Rock On, Bucaroos

Ho-hum. Another night, another blowout win. The Pirates, behind the sluggin' Jose Castillo, who hit, yes, his fifth homer in five games, blasted the Milwaukee Brewers for the third night in a row, 6-1, running their current home stand record to 5-1. No more comments about the one they lost. The team put that one behind them with a vengeance.

Poor Brewers. The Bucco buzz saw has outscored them 32-5 in the first three games of this series. Their hitters tonight were dominated by Ian Snell, who finally earned a win worthy of the name, going six innings while yielding just one run.

So the Pirates wind up May with a 12-15 record. Nothing to write home about until you take a gander at their April record of 7-19. At 19-34, they are still on pace to lose 100 games, but they now need to go just 44-65 the rest of the way to avoid it. In other words, just play .400 ball from now until the end of the season, and the ignominy of hitting the century loss mark is avoided.

The 1985 Pirates were the last squad in team history to loss more than 100 games, going 57-104. They were 15-29 at the end of May, one-half game ahead of this year's edition. However, we can hope that the 2006 team does better than the 25-55 mark compiled by the 1985 Pirates between June 1 and September 1. That dreadful stretch left the club at 40-84. Can the 2006 Bucs do better than 21-50 over the next three months and surpass that lofty standard? Let us say a silent prayer to an answer in the affirmative.

If offense is any indication, the current team is far ahead of its 1985 predecessor. That team scored only 568 runs the entire season, or barely 3.5 per game. This year's team has already scored 236, about a run per game better. Yes, the difference in eras accounts for a bit of that, but the '85 team had no player that would match up with Jason Bay. The team leader, "Home Run" Jason Thompson, launched a staggering 12 round trippers, and the RBI leader, second baseman Johnny Ray, knocked home a modest 70 runs. His 2006 counterpart, Jose Castillo, by comparison, is on pace to drive in around 90.

The '85 team was the worst Pirates team since the 1952 squad that went an incredible 42-112. And the mid-'80s version was not on a rebuilding course. Only Sid Bream and Bob Walk played on any of the division championship teams of '90-'92, and the roster was littered with players whose best days were far behind them, including George Hendrick, Steve Kemp, Lee Mazzilli, Rick Rhoden and Sixto Lezcano. The team leader in saves was none other than John Candelaria, with nine.

None of these sorry statistics should make the pain of the present year go away, but perhaps it gives some reason for greater hope than existed two decades ago. Let's leave it on this note: Freddie Sanchez, with three more hits tonight, is hitting .352 as the Pirates' third baseman. The '85 team's hot corner man was Bill Madlock, ending his excellent career by struggling to a .251 finish.

Is there brightness in the dark of '06? A bit. Remember '85!

Keep the Angst Coming!

The dispirited Pirates dragged themselves onto the field Monday night following their extra-inning loss to Astros on Sunday, one in which they blew a four-run lead in the ninth. Clearly still dragging this heavy burden, they wearily turned to face the Milwaukee Brewers and...won, 14-3 behind two touchdown passes by Ben Roethlisberger to Hines Ward and a stifling defense.

Okay, too early for the Steelers references (but who can blame Pirates fans for counting the days to football training camp), but for a day at least, the Pirates did resemble their tough-as-nails pigskin counterparts, who shrugged off a 7-5 record in November and rode seven straight wins to the Super Bowl. The Pirates won't be in the World Series, or even the playoffs, but they have shown on this home stand (3-1 thus far) that they still want to play ball as much as the guys who play across the lot at Heinz Field.

One has to wonder about this Pirates team. They follow up the most stirring win of the year with the most depressing loss of the year and then follow that up with a blowout win. They could easily be undefeated on this home stand after playing atrociously in three road losses in Arizona.

The enigma that is the Pirates grows even murkier when one looks closer at their record. They are one game over .500 at home, which doesn't sound like much until you look at the five teams with the worst won-loss records in baseball. Of these (in descending order, Washington, Chicago Cubs, Pirates, Florida and Kansas City) none has a winning home record except the Pirates. They have won five of their past seven games at home against Central Division opponents Cincinnati, Houston and Milwaukee (and are leading the latter as of this writing tonight, 9-1), all with records at or above .500, but have losing records against the lowly Cubs and Marlins. And, of course, on the road, they are abysmal, at 4-22, better than only hapless Kansas City.

