There's lots of talk about the little LaRoche brother on this off-day, and I think that's probably warranted given the details. Rob Neyer speculates that there's something "seriously wrong" with LaRoc439 in he, and guesses it's physical more than mental. Charlie, meanwhile, plays off of Neyer's piece and guesses that maybe it is mental. Since both of those pieces were published, the PG has run an article mentioning that LaRoche's back pain hasn't completely gone away yet and implied that that may be a reason for both his struggles and his subsequent benchings.

So what's the deal? Like both Neyer and Charlie, I find it hard to believe that a guy from a baseball family, who's dad and brother were/are both solid Major Leaguers, has some kind of mental block between AAA and the big leagues. It just seems implausible to me. I don't want to be redundant here in repeating points that have already been made, but I do have a few things to add to the discussion.

First off, I've already said that I think that Chad Hermansen is a bad comp for LaRoche. In fact, all the usual suspects are. JJ Davis had good minor league numbers, but his minor league K/BB ratio doesn't even come close to LaRoche's. Andy Marte might be the best comparison; I'm still not sure what went wrong from his great 2001 season in AAA at the age of 21 and now. And yet, LaRoche's minor league numbers were better than Marte's. Even accounting for park factors and hitter-friendly leagues, LaRoche's K/BB numbers in the minors are 294/243. The guy knows how to hit. All of these uber-prospects who have fallen off the face off the earth saw huge declines in even their minor league numbers once their slides began; LaRoche hit .293/.452/.439 in AAA last year and we know he did it with a thumb injury that sapped his power. I'm just not sure how any of those other "mysterious collapse" cases fit with him.

The other point I would make is this: don't be so certain that Russell is benching LaRoche without the consent of the front office. There seems to be a pretty strong, "I can't believe Russell is doing this" sentiment, but I'm not so sure that a player that Huntington wants playing would be so quickly benched by Russell. We know that the Pirates rule over their minor league coaching staff with an iron fist. While I'm sure JR has more leeway than that, if the front office wants LaRoche playing every day, I have to think he'd be playing every day.

So that raises the question, why is he not playing? It could be the back injury; that seems like a perfectly valid reason to give a guy a few nights off if he's struggling in the field. Or it could be that he's quickly moved into Steve Pearce territory with management. I can't imagine the team was terribly pleased when he came to camp and his back problem acted up, only to find out that he hadn't been doing his stretches to try and prevent that. And I had heard that one of the reasons he was placed in Joe Torre's doghouse in LA was for pulling a Jose Bautista last year; deciding in the batter's box that he was going to try and squeeze-bunt a runner home without really telling anyone about it when all he had to do was put the ball in play to score the run. Not being a Dodger fan, I don't really have verification for this. I've certainly gotten the impression in the past that the front office hasn't always been pleased with LaRoche and that that's not all related to his play.

In the end? It's four games. Everybody's gone hitless over four games before and maybe this is nothing. Maybe his back hurts and Russell's giving him some down time to alleviate the pain and by May, this is all going to seem silly. I hope that's the case, but I become less and less positive every day that it is.

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On Saturday, WHYGAVS turned four. I'm not entirely certain why I feel like the fourth birthday for a blog is such a big deal, but it seems momentus to me for some reason. Regardless, I wanted to mark the occasion a bit and thought I'd do a quick retrospective. The first words that ever appeared under the "Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?" header were these words right here:

Seeing as how I spend 90% of my time thinking about, watching, or listening to the Pittsburgh Pirates, my thoughts and ramblings about them are really to long to fit into an AIM profile, so they will go here from now on. This is whole thing is really more for me than anyone else, but since I'm a nice guy I'll share this with everyone. This way in the long run we can all look back and point out all the places I was right and Lloyd McClendon was wrong, and all the places I said things that made me look like an idiot (more often than not). Feel free to share this with anyone you please, just let 'em know where it came from. Since we're in the infantile stages here, things will probably change around a bit until I figure out exactly what I'm going to do with this space, but hey, as a college student I'm a master of procrastination. At least I can focus it into one place here.

I was exactly what I said I was; a bored college sophomore looking for ways to kill time and not study for Organic Chemistry. This lead first to the birth of WHYGAVS and second to the first C of my life. There wasn't much in the way of readers back then, but a few followers popped up early on and kept me going. This is what WHYGAVS looked like for much of its first year:

After some time, I decided that maybe a Pirate blog should be black and gold instead of just black, so I learned some very basic coding skills and started turning things gold. I think at some point the links also became gold, but I can't find evidence of that in the Internet Wayback Machine.

Much to my surprise, WHYGAVS really began to grow in that second summer and inevitably, people started complaining about the black background. I finally caved and instead turned the entire blog into a hideous, jumbled, bright yellow mess that looked like the tragic love-child of ESPN's old Page 2 design and a 1970s era living room.

For some reason, people kept reading through the template disaster of the summer of '06 long enough for me to realize that my blog was a hideous-looking disaster, and when Blogger came out with some new templates, I finally got things into good working order.

If you ask me, that's a pretty kickass looking blog, and WHYGAVS stayed that way until Derek from Bloguin made me the proverbial offer I couldn't refuse, paving the way for my move from Blogger and to the site that you all see now.

