Before I get to my preview of the absolutely terrible Pittsburgh Pirates, I just want to thank Boston Dirt Dogs for posting a slightly homoerotic picture of my friends and I at a baseball game three years ago. The response of the masses has ranged from "wow, that's gay" to "so that was before you joined a gym, right?"
THE PITTSBURGH PIRATES
Pitching: Pretty horrible. They have a quartet of young guys (Zack Duke, Paul Maholm, Ian Snell, Tom Gorzelanny) set for the rotation, three of which (Duke, Maholm, Snell) have at least one full year of service time. Having young pitching is a good thing when you have young talented pitching and while Duke, Maholm, and Snell have shown flashes of quality pitching (Snell with a GREAT K-rate and Duke with a fantastic name) I hesitate to say that this is the year any of them really figure it out. After those four the Pirates can pick between Tony Armas and Shawn Chacon which is like choosing to mix either arsenic or cyanide into your lemonade. Bullpen: they traded their only asset, Mike Gonzalez, for Adam LaRoche. So we'll probably see Kevin Gryboski or John Wasdin in the later innings of a baseball game.
Hitting: Knock knock? Who's there? A superstar hitter who is underpaid and happy about it. A superstar hitter who is underpaid and happy about it who? Jason Bay. Following the 2005 season, Bay signed a four-year, $18.25 million back-loaded contract and was so happy he shed tears over it. And that's refreshing. What's not refreshing is how fast he's going to bolt to the Yankees when his contract is up in 2009. As for Bay's help in the lineup, it's sparse at best. I'm sold on LaRoche, who hit 32 homers last year in Atlanta, but I am not about to buy any stock in last year's batting champion, Freddy Sanchez. Freddy defies what I like to call common sense. Last year he was a 28-year old infielder who played three different positions, hit .344 with a strikingly low (for his BA) OBP of .378, showed no speed on the basepaths, and had only six homeruns. Granted he's a high contact player (only struck out 52 times) so he won't be that prone to slumps but his low homerun total for a high contact player means he's more often at the whim of lady luck on the balls he puts in play. The only time such a shallow disparity between BA and OBP should be accepted is if the player's name is Vladimir Guerrero. And, hell, even Bill Mueller won a batting title.
Miscellaneous: I'm sick of talking about the Pirates, so I'll use this opportunity to let everyone know that Vladimir Guerrero's middle name is "Alvino."
Pirate-related Ridiculous Proposition Bet: Odds of ESPN running a pun-tastic "Duke's of Hazzard" headline if Zach Duke turns in a shutout on a slow news night- EVEN MONEY.
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