What gives? Well, they don't hit on the road, for one thing. At home, the team had scored 124 runs in 25 games (before tonight, which will pad the total), or about five per game, nearly enough for the generous pitching staff. And about half of that total has come in the past seven games. In 26 games away from PNC, on the other hand, they have scored a grand total of 84 runs, or about 3.2 per game. The best pitching staff in MLB is going to have trouble dealing with that meager production, and the Pirates are not closing to having the best. They have, in fact, given up more than five runs per game on the road.

Then there is the matter of one-run games. The Pirates have lost 1o of them on the road. Cut that in half and you don't have a dream season, but you don't have a disaster either. The team went 1-6 on its seven-game trip to open the season and was outscored by a total of eight runs. In 13 of the 22 losses, they either led or were tied at some point in the game, many of them in the late going, and in a number of other losses, they scored one or more runs in the ninth inning to bring themselves to within a single tally, but couldn't get over the hump.

Just why all of this is so is difficult to answer. Why does Jose Castillo, for example, hit about .330 at home (he hit two homers and drove in six tonight) and about .260 on the road? Their travails put me in mind of the Colorado Rockies, who for years have been among the worst road teams in all of baseball. Of course, that was always atrributed to the team's high-altitude home ball park, Coors Field, where until recently, averages and run counts were hugely inflated. When the light-air Rockies went on the road, their bats seemed to take on a burden of lead. But that doesn't explain the disparity for the Pirates, who play in a ball park that is not known as a hitter's paradise.

Well, tonight's game is over, and one can only wish that the magic air wafting in off the Allegheny and Monongahela could blow forever. Pirates 12, Brewers 1. Maybe we can prorate these runs over the next road trip?

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

The Pirates went to bed a happy bunch early Sunday morning, having scored a stirring 18-inning victory over the Houston Astros. A little more than 12 hours later, the joy of morning had turned into the gloom of afternoon with perhaps the most painful loss of this star-crossed season, 5-4 in 10 innings. The loss prevented the team's first series sweep in two years.

Oh, any one-run, extra-inning loss is tough to take, especially for a team 18 games under .500 that has an abysmal record in one-run games. But this one heaped an extra dollop of indignity on our bealeaguered bunch. The Pirates entered the ninth inning with a four-run lead, courtesy of two of the heroes from the previous night's marathon, Jason Bay (10th homer in 10 games) and Jose Bautista (three-run shot). Best of all, they had gotten eight dominant, shutout innings from the suddenly resurgent Oliver Perez, who had turned in his third straight strong performance. To top it off, the Astros were a reeling bunch, ready to rack up their sixth consecutive loss.

But this is the Pirates, a team that rarely finds success and seems to run from it when they are in danger of doing so. Perez had thrown 120 pitches, but manager Jim Tracy inexplicably decided to send him out for the ninth. Seven pitches later, two men were on, Perez was gone, and Mike Gonzales was brought in. Minutes later, two runs were in, Gonzales was gone, and it was left to the overused Salomon Torres to give up the remainder of the lead and then to post the loss in the tenth.

The Buccin' Ear noted in yesterday's post that one should resist the foolish temptation to view the victory on Saturday/Sunday as season turning. Just so with the Sunday afternoon defeat. It probably won't, as Bay said, "suck the life out of the team." After all, if 33 losses in 49 games hadn't done that, it's unlikely that one more would. Games like this happen to most teams once or twice during a season and as painful as they are, professionals move on to the next game. Baseball doesn't allow a lot of time for reflection, which is probably a good thing.

Still, Sunday's game focused the Buccin' Ear's attention anew on the managing of Jim Tracy. Several nights earlier this week, Tracy had withdrawn Perez after six shutout innings against Arizona, citing his high pitch count of 97. The Buccin' Ear then and now had no problem with that decision, even though the Pirates bullpen failed to hold that lead also. Perez is on his way back from a terrible first month and a half of the season, and his velocity has only slowly been coming back. Why risk a setback?