But the important part about this post isn't the look back on the old versions of WHYGAVS, it's this part at the end where I thank each and every single person that reads this site for doing so. Exactly four years to the day after I started blogging, I was sitting in a press box with a press pass, watching the two best prospects in baseball go head to head in Durham. On April 11, 2005, I don't think I could have even possibly imagined a scenario that lead to that, but here we are. The truth, though, is that that's not why I write. I write because WHYGAVS has shown me that there are other Pirate fans out there just like me, who remember what I remember and who care as much as I care. I've never admitted this on here before, but I came perilously close to closing the blog down after my move to North Carolina in the dark days of the end of the Littlefield era. In the end, I just couldn't do it because I honestly felt like it would let people down. I kept going and sure enough, Littlefield was fired soon after and I haven't looked back since.

So thank you for all of the times we've agreed and especially for all of the times we haven't. WHYGAVS has made me a smarter, better baseball fan and a smarter, better Pirate fan because everything I write has to be up to the standards of not just myself, but of all the smart fans that read. If I could, I'd thank each and every one of you personally for four great years. Here's hoping the next four see some wins.

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Before I even start this recap, I need to point the following things out: the Astros haven't scored since Saturday, they started Jason Michaels in center today, and Russ Ortiz took the mound for them today. This isn't so much a baseball team as it is a squad of players that even Dave Littlefield would be embarrassed by. All reactions to this game should be tempered by this reality.

That said, Zach Duke just threw a complete game shutout. Yes, I'm worried about him throwing 119 pitches in April, but it's hard to imagine JR was going to pull him at less than 120 so long as he had a shutout going in the home opener. His velocity looked good on the Gameday in the 9th inning, and so I'm just going to hope this is a non-issue.

Just like his first start against the Cardinals, he again did all the things that he hadn't been doing the past few seasons. I realize that Duke's not a strikeout pitcher and he never will be, but every pitcher has to strike some batters out, and if they're not it's a good indication that they're not pitching well. From 2006-2008, Duke's K/9 rates were 4.9, 3.4, and 4.2. Those aren't numbers he can succeed with. Today, he got five strikeouts over the full game, including getting Lance Berkman on K's three times. In his two starts this year, he's averaging 5.7 K/9. As everyone's been noting, his fastball has more zip on it and his breaking balls seem to have more bite. He looked like a different pitcher last Tuesday and while I didn't see today's game, it seems clear that he did again today. I still think it's too soon to start making any conclusions about him, but I like everything I've seen so far.

After Ian Snell's good start was wasted yesterday, it was also nice to see some offense today to back Duke's strong effort, even if it was off of a pretty motley crew of Astros' pitchers. Freddy Sanchez double three times and Adam LaRoche and Ryan Doumit both homered (right around the seats that I would've been sitting in if I had been able to make it home ... grumble grumble grumble) and added multiple hits to the seven-run, 14-hit attack.

At the end of the day, we can talk about how bad the Astros are, but the Pirates are 4-3 and my dad (who's been going to these things for quite some time) called today one of the best home opener's he's ever seen. Who's going to argue with that?

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The Pirates are on a pretty ridiculous run of openers, from last year's fly ball debacle in Atlanta to Jose Bautista's impromptu bunt in the home opener last year, to this year's dramatic comeback to start the season in St. Louis. It's hard to believe that a game between two teams almost certainly ticketed for the basement of the NL Central is going to live up to that, but that doesn't mean that I'm happy about not being there for it.

Today I'm most interested in how Zach Duke fairs after his stellar season debut against St. Louis. I don't know when exactly I'm going to be convinced that he's "back," but each good start he makes is a step in the right direction, as far as I'm concerned. He's up against Brian Moehler today, and if that dude shuts us out with fewer than five hits, I'm not going to be pleased at all. Ramon Vazquez is predictably in the lineup for Andy LaRoche, but beyond that the Bucs look about the same as they have all season today.

I know a lot of readers are at this game today, but there are at least a few other out of towners and ex-pats like myself and we can all commiserate in the gamethread this afternoon. IT'S THE HOME OPENER! THE PIRATES ARE STILL OVER .500! GET EXCITED, EVERYBODY!

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Nate at Sixty Feet, Six Inches was at the Indy Indians home opener. He's planning on following the Indians pretty closely all year, so make sure you keep an eye out for his posts. The above pic was sent along by Bam of the Blitzburgh Blog, who was also in Indy for the opener. I probably won't post pics from minor league games all year, but if you're at the games, I'd love to hear from people watching the affiliates play and I'll do my best to get whatever you guys send me in to posts.

Trying to keep the sidebar updated part 1,000,000: Everything Pittsburgh, B.U.C.C.O. Fans.com (lots of good stuff there), the Jolly Roger, This Is Getting Old, North Side Notch, and Is This Thing On?. If you've sent me the link to your blog and I haven't put it up yet, please don't interpret that as a slight from me. Just send it along again and I'll do my best to get to it this time around. And if you read a blog that I don't have linked, use this thread to tell me about it. I'm really going to try and get the sidebar cleaned up in the next week or so here.

Hope everyone has fun at the Opener today. I'm insanely jealous of all of you, mainly because I had intended to come home for Easter/the Opener this weekend, until I found out on Thursday that my thesis proposal is going to be on May 5th. Holy crap, that's soon. Posting might be a little light until then. Gamethreads and recaps will certainly be posted, but if you feel like I'm missing news stories or just not giving you enough to talk about, well, there is a forum.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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!

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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?

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