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!

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.

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.