, I thought, "Here we go again," and I doubt I was alone there. But Snell had a little more in the tank than that today and even though he got in to trouble again a few times, he managed to keep the Reds off of the scoreboard the rest of the afternoon. I was particularly impressed in his ability to really bear down in a few situations and crank his fastball up to around 94 (according to Gameday) to get some big strikeouts. If you check the first graph here, you can see that Snell got his fastball above 92 pretty regularly today, and I think that's where it needs to be for him to really be successful. Three walks in six innings isn't great, but I'll take seven strikeouts, five hits, and only two runs in six any day.

Of course, that line and the final score were both really mitigated by some great help from the defense behind him, particularly Jack Wilson. Wilson turned one of his trademark diving-up-the-middle-shovel-from-the-glove double plays in the sixth inning (this particular sort of play, which Wilson has made look so easy the countless times he's pulled it off, is exactly what people are going to remember Jack Wilson for in Pittsburgh), then caught a line drive in shallow left field off the bat of Edwin Encarnacion and turned it in to a 6-4-3 triple play. The problem, of course, was that to that point, Wilson had turned in two defensive gems, but the Pirates' offense only had two hits to match.

Finally, a few other quick observations:

• Craig Hansen got in to trouble and couldn't finish his one inning, but I still liked seeing him strike Aaron Harang out on three pitches. To my eye, at least, he does seem to have a bit more control this year.
  
• I wasn't really a fan of John Russell pinch-hitting for Andy LaRoche with the game on the line in the eighth. I get that the guy is struggling, but either he's your third baseman and you trust him to be out there, or you don't. From what I've seen and read about the past few games, he does seem to be getting some good wood on the ball and I mean, come on, he's not going to bat .000 this year. I still won't be surprised if Russell spares him the boos during the home opener tomorrow.
• What really burns about this one is that JR managed to finagle two scoreless innings from relievers not named Grabow or Capps, and the Bucs still couldn't pull this one out.
  
• Nate McLouth did not look good at the plate today. Harang made him look like a little leaguer during the last at-bat of the game. But hey, I'm just a nerd with a computer, what do I know?

At least Snell turned things around a bit today. And hey, .500 for the home opener isn't too bad, all things considered.

You know how you can tell that baseball season is here? The first Sunday afternoon game of the season is here! And on Easter Sunday, to boot.

Ian Snell and Aaron Harang take the mound today at 1:10. Harang had a good first start this week, but got the loss when Johan Santana out-pitched him. Snell pitched terribly in his first start in St. Louis and I think we'd all like to see him bounce back today. There's no surprises in the lineups today, so hopefully we can keep the good mojo from yesterday going.

As a quick aside, I got to spend last night in the pressbox in Durham for the David Price/Matt Wieters showdown that finally took place. Neither prospect looked great, but there was still some cool stuff to see.

It's always nice when the Pirates can bring a non-losing record in to the home opener, and they assured themselves of that today by walloping the Reds 10-2. The game was oddly blacked out for me so I didn't see any of it, but it looks like it went just the way a typical Pirate win is going to go this year. Nate McLouth and Adam LaRoche homered, Ryan Doumit hit a grand slam, Nyjer Morgan found his way to the base three times, and Paul Maholm went seven solid innings, holding the Reds to just three hits.

I mean, really, this was a pretty solid win from start to finish. Four runs off of Johnny Cueto (who struck out nine, but hey, we're gonna do that a bit this year), five off of former Bucco Mike Lincoln, and a non-disastrous outing from our own bullpen is a good recipe.

Of course, it wasn't all good. Andy LaRoche went 0-for-5 (at least he didn't strike out!) and Jesse Chavez didn't pitch great in his inning, put that's splitting hairs in a 10-2 win. One more win and they're rolling in to the opener with a .667 winning percentage!

We've got a weirdly placed afternoon game today, which will feature Paul Maholm and Johnny Cueto on the mound. You'll note that the Reds moved their starter from last night's rainout back a day in the rotation, while the Pirates did not do the same for Jeff Karstens. Both LaRoches are back in today's lineup, while John Russell will be in the dugout with his arm in a sling thanks to surgery to relieve gout in his elbow. Do you really think any other teams have managers that need surgery for gout?

Jeff Karstens makes me nervous. The article about him messing with deliveries all spring just makes me generally uneasy for some reason. It's likely because I'm not sure how good he is to start with, even if I'd rather see him than Jason Davis or Virgil Vasquez in the rotation. He's going against Johnny Cueto, who strikes me as just the sort of pitcher that the Pirates are capable of making look very good.

Anyways, I want to see Karstens pitch, but I'm going to Durham for the Price/Wieters bonanza tonight (secretly keeping an eye on Nolan Reimold, who I played with in high school), so I think I'm going to set the DVR for this one tonight and catch it after the Bulls game ends, if its not rained out.

Joe Posnanski interviews Michael Schur (better known by some as Ken Tremendous). Internet baseball nerds rejoice!

I wanted to say something about Nick Adenhart yesterday, but I couldn't really find any words that felt right for something so sad and senseless. Vin Scully (as transcribed by Will Leitch) put things into perspective.

Via DK's blog, here's the local recap of Pedro Alvarez's professional debut.

And while we're on the Minor League watch, Andrew McCutchen and Brian Bixler both had two hits last night, and both of them tripled in the Indianapolis Indians' opener. And Indy lost 16-5.

The Pirates will honor the three fallen police officers by wearing PBP caps and a patch at the home opener on Monday.

You know what's nice to see after a long day?

Pedro Alvarez, 3/4, HR, 2B, 4 RBI in his professional debut.

Throw in two hits from Jordy Mercer for good measure, and I'd say that's a pretty solid opener for the Lynchburg Hillcats. They're in Winston-Salem in five weeks. I'm excited.

What a weird game. The Pirates lead 1-0 for most of it without the benefit of a hit, then got a hit, then gave up two runs and lost. Getting one-hit is never a good thing and Ramon Vazquez getting that one hit is probably only going to encourage John Russell to keep Andy LaRoche on the bench more often. I think that's a bad thing, but I'll go in to that a little bit later.

Instead, I want to look at Ross Ohlendorf's start. On the surface, I wasn't terribly impressed with what I saw from the Gamecast this afternoon. His velocity didn't seem all that impressive (it sat right around 90 or 91), and an almost every pitch was a fastball or sinker. The distinction between a fastball and a sinker can be a pretty fine one, but Pitch FX says that 70 of his 90 pitches was either one or the other and I don't see a whole lot of difference in break between the two pitches.

That's not to say that there's not a difference; it's hard to tell exactly what those numbers mean without a point of reference. But if Ohlendorf was dominating with a good, hard sinker today, I would expect to see something other than 10 flyouts and only seven groundouts. With only one strikeout, that's a pretty iffy outing in every way except for the runs column. I'm not trying to rag on Ohlendorf here -- six scoreless innings is a solid start and he probably shouldn't have been rolled out to start the seventh -- I'm simply looking at these pitch charts and trying to get some predictive value out of his start today. If I had to guess, he's going to give up more runs in his next few starts if he pitches like he did today.