So what was Perez doing going back out after 120 pitches? Tracy noted that he had handled Mike Lamb and Morgan Ensberg throughout the previous eight innings, which was true. But Lamb and Ensberg are currently the Astros two best hitters, and it stands to reason that after seeing Perez three times each and with the pitcher probably losing a bit of his stuff, the odds of a hit or two weresignificantly higher than they were earlier in the game.

But that's second-guessing. What bothers the Buccin' Ear is Tracy's criticism of Gonzales, who wasn't sharp, after the game, and his statement to the effect that "you saw what happened," as if the fact that Gonzales didn't perform justified Tracy's decision not to bring him in to start the inning.

That's circular logic. Anybody can look back on what happened and then use it to justify his decision to do something else. Tracy used a variation of this approach a week or so ago when he sent Jose Hernandez to the plate to bunt. When JH couldn't advance the runner, Tracy received some questions on why he was sent up to bunt and said basically, "well, what if he had hit into a double play?" Well, what if? The point is you send your players in to do what they do best. Even if they fail, you used them in the role they should be in. Hernandez can't hit a lick this year, but that doesn't mean you ask even an aging power hitter to bunt the runners along. Similarly, Gonzales is the closer and he should have been out there to open the ninth. The fact that he had a bad outing can't be used to justify the decision not to use him the way he is supposed to be used.

Tracy also did not do himself proud in criticizing Gonzales for his poor performance, which included two walks. Gonzales was already beating himself up over letting Perez's win get away. And it's not as if he's been a big part of the Pirates failure to perform this year. He has six saves and a 2.79 ERA for a bad team. He had been especially good in the games leading up to yesterday's, posting an ERA of just over 1.00 in the previous 16 innings. What he deserved was the support of his manager.

As for Perez, his brief response to a question posed by the Post Gazette spoke volumes. When asked how his arm felt for the ninth, Perez answered, "Sometimes you have to find your strength." The attitude is admirable. The translation probably is, "I was damn tired."

If Tracy is to play a part in turning this team around, he'll have to reevaluate in his own role in the current abyss in which it finds itself. He has decisions upcoming on the status of Freddie Sanchez and Craig Wilson when injured starters Joe Randa and Sean Casey return to the lineup. He will need to show a bit more leadership than he did after yesterday's game.

Who Am I? To Stand and Wonder, to Wait?

The Pirates of Penance and the Buccin' Ear, absent for a few days, will assume a Pirates-like role today and play catch-up.

When we last looked in on our heroes, they were languishing under the dome in Arizona. After wasting a fine effort from Oliver Perez in the series opener, the team went on to lose two more to the D-Backs, who completed a sweep. The brooming left the Bucs with a horrifying road record of 4-22 and sent them limping home with a 14-33 mark to PNC, where a long-time tormentor, the Houston Astros, awaited. Certainly not a hope-inspiring scenario.

The series started unpromisingly on Friday night as Ian Snell put the team in a 4-1 hole by the fourth inning. Listening to the game on XM as I drove, I have to admit I mentally filed the game away under "L." Returning a couple of innings later, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Pirates had dropped a big 7 on the scoreboard in the bottom of the fourth, an inning that included yet another blast from Jason Bay, who continues to solidify his standing as one of the game's outstanding young players. The Bucs went on to an unexpected rout, winning 12-5.

That set the stage for Saturday's game, which turned out to be two games. Bouncing back from defecits three times, the Pirates won an 18-inning epic that stretched across nearly six hours, 8-7. The game included Bay's ninth homer in nine games (five games in a row currently) and a mad dash home on a short fly from Jose Batista in the 18th. The ball arrived ahead of Bay, but he ran over the Astros catcher, who dropped the ball and the game. The Pirates were the proud owners of a two-game winning streak and a chance to get a three-game sweep for the first time since -- get this -- 2004.

The Pirates spoke euphorically after the game about this win, some of them predicting that it might help them turn the corner. Let's not begrudge them that optimism, even if we remain skeptical. This is a team that has had about everything that could go wrong this year do so. If any team deserves even a pinch of good fortune from the Baseball Gods, it's this one. The question is, are there signs of progress with the team?

