I want to say that nothing went right in this game, but that's not true in the strictest sense. The Pirates took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning and then nothing went right from there. Wandy Rodriguez couldn't find the strike zone in the first inning and when he had a chance to get out of the inning with the Pirates still only down 2-1, Clint Barmes booted a double play ball and by the time the inning finally ended, it was 5-1 Brewers. 

Given the way the Pirates have scored runs lately, that didn't necessarily seem like the worst thing in the world. Rodriguez seemed to settle down and the Pirates got a second run and then Yovani Gallardo and Norichika Aoki hit back-to-back homers and pretty soon Jonathan Sanchez was in the game and that was that. 

Let's try again tomorrow.

The Pirates are probably the hottest team in baseball right now, rolling to 14 wins in their last 19 games against mostly good teams and first place in the NL Central. No matter how well they're playing, though, a trip to Miller Park is a terrifying thing for the Pirates. Last year the Pirates won two games at Miller Park. In 2011, they won one. In 2010, they won two. They didn't win any games there in 2008 or 2009. In that whole span, the Pirates have only won one series at Miller Park, and that was in 2010. 

If the Pirates are going to turn things around for real this year, winning some games in Milwaukee would be a really good place to start. Tonight Wandy Rodriguez starts against Yovani Gallardo. Gallardo's off to a pretty rough start this year with a 4.97 ERA and an alarmingly low 5.3 K/9 in his first five starts. Everything has to start somewhere, I suppose. 

First pitch tonight is at 8:10

Before the game started, I laid my gameplan out thusly: Jeff Locke needed to keep the game close for as long as Shelby Miller was on the mound, the Pirates needed to work Miller to get him out of the game reasonably early, and the Pirates needed to pile runs on the Cardinals' struggling bullpen. That worked pretty much to perfection with one notable exception: Jeff Locke did more than keep the Pirates within striking distance. For his second straight start, he was excellent. He tossed a shutout over a career-high seven innings, striking out four, walking two, and only allowing three hits. Over his last two starts, he's thrown 13 shutout innings, striking out ten, walking four, and scattering five hits off into the wind. 

On the offensive side, things started slowly. In the second inning, Russell Martin took an up-and-out fastball from Miller and slammed it over the centerfield fence. In the fifth inning, Jose Tabata took almost the exact same pitch and drove it the other way over the right field wall. In the sixth, Miller finally got chased with a Brandon Inge single. Fernando Salas was greeted with a John McDonald double that was more a terrible play by Matt Holliday (the ball literally bounced off of his wrist) that scored Inge. Garrett Jones homered in the seventh to drive the lead up to four. In the ninth, the runs came pouring in; Pedro Alvarez singled in two runs and Martin followed that up with a two-run homer.

Through 25 games, the Pirates are 15-10 and in first place in the National League Central. You know this drill by now: after starting 1-5, they're 14-5 with series wins over the Diamondbacks, Reds, Braves, Phillies, and now Cardinals. They're playing very strong defense and they're getting hits from all over the lineup. The pitching staff hasn't been great, but Jeff Locke has made two very good starts in a row now and Charlie Morton made another good rehab start and things have been better than the worst case scenario that I was certainly worried about before the season. 

On one hand, it's 25 games and it doesn't reall mean anything. On the other hand, it's an incredible amount of fun to see the Pirates playing like this. A good April is only the start of a good season, but I'll take a good start over a bad one for sure. Milwaukee's next. If the Pirates are ever going anywhere, they're going to have to start winning games there. Maybe this will be the week.

After yesterday's late comeback victory, the Pirates find themselves in the same place that they were in when this series started on Friday -- a half-game behind the Cardinals. If the Pirates win today, they'll move into first place in the division and they'll ensure themselves at least five wins on this 10-game road trip no matter what happens in Milwaukee next week. All of that frankly sounds pretty nice, so let's hope for a win today. 

As has happened pretty regularly in the early season, the pitching matchup is not a favorable one for the Pirates. Shelby Miller has been excellent thus far in his rookie season. He's got a 1.44 ERA over 25 innings in his first four starts, striking out 26 and walking just seven. He does have one loss and that one loss was hung on him by the Pirates, but that was more due to AJ Burnett's excellent start than it was anything Miller did wrong; he struck out six and allowed two runs on four hits in six innings. For the Pirates, Jeff Locke looks to make a second good start in a row. He's been wildly inconsistent this year and in his career and this Cardinal lineup is quite a bit scarier than the crap sandwich the Phillies trotted out against him earlier this week. 

The plan for this game should be pretty much the same as yesterday: get a decent enough start from Locke to stay close, even if Miller is dominating. Make Miller throw enough pitches that he can't throw a complete game. Once the Cardinal bullpen enters the game, make them throw strikes because they're not very good at that. 

First pitch today is at 2:15. 

