Game 48 – A Memorial Day Weekend!

I wonder if these are the Posse de’ Perez kids back as the ‘Go Bucs’ kids?

If they are, I reiterate once again, Kevin McClatchy needs to get his PR machine working and get these kids tickets to all the games! I mean, it isn’t like he can’t afford it or anything! Come on Kevin.. DO IT!

Fireworks night at PNC tonight, a ton of people in town to eat, drink, and be merry here for the holiday weekend, parades in town tomorrow, festivals on Sunday, a picnic with family on Monday, and a ton of good baseball wedged in between. Man.. no hurricanes, no game rainouts, cold Corona’s, a hot pool, the start of summer.. what more can anyone ask for?

That’s right.. a Bucco Win. But not just a win but a blowout win against a NLCD team ahead of us in the standings. The Pirates obliged us tonight by doing just that. BTW, the Pirates play 30 games in the next 31 days and I am here to tell you I expect us to play at least .500 ball. I smell it.. I feel it.. I hear it.. it *will happen*. Watch and see.. you heard it here first.

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UPDATE: Believe it or not, Jim Tracy just came out in the media (11:00 pm Eastern time) and blamed the Pirates worst start in 52 years on the players. OMG. Has he lost his dang mind? I want to sit down and cry.. I really do. I mean, when the skipper fails to take heat off his youthful players and instead starts pointing fingers at them trying to make himself look better, it is obvious his time has come to leave the ship. What a bonehead thing to say/do.

If I worked underneath him, and he pulled that crud on me, dang if I would want to play under him. Nor should we expect anyone else to want to. One credit I will always give to Lloyd McClendon is that he took the heat on himself.. he kept it off the players. The end result was *always* more productivity for the dollar than any other team in baseball. Maybe not in wins, but in payroll/performance.

Wow. For a team that has huge clubhouse problems, has player’s challenging every thing the org says and does, has infighting now between the coaches in the farm and the GM, has players walking away in digust, and now it’s leader telling them it is all their fault they are losing, I don’t know how much more this ship can sink. I mean, it certainly can’t be McClatchy and Littlefield’s fault this org is a mess, can it? Unfrkinbelievable.

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Snell had a typical Snell game.. lots of hits hammered off him, a few K’s sprinkled around, poor command and control for the most part, but he did enough to keep his team in the contest and that is the name of the game. I mean, just ask Snell what he thought of his performance tonight.. or better yet, ask Colby what he thought of Snell’s affection toward him after the game:

Yep.. he kissed Colby. Lanny and Blass has a good time with the kiss. But to be honest, I’m a bit worried about it. hehe

Yeah – the clown act continued tonight with Paulino forgetting once again how to properly block pitches down in the dirt:

Notice his glove is pointing downward instead of pointing up in the air and his blocking stance is a crouch instead of a blocking crouch. It was called a wild pitch but that was no more a wild pitch than there is a man in the moon.

Ronny has a very long way to go defensively.. these are things catcher’s learn in little league and are polished over the years. Not at the bigs level. I have to believe the org will eventually move Ronny out from behind the plate.. maybe a corner OF position.. maybe 1B. He is simply not an acceptable MLB catcher defensively and with the basic skill set he is displaying, he never will be, imo.

An interesting note was announced tonight about Paulino from the Pirates broadcasters. Lanny said Tracy made his decision in spring training that he wanted Paulino to be the catcher this year. I guess they waited until Doumit ended up hurt before making the move. I assume that had to do with service time as well so Ronny wouldn’t get a full year in and they could maintain a 4th year option on him and probably more than 3 years in arb before he hit the magical 6 years of service time.

And Jose Castillo added another E to his resume tonight with this little ooppsss:

Paulino was attempting to throw out Traveras on the steal and Jose just simply let the ball go right between his legs and he ended up at 3B. The batter eventually walked.

Well, the two third inning E’s really didn’t matter because Snell lost his composure, lost his train of thought, and lost his mind when he next threw a 2-1 heater up in the zone to Ensberg who took him yard with the 2 men on base.

Offensively, the Buccos exploded. Eight of our twelve runs came on clutch 2-out hits and half of the position players had 2 or more rbis. I won’t even talk about the Astros ‘no fear’ decision to pitch to Jason Bay all night long – Garner has simply lost his mind as hot as Bay is. I doubt Jason gets another quality AB the rest of the series now. But then, Craig Wilson and Burnitz are almost just as hot. And how about Paulino going 4-4 with 3 rbis and a run scored? Wow.

And how about the Astros poor D tonight? They came in 8th best in the NL but looked more like the Pirates have the last month. Obviously their heads are hanging low right now after being manhandled by the Nats the last 3 games. But they battled all night long even so.. they ended up punching out 11 hits and 5 runs which is good enough to win most games.

Tracy has a hard decision coming up when Casey comes back Monday. Obviously, Craig is odd man out but Tracy isn’t going to sit a hot Craig so maybe Nate will be the one sitting and Freddy moving up into the leadoff spot? But who plays CF? Shoot, if we can score 6+ runs a game, it probably won’t matter if Bay is in CF.

Kudo’s to Torres, Hernandez, and Vogey for shutting down the Astros the last three innings to just one hit.

– tidbits –

Pirates had scored only 13 runs in 21 games in the 4th inning all year until they erupted for 7 more tonight.

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Dejan mentioned last night that JVB challenged Littlefield about his medical condition and went to go see Doc Andrews who promptly shut him down for two weeks. That is the third player to challenge the Pirates medical decisions this year so far – Gerut, Wells, and now JVB. Wells had been diagnosed correctly, of course. In Gerut’s case the Pirates wanted more of a conservative approach to see if they could get him back into the lineup. That didn’t work. And now JVB. I expect with the problems JVB is having with this org, he could end up in court one day with them or released by the org ala Bradley.

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Still no Duffy. But check out this coincidence (don’t get mad Duff):

from May 1st – May 14th
Jason Bay = .244 BA, 1 HR, 7 rbis, 11 K’s (11-45)
Jeromy Burnitz = .095 BA, 1 HR, 5 rbis, 12 K’s (4-42)

Duffy assigned May 14th..

from May 15 – May 24th
Jason Bay = .417 BA, 7 HR, 17 rbis, 6 K’s (15-36)
Jeromy Burnitz = .354 BA, 1 HR, 6 rbis, 7 K’s (11-31

hmm..

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