Pittsburgh "73-89" Pirates 2018 Thread

World Series team clearly

what's with the name change:  Rivero >> Vasquez

posted by QuakerOats

what's with the name change:  Rivero >> Vasquez

Bucs Dugout says: Vázquez is the surname of his sister, with whom he appears to be very close.

Which really doesn't explain things, but yeah.

Solo-homer-friendly day in Chicago. Cubs have one, Pirates have three (two by Polanco) in taking a 3-1 lead in the top of the seventh.

Combo-breaker, as Cervelli cracked a three-run homer to make it 6-1. Getting 2/3 on the road against the Chubs would be a nice series win. With the way the bullpen has been, I'm not going to get my hopes up until it's over, but yeah, lookin' good!

NOT SO FUN FACT: Gerrit Cole became the second pitcher in MLB history (Nolan Ryan being the first) to strike out 11+ batters in each of his first three starts in a season.

A reallly enjoyable thing to keep in mind while reflecting upon Chad Kuhl's less-than-tolerable outing last night in getting beat by a really shitty team run by penny-pinchers.

Don't look now:  11 - 4 start 

Avoided being swept by Colorado due to scoring 10 runs today. If they'd used up a few of those last night, Trevor Williams would be 4-0 instead of 3-1. Still, 12-6 and still leading the division is pretty cool.

Getting completely dominated by Jake Arrieta. Well, that sure brings back memories. Damnit...

Good win today, 1-0 on a Dickerson walk-off home run after eight strong innings by Nova and one that Felipe survived somehow.

5-of-6 from shitty Detroit this year is a positive. If they can continue to beat the shitty teams, they should at least stay in something resembling contention for a good while this season.

Huh, Jung Ho Kang was given a work visa again to play in America. I don't know how long it'd take for him to get back up to speed, since it's been over a year since he's been in MLB and he sucked in a brief stint in a Dominican league last year, but if he can provide some offense, that'd be cool (although Moran has been hitting well at 3B, which is where he mainly played for Pittsburgh in the past).

Now he just has to avoid those persistent "glug, glug, vroom, vroom" problems because there's no way he can have any room for error.

Swept the POS Cards, back in first and got a great debut by Nick Kingham, former really high-rated prospect who had Tommy John issues and missed a good bit of time.

Good weekend in baseball land!

Team has had an interesting two-day series with the White Sox. Trailed 4-0 after the first inning last night and came back to score four in the second and go on to win 10-6.

Trailed 4-0 and 5-2 today, but scored four in the top of the ninth to at least have a chance to nail down a two-game sweep of a really, really shitty team. If RomeroVasquez can get three outs, that is.

They have pieced some things together; interesting to see how long they can hang. 

Well, at least the Bucs are high atop the NL Central. 

Currently the daily winner of the four-team roulette wheel to lead the division! Which could change in the next four hours, since there seemingly needs to be a new leader every day, but I'll take it, since I was expecting them to be closer to the bottom than the top by this point of the season.

BREAKING NEWS: They'll still be in first place for at least the rest of this day, as they beat the ChiSox again. Damn, I wish they could play utter shit competition like those guys more frequently!

I'm starting to wonder if my 73-89 prediction might have been a bit low win-wise. Sure, they're mainly feasting on a lot of the league's shittier teams like the White Sox, Tigers and so on, but it's better to kick the shit out of weak teams than to regularly lose to them. Don't know if they'll have the staying power to be a contender, but it's nice to still be at the top of the division in mid-May.

Now they're playing like the 73-89 team I thought they'd be. Slow starts by the pitchers to put them in a hole combined with no offense AND, on the days they do hit, late-inning bullpen implosions = bad times.

So, they have a stretch where they go 14-30 and plummet out of contention; the GM makes "we'll need to play really good going into the break or we might have to be selling" comments; the team then goes 7-1 over their last eight games, including a 5-game sweep of the Brewers (who usually beat them about 95% of the time), so now what?

They aren't really in contention at the moment, they'd have to play a good bit over .600 the rest of the year, as if the current #2 wild card is only .500 the rest of the way, they' have to be .585 by my math to be even with them...and there are a decent number of teams between them and that team. So, they're basically in that awkward position where they're trapped in that no-man's land of mediocrity where whatever choice they make will wind up being the wrong one!