Yes and no, but let's focus on the yeses for now. First and foremost, there is Jason Bay. The quality of his play in the most difficult of situations for players can't be overstated. After enduring a slump for a couple of weeks in late April and early May, he has been an offensive terror in a lineup that provides him precious little protection. During the nine-game stretch noted above, he has driven in 22 runs, while hitting nearly .440. No one can accuse him of giving up on the season.

Next to Bay, the biggest plus for the team has been Freddie Sanchez, whom the Buccin' Ear continues to strongly support over the injured Joe Randa. He hasn't been a big factor in the Astros series at the plate, but he is still hitting over .330, and productively. He's solid defensively, and he is a player who has earned his playing time, which can't be said of everyone on the Pirates' roster.

Saturday's unsung hero was Ryan Vogelsong, who ate up five innings, saving the bullpen for today and giving a huge boost to the team. Here is a guy who easily could have given up on himself after a career-threatening injury and lots of bad outings for the Pirates in a starting role. But he seems to have taken to his middle relief role and has, like Bay, displayed a great deal of professionalism.

The Pirates are above .500 at home. That is a modest achievement for most teams, but most teams haven't lost 17 more games than they have won. The team is competitive at home. So the question, of course, is why they are abysmal on the road. But we're focusing on positives, so we'll leave that one aside for now.

The focus of today's game is Perez. He has put together two good starts in a row, and a third one would be a huge boost both for him and the team. And there are signs that he can do it. By all accounts, his long-missing velocity is returning.

Put simply, the Buccin' Ear's take is that Perez needs to assume the same role on the pitching staff that Bay has assumed as an everyday player. The Pirates desperately need a pitcher who can consistently keep the team in games. Perez did that in 2004, but he has been largely missing in action since. Perez has an opportunity to set an example for the rest of the Pirates' struggling staff. (Ian Snell picked up the win Friday after struggling through five uninspired innings and Paul Maholm fell victim to a four-run fifth last night after throwing four impressive innings. Zach Duke pitched poorly in the season finale at Arizona and so far has shown few signs that the promise of last year was justified.)

And finally, the Buccin' Ear notes the slow ascent of Jeromy Burnitz, the recipient of a few (well-deserved) shots in this blog. Burnitz hit a big pinch hit home run last night and his pushed his average up about 40 points over the last two weeks. The Buccin' Ear will not become a Burnitz convert, but if he can begin contributing offensively, it will not only help the team, but raise his worth, which is important, because the Pirates would do well to trade him and his salary at midseason.

On those notes of sunny optimism, the Buccin' Ear leads the cheers: Bring out the brooms!

Somebody Bring Me Some Water

The Pirates headed to the deserts of Arizona Monday, a strange place to search for an oasis of victory. Not surprisingly, they have come up dry in their first two contests with the Diamondbacks.

Monday was a game featured by the waste of a superb pitching effort by Oliver Perez, who hurled six scoreless innings, but was denied a decision by a bad bullpen effort. The Buccos went down 4-3 when a last-inning rally fell short. With one out and two on, Jose Hernandez inexplicably made a plate appearance. Surpisingly, he made contact. Not surprisingly, he made out, and shortly thereafter, the Pirates were done. No comment about Hernandez other than those made in a previous post by the Buccin' Ear are necessary. The problem isn't Hernandez. The problem is a team that sees fit to carry a sub-.150 hitter on their roster and use him in a game situation.

Tuesday's loss featured a contribution from another Pirate killer, Ryan Doumit. After going hitless in four trips, Doumit has joined the sub-.200 club. As the Buccin' Ear noted earlier, Doumit's lack of offense was summed up in Cleveland when he served as designated hitter and was asked to bunt. In Monday's game, Jim Tracy for some reason wanted Doumit up to pinch hit for Perez with two on in the seventh. (No argument with removing Perez; he'd thrown nearly 100 pitches.) Doumit fulfilled his role on the team by popping out.