I'm not sure what possessed Mike Matheny to take Jake Westbrook out of the game after six shutout innings and only 91 pitches, but the move certainly went appreciated by the Pirates and their fans. As soon as Westbrooke came out of the game, Pedro Alvarez singled and Russell Martin homered to turn a 2-0 deficit into a tie game. Then Clint Barmes singled, James McDonald came in and pinch-bunted for AJ Burnett (more on this in a second), and Starling Marte drew a walk. That was it for Kelly, but Trevor Rosenthal wasn't much better. He came in and drilled Jose Tabata to load the bases, then walked Andrew McCutchen to put the Pirates ahead, then surrendered a fourth run on a Garrett Jones ground out. 

From there, Tony Watson, Mark Melancon, and Jason Grilli held the Cards to one run in the last three innings and the Pirates tacked on a fifth run for good measure, stealing a comeback win in St. Louis. Maybe this shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. The Cardinals' bullpen has been one of baseball's worst this year, while the Pirates' bullpen has been nearly impeccable. Still, late come from behind wins are always nice, particularly when they're driven the lower part of the lineup, like this one was. Any time you can get a win after an ugly loss like Friday's, it's very welcome. 

*One quick note: both James McDonald and Wandy Rodriguez were used as pinch-hitters today. This is what happens when you're carrying John McDonald along with Brandon Inge and then you decide that an injured Neil Walker won't go on the disabled list. This week is going to see a very thin bench.

The Pirates play a weirdly timed 4:15 PM EDT today, presumably because the FOX games are at 1 PM this weekend. Last night did not go well for the Pirates, obviously. Jonathan Sanchez faced four batters, retired none, and got thrown out. Clint Hurdle got thrown out protesting Sanchez's ejection (obviously arguing that there's no way Jonathan Sanchez has good enough control to hit anyone intentionally). When Starling Marte got hit by his second pitch of the game in the fifth inning without a compensatory ejection on the Cardinals' side, Jay Bell got thrown out of the game, too. To top it all off, Neil Walker injured his hand in the eighth inning trying to break up a double play, resulting in some stiches that will require him to miss a week. Also, they lost 9-1. 

Anyway, AJ Burnett starts today and given his reputation and yesterday's goings-on, he will be immediately ejected if he so much as grazes a Cardinal player's shirt. Jake Westbrook is pitching for the Cardinals, which means that if he beans nine Pirate batters in a row directly in the nose, he will still be allowed to face a tenth. This is how baseball works right now, and the only way the Pirates can change it is to win enough games to be afforded the respect the Cardinals are given by the umpires. This is not a joke: if you want the Pirates to "man up and get revenge" or whatever foolishness today, AJ Burnett is not the pitcher to do that because he won't be given any leeway and the bullpen cannot handle another long afternoon. I would much rather see the Pirates go out and score more runs than the Cardinals. That always seems like the best form of revenge to me. 

First pitch today is at 4:15.

After a nice start to their ten-game road trip, the Pirates are now entering the portion of the trip that I'm most interested in: six games in St. Louis and Milwaukee. The division has a new shape this year without the Astros in it and how the Pirates play the NL Central teams is going to go a long ways towards deciding how 2013 shakes out for the Pirates. 

Plus if the Pirates can take two of three this weekend they'll find themselves in first place on Monday and I know that it's only April but I'd rather be in first place than not be in first place. Of course things get off to a worrisome start tonight with Jonathan Sanchez taking the mound in what could be his last start as a Pirate (Francisco Liriano was pretty awesome in Indianapolis last night, though I'm guessing that he might not join the club until after an off-day resets the rotation after the Milwaukee series, so Sanchez may get one more start) against Lance Lynn. On the other hand, the Pirates have won six of their last seven games against Tim Hudson and Paul Maholm and Kris Medlen and Cole Hamels and Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee, so who cares about the starting pitching matchup? 

That's a silly thing to say. I care about it. Hold on to your butts. We've all almost made it through the Jonathan Sanchez era together. First pitch tonight is at 8:15

It is Friday, April 26th, and the Pirates are 13-9. They're 12-4 since their 1-5 start and that 16 game run has been mostly made up of good opponents, the Phillies notwithstanding. This is a little bit different than the way things have played out in the first two years of the Clint Hurdle era. In 2011, the Pirates' flirted with .500 for much of the early season but didn't really go beyond well beyond a game or two over .500 until July, when they peaked at 53-47. Last year they started 2-1, but lost five straight after that and didn't get back to .500 until May 30th. In 2011 and 2012, the Pirates kind of snuck up on people. In 2013, the Pirates could end April in first place with a strong series in St. Louis this weekend.

