First things first: I passed my exam this afternoon, and so I may or may not be celebrating tonight instead of watching the Pirates.

Second: this losing streak against Milwaukee is officially epic. I think it has to cross the 15-game threshhold for that designation, and we're there. It's an epic, epic losing streak and it's taken on a life of it's own. No lead we have against the Brewers will be safe until we can close out a win. Ian Snell and Jeff Suppan ... that should be a favorable pitching matchup for us, right? WRONG! Until we break this streak, I'm going to be convinced that the ghost of Jackie Chesboro himself wouldn't stand a chance against the Brewers. No one loses this many games in a row to another team. NO ONE.

You suck, Snell. You can't break the Brewer curse. No one can break it.

(That's right, I'm even bringing the insult back to break this thing up.)

You know, I want to write some BS line about "Hey! We knew the bullpen would blow some leads this year, we just have to accept it and move on," but f*** that noise. This loss stings. Maybe it's the Penguins' ugly start (I don't even know if I can put my dislike for Alex Ovechkin into words, but that's for "Where have you gone, Kevin Stevens' Eight-Ball?" and not WHYGAVS), maybe it's my impending thesis proposal/oral preliminary exam tomorrow (you guys are lucky there's a recap in tonight, I'm nearly to panic level DEFCON-5 over this thing), or maybe it's just that I plain don't like the Brewers. Whatever the case, this loss is not easy to swallow.

OK, so the Matt Capps meltdown has been an impending event all year. He hasn't looked sharp, his fastball seems to be clocking a little slow (it was about 93 tonight according to Pitch FX) and he very nearly blew a bigger lead against a worse team on Saturday. But six runs in the last two innings? After Paul Maholm's first real gem of 2009? After we scraped out four runs against three runs and a lead against a guy that absolutely dominated us last week? After Andy LaRoche hit a home run?!? Just not cool.

Someday, we're going to beat the Brewers. And it's going to be awesome.

First things first: fist-bump to my man Tecmo at PSAMP for this awesome Adult Swim clip. You know things are bad when you've become a punchline for stoners, insomniacs, and college kids.

Second things second; almost all of you want to watch the Penguins game tonight. I'm not going to tell you to not do that. Heck, I'll admit that I'm going to be watching hockey tonight, too. But keep an eye on the Bucs, at least, because Yovani Gallardo is taking the mound again at PNC and he's facing Paul Maholm and the Pirates are frustrated and the Brewers aren't happy with the Pirates and all of these things mean that this might be a little more ... "spirited" than your usual early-May ballgame.

Of course, at this point I feel more desperate than even Jim Mora. Win? Win a game? Winning? I'll just be happy if we score a run.

Well, so much for that. After an encouraging 8-run outburst last night, the Pirates were shut down completely by Johnny Cueto today. Cueto struck out nine Pirates in eight innings, holding the Bucs to just four singles and only one walk. Against Jeff Karstens, that effort was plenty to get the Reds their second win in the three-game series against the Buccos.

So the offense is a problem. It's a big problem. Not only were the Bucs shutout in two of three games against these Reds, they failed to register an extra base hit in both of the shutouts. They haven't hit a home run in a week now, since Adam LaRoche's two dingers against the Padres closed out the series win in San Diego last Sunday. It's hard to imagine the offense having a worse week.

On the bright side, Jesse Chavez and Evan Meek continued to pitch very well today, shutting out the Reds over the last four innings after Karstens got yanked. Maybe the offense will be as bad as we expected coming into the season, but hey, that doesn't mean the bullpen will be!

Yep. I'm grasping at straws. What's that? The Brewers are coming back in to town tomorrow? Crap. This is why the MLB plays a longer schedule than the NFL, I guess.

One of the best things about baseball is how quickly things change. Yesterday, we were all lamenting the Pirates inability to score runs and wondering if they'd ever win/score again. Today, they have a chance to take a series from the Reds and make that sweep by the Brewers seem like ancient history.