Wanting to keep Doumit's bat in the lineup, Tracy moved the defensively challenged backstop to first base on Tuesday, a position that, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette promptly pointed out, he has hardly played, and never on the Diamondback's field. Not surprisingly, then, he made a key error in the fifth that led to three unearned runs and doomed the Pirates to a 7-3 loss.

Tracy declared after the game that he wanted Doumit's lefthanded bat in the lineup for "pop." Excuse me? If Tracy isn't careful, he's going to be asked to guest-perform on Comedy Central. And isn't the job of a manager to put his best players on the field in the spots that they have the best chance to perform well? If so, what was he doing putting Doumit in that spot?

Pardon the Arizona pun, but Tracy seems snakebit, just as so many other managers have seemed in trying to run their talent-thin Pirates teams. Every decision he makes seems to backfire. It's easy for the Buccin' Ear to take these shots at his decisions, but in the final analysis, Tracy is trying to fight a war with broom handles.

Well, there is an up note: Jason Bay continued his hot hitting Tuesday with two home runs. The catch? He hits for the Pirates, and of course the bases were empty both times.

Facing the Indians with an Empty Quiver

The Pirates, as is their practice, the Pirates of Penance sorrowfully notes, found a way to lose the rubber match of their three-game interleague tilt with the Indians Sunday, falling 3-2 in 10 innings when Grady Sizemore, who had struck out four times, singled in the winning run with two out. Mike Gonzales had gotten the first two men out, then collapsed.

Wasted was a decent starting effort from Paul Maholm (one run in 5 1/3 innings, although he labored through 105 pitches). If we're looking for hope, as the Buccin' Ear tries to do, it comes in the form of Maholm's and Zach Duke's respectable starting outings this weekend against a very tough lineup on the road.

The real story of the game -- the state of the Pirates, really--occurred in the ninth inning, when the Pirates had runners on first and second, no one out, and sent up...Jose Hernandez...to bunt.

The coverage in the Post Gazette made much of the fact that Hernandez, who had done well against Indians reliever Bob Wickham in a modest seven career at bats, was asked to bunt. Not surprisingly, Hernandez couldn't pull it off, laying down a poor bunt that resulted in the lead runner (Jeromy Burnitz) getting cut down. The inning ended when Jose Castillo hit into a double play, the result of Ryan Doumit being stranded at first due to Jose's botched effort. The Post Gazette pinpointed this as the turning point of the game.

Well, the real question, from the Buccin' Ear's point of view, is twofold: one, what was Hernandez doing at the plate and two, what was he doing in the stadium?

If there is a poster child for the misguided player personnel policies of the Pirates, it is the presence of Jose Hernandez on the roster. He is 37 years old and had his last decent statistical season in 2002 with Milwaukee when, you might remember, his manager decided to sit him in the season's final game so he wouldn't break the all time single-season strikeout record. (He finished with 188, three better than the previous year's count.) Like his teammate Burnitz, he is a career .250 hitter with a poor career on-base percentage (.312). Most impressive is that during the course of his time in the Bigs, he has struck out over 250 more times than he has gotten a base hit. Well, gee, why wouldn't the Pirates want him on the roster? Who wouldn't want to add another overpaid, over the hill, underachieving player?

By Jim Tracy's own admission, he had Hernandez bunt because, he told the Post Gazette, "If Hernandez swings away and hits into a double play, you kick yourself."

Well, JT has gotten into the swing of managing the Pirates. You send a guy up to the plate with instructions to do the thing that has the least chance of screwing everything up. He noted that he was aware of Hernandez's success against Wickham. His comment, however, also indicates he was aware of another statistic: Jose has grounded into more than 120 double plays in his career.

You have to feel for Tracy. He has so few options that he must feel like a guy dueling Wild Bill Hickock with a pop-gun when he trudges into the dugout each night. His designated hitter Doumit was on first base because he bunted ahead of Hernandez. Quick, somebody name the last DH in the American League to lay down a bunt. But that is what Tracy is reduced to because Doumit can't hit a lick.

At 14-30, the Pirates continue on the fast track to oblivion. We can only hope that the rush to unload the dead wood on the roster begins soon. Does Triple A need another franchise?