So let's talk about how the Pirates have made their way to 13-9. There are obviously some unsustainable things here. The bullpen is seriously overworked right now. Justin Wilson is on pace for more than 100 innings, Mark Melancon is on pace for ~95, Tony Watson is on pace for just shy of 90. You can't ask for that much work from that many relievers. Guys are going to wear down, become ineffective, and get hurt. The pitching on the whole has been good enough, but opponents have just a .259 BABIP against the Pirates. The Pirates' defense has been excellent, but no team had a BABIP of lower than .277 against their pitching staff last year. They can't keep turning balls into outs at this rate. The offense has been a pleasant surprise. Pedro Alvarez was a non-entity until late last week while Andrew McCutchen and Neil Walker have struggled, but Starling Marte and Travis Snider and Russell Martin have picked up the slack. This will eventually balance itself out, but I'm considerably more hopeful for the seasons that Snider and Marte might have after seeing their approach at the plate in the early part of this season. I thought before the season started that everything went right, that the Pirates could have an average offense in 2013. Nearly a month into the season, that doesn't seem like a pipe dream. 

What's been most encouraging thus far is that this Pirate team is as fundamentally sound as any Pirate team I can remember. I mentioned the defense above, but I don't think I can mention it enough. FanGraphs lists the Pirates as the Major League leaders in John Dewan's Defensive Runs Saved and seventh in UZR. Simply put, they're turning balls into outs at a rate greater than anyone in baseball except for the Orioles. As I said above, they're doing so at a rate that's unsustainable, but the good news is that this is when the Pirates need their defense the most. Obviously much of the hope for the Pirates in the latter part of the season lies in someone (anyone!) getting Jonathan Sanchez and maybe Jeff Locke out of the rotation. Once the rotation is a little deeper, the defense will have room to breath. 

This extends beyond defense, though. FanGraphs rates the Pirates as the fifth best baserunning team in baseball thus far in 2013. That number doesn't include stolen bases, but the Pirates are doing much better on that front this year. They've stolen 13 bases in 18 attempts, which is a 72% success rate and much closer to the general rule of thumb break even point of 75% than they were last year. We can use TOOTBLAN (thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop, or any non-forceout out on the basepaths) to visualize the Pirates' strong fundamentals this year. They have the best TOOTBLAN differential in baseball, getting thrown out six times on the bases while cutting down 16 runners. 

The point here is that while the Pirates' good record thus far is certainly a result some unsustainable things like the bullpen's work rate and the defense's extreme efficiency and Travis Snider's and Starling Marte's ridiculously high BABIPs (.405 and .459, respectively), the Pirates are also doing a lot of little things quite well. Since the rotation should have its best days in front of it, Pedro Alvarez is heating up, and Andrew McCutchen and Neil Walker are certain to come alive at some point in the near future, I'm not hugely worried about riding some of those unsustainable things to a good record in April. In general, though, I'm pretty happy with the general foundation that this record is built on. There's plenty of baseball ahead of us in 2013, but I feel a lot better about the Pirates now than I did when I left Bradenton a month ago. 

Of course a bad week against the Cardinals and Brewers will change that quickly. If the Pirates are going to have any success in 2013, they're going to need to beat NL Central teams. They've done a nice job of that so far, but a road trip through St. Louis and Milwaukee is much different than an April homestand in Pittsburgh.

For the second game in a row, the Pirates got a middling start against a pretty good one from one of Philadelphia's better pitchers. Neither Good James McDonald nor Bad James McDonald was anywhere to be seen today; instead, Middling James McDonald made an appearance with the ability to occasionally get some big strikeouts (he struck out Domonic Brown and Ezequiel Carerra with Ryan Howard on third and one out in the second), but he still walked three hitters in 5+ innings and threw a bunch of pitches and left a big mess on the table for Justin Wilson in the sixth inning without recording an out. Wilson mopped things up nicely, though, and Tony Watson followed up behind him to give the bullpen four innings of one-run relief.

That was all the Pirates needed. Facing a 3-1 deficit, they rallied for two runs against a clearly tired Cliff Lee in the seventh inning then picked up three more against the Phillies' terrible bullpen in the eighth. One day after Brandon Inge pinch hit for Garrett Jones and drove in the go-ahead run with a bases-loaded single, Garrett Jones pinch hit for Brandon Inge and delivered a go-ahead bases-loaded double.

Earlier in the game, Gaby Sanchez delivered his second homer of the series and drove in half of the Pirates' six runs. Mike McKenry had the big game-tying single in the seventh. Pedro Alvarez had two singles and two of the longest bases loaded foul balls anyone has ever seen, I think, though he ended up not driving in any runs. Starling Marte had two more hits and drew a walk and scored twice, including once on a sac fly to shallow right-center field. Andrew McCutchen broke his 0-for-17 slump with a two-out single in the seventh that lead to Sanchez and McKenry's run-scoring singles that tied the game. 

This was a good series in Philadelphia, is what I'm saying. I can't imagine that too many teams, if any, have won games started by Hamels, Lee, and Halladay on successive days. The Pirates are 13-9 and have won 12 of their last 16. Next up: St. Louis.