It won't be easy, though with a pretty unfavorable pitching matchup in Johnny Cueto and Jeff Karstens. We beat up on Cueto in his first start, dinging him for eight hits and four runs in six innings, but he also struck out nine Pirates and has quite good in his three starts since then, allowing just two earned runs. He did walk six in his second start, but he's been improving each time out, it seems. Karstens is the ultimate "what you see is what you get" starter. He's going to go out there, give you five innings or six, and if you've scored a few runs, you'll probably still be in the game. So will the Pirates score a few runs against Cueto? That's the question today.

I guess after a four-game losing streak, it doesn't matter if you take a game that should've been an easy win and turn it into a hard one, so long as you actually manage to win. The Pirates put four quick runs up in the first inning tonight, which was rather welcome after the team had failed to score in their previous 22 innings.

The Reds drew close on Alex Gonzalez's three-run homer off of the foul pole in the fourth, but the Pirates got a break when Alex Rosales and Brandon Phillips combined to completely botch what should've been an inning-ending double play ball off of Andy LaRoche's bat into two runs for the Pirates. Nyjer Morgan (beat out a double play ball, went from first to third on Ramon Hernandez's laziness on a wild pitch, scored on a sac fly) added an eighth run and the Pirates very nearly needed them all when the Reds dinged Matt Capps for five hits and two runs in the ninth inning before Capps got himself together and struck out Gonzalez to close the game out.

I'm not sure why I felt the need to recap all the action from the game, but perhaps it's to try and convey the feeling that I had for the entire nine innings that the Pirates were going to somehow find a way to blow the game. They very nearly did, and with the way Capps started the ninth inning I was half expecting Russell to get Jesse Chavez up in the bullpen. But they didn't blow it, they got some timely early hits, they got a nice start from Ohlendorf, they took advantage of some mistakes by the Reds, and they ended the losing streak at four. That means it was a good game.

At this point, it's time to stop being concerned with the long-term ramifications of this ugly streak for the Pirates and just start hoping they win a game soon. A four-game losing streak isn't all that long of a slide, but once we move towards five, six, seven, and beyond, things get harder and harder to stomach. Even tougher to stomach is this ugly scoreless streak we're on right now. We shut the Braves out in back-to-back games back in our first homestand and they rebounded with ten runs in the third game of the series. I'd love to see that sort of reaction tonight against Micah Owings.

Ross Ohlendorf gets the ball for the Bucs tonight. He was successful in his last start, but he didn't mix his breaking pitches and changeup in with his sinker nearly as well as he did in the start before that against the Marlins and after his start he said he just didn't feel all that confident in those pitches. Much of Zach Duke's success last night seemed to come from keeping the Reds off balance all night, so I'm hoping to see Ohlendorf work that slider and changeup in much more tonight than he did against the Padres. But mostly, I'm hoping to see some runs scored.

What can you say about this one? Getting shut out by Bronson Arroyo sucks. Zach Duke pitched a great game last night, constantly keeping the Reds off balance by changing speeds and getting a lot of ground balls, and there was nothing the Pirates could do against Arroyo, scratching out four singles in eight innings.

There's not a lot else to say about this. The Pirates didn't score on Friday, they didn't score on Wednesday, and they didn't score after the fifth inning on Tuesday. Even Nate McLouth's return didn't seem to help much last night. He singled and he almost hit a homer, but his long foul ball was probably the offensive highlight of the night. Where have you gone, Ryan Doumit?

This is it. Maybe it's too early to say that a certain set of games is a defining stretch for a baseball team, but the Pirates need some wins against the Reds this weekend. Three straight losses against the Brewers has really taken the air out of the tires on the Pirate bandwagon, but Zach Duke (the Pirates' best pitcher this year) goes against Bronson Arroyo (a guy the Pirates have hit well recently) at PNC Park tonight. Nate McLouth makes his return to the starting lineup tonight, and hopefully he can give a jolt to an offense that was depantsed by Yovani Gallardo two days ago. If this year is going to be any different at all than past years, the Pirates need a win tonight.