Searching for Our Soul in the Heart of Rock-n-Roll

Interleague league play began this weekend, and the Pirates were given a tough draw: the Cleveland Indians (see comments on this team in a recent Pirates of Penance post by the Buccin' Ear). After the disappointment of the Thursday come-from-ahead loss to the Reds, the team was probably looking for an easier pitching opponent than C.C. Sabathia, but that's who they got, and they were shut down Friday night, 4-1. Zach Duke pitched poorly in the first inning, giving up three runs, but he settled down nicely, surrendering nothing more and going seven in a performance good enough for a win if he had been pitching for somebody other than the Pirates.

Tonight the team rebounded with a 9-6 win, beating up Jason Johnson with lots of early offense (a homer and four RBIs for Jason Bay), enough even for Ian Snell, who staggered through five innings to get his third win. His ERA is as beefy as C.C. Sabathia: 5.74. I've heard for a couple of years now how promising this guy is. Enough. He was given a shot in the second half last year, showed little, and is now the fourth best pitcher on a bad staff. Apologists (or optimists) will point to the fact that of the five runs he gave up, only two were earned. Well, that probably says more about the lack of clutch hitting tonight by the Indians (they stranded 12) than Snell's hard luck. The guy threw 105 pitches (about 60% for strikes) and walked five. Most nights that kind of pitching is going to send you off to lather up with Irish Spring a lot earlier than the fifth inning.

But let's look at the positives. With the exception of Friday night's game, the offense, which has been dreadful thus far has shown signs of life this week, putting up 34 runs in five games against the Ohio teams. That doesn't make the team an offensive juggernaut, but it's more than respectable for the short term. The revival of Bay's bat is most encouraging. It was not surprising that when he went into an offensive funk in late April, the lights essentially went out when the Pirates were at bat. The Good JB (see comments below on the Bad JB) is often the only bright spot on this team, and it's nearly a miracle he's put up the numbers he has thus far in his career with the anemic lineup around him.

Another positive: Freddie Sanchez moved back to third base with the return of Jack Wilson to the lineup, picked up two more hits and is now batting .348. It will be interesting to see how Jim Tracy plays it when Joe Randa returns from the DL. It says here that Randa stays on the bench, but then I'm not the guy who foolishly shelled out a few million bucks to bring him in in one of those patented Pirate moves that must have struck fear into the hearts of their Central Division opponents. I can just see the jaws in the front offices in St. Louis and Houston dropping. "Wait a minute, dude. You're telling me they signed Randa and Burnitz? Get on the phone! We have to do something to stop these guys!"

Then there's first base, where the case is less clear for Craig Wilson over Sean Casey, who is still healing from two broken bones in his back. There I'd be inclined to give Casey the nod, although he fails to give the Pirates what they desperately need, which is some additional power in the lineup. Leave it to the Pirates, by the way, to sign not one but two corner players, in Randa and Casey, with below-average power numbers. Craig Wilson has some pretty good pop when he connects (he strikes out three times more than he walks), and nearly half of his hits this year have been for extra bases, including seven home runs. So there's a case to be made for him getting some of the time at first after Casey comes back. See Randa, Joe, however, for the reason that might not happen.

The Bad JB, Jeromy Burnitz, however, has clearly made his case for getting less playing time, and Wilson should take some of it in right. The big lug did collect two hits tonight to skyrocket his average to .206, but it's difficult to overstate the enormity of his flop thus far. Not only is his average anemic, but as the Buccin' Ear commented on the other day, his OBP is under .250, incredible for an everyday player. Wilson's strikeouts-to-walks ratio would actually be an improvement over Burnitz's, which is nearly five-to-one. In roughly 150 official ABs going into tonight's game Burnitz has walked eight times.

Those who keep assuring us that Burnitz will snap out of it (e.g., Jim Tracy) may have forgotten that there is precedence for this. Over roughly 215 games between the start of the 2002 season and a little more than a third of the 2003 season, he hit about .210. The Mets dumped him at the conclusion of '02, and the Dodgers packed him up 60 games into the '03 season (he was batting .204) and sent him to Chicago, where he recovered somewhat in the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field, hitting well enough to get his batting average for the season "up" to .239. From there he went to Colorado, where he pumped up his numbers for a year, and parlayed that into a return gig with the Cubs. There he put up decent numbers. Let's see. Wrigley Field and Coors Field. Numbers improve. Shea Stadium and Dodger Stadium. Numbers shrivel. Anybody see a pattern here?

Burnitz has been known to be a hard worker throughout his career (although he did himself no good recently by not running out a ground ball. What was he thinking?), but that doesn't obscure the fact that he is a career .250 hitter who has six sub-.250 seasons on his resume. He is also 37 years old, so it's hard to understand what the Pirates were thinking when they signed him.

Derek Bell is still the poster child for DPSs (Disastrous Pirate Signings), but JB is working hard to supplant him. Let's give him some time on the pine to think about what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

Pitching an Uncertain Future

The Pirates of Penance and the Buccin' Ear were positively giddy. After outscoring the Reds 16-5 in the first two games of a three-game series at PNC, the Pirates dropped a six spot on the board in the first inning of the finale. Total domination! The bats were alive! Victory 14 gleamed on the horizon! One could almost see the sun glinting off the Allegheny, reflecting the new-found glow of Pirate success.

Well, hold on. This is the Pirates we are talking about. Starter Victor Santos coughed up all but two runs of the lead by the fifth inning, the bats went dead, and rookie Matt Capps sealed the defeat by giving up three of four runs in a fateful seventh inning. Final score: Cincy 9, Pittsburgh 8. So much for momentum.

Jason Bay, who has started to return to the form of his first two seasons (he hit a homer and drove in four runs today) insisted that the team is "going in a better direction" than it was a couple of weeks ago. Well, as much as I like his attitude, I have to disagree. Remember, this is a team that prior to the Cincinnati series dropped two of three to the Florida Marlins. And just as bad teams lose two of three to other bad teams, they also win two of three when they should sweep.

The failure of Santos (4-13 in 2005 for Milwaukee; obviously an ideal pick-up for the Buccos) to shut down the Reds returns the focus to the Pirates' pitching after two games of relative respite. Coming into the year, Santos had a career record of 17-33 with an ERA of 5.00. Never let it be said that he has disappointed with the Pirates; he's lived down to those numbers. Santos has this spot in the rotation because of the ill health of Kip Wells, who suffered a blood clot that required removal and is expected back in July. Does his return provide cause for hope?

Well, no. Wells is coming of an 18-loss season and has never lived up to the promise he provided when the Pirates acquired him from the White Sox. He has shown flashes of brilliance, and he clearly has above-average stuff. The problem is that Wells has never been able to consistently change speeds off his plus fastball. When he can't keep hitters honest with breaking stuff, he tends to get drilled.

Anyway, it's not like Kip Wells was going to deliver us from Victor Santos. He has a 55-69 career record, and after two initially promising seasons with the Pirates has gone 13-25 with an ERA near 5.00. In this he is similar to Oliver Perez, a spectacularly talented pitcher who initially eased the pain of the Brian Giles trade by pitching brilliantly for a bad 2004 team (sorry for the redundancy). Hopes were high in 2005. So of course he pitched horribly, broke his hand by smashing it into a wall at midsummer and has continued to plunge in 2006, going 2-5.

In addition to Santos, Perez and the waiting-in-the-wings Wells, the staff includes the young arms of Zach Duke, Paul Maholm and Ian Snell. Of these, Duke seems the most promising, and he pitched quite well in the second half of 2005. Even he, however, has shown signs of the Pirate malaise. His ERA thus far is over 4.00, and were it not for his domination of the Chicago Cubs, we might well find him in Victor Santos territory. Maholm has shown some signs of recovery after an awful start, but Snell has been maddeningly inconsistent and any reasonable observer would have to say he wouldn't be on the staff of most Major League teams.

The awful state of the pitching staff is made further frustrating by the recent penchant of highly rated Pirates pitchers to develop arm problems. Sean Burnett, Bryan Bullington and John Van Benschoten have all suffered serious injuries, and their futures are in doubt.

We keep waiting for rays of hope from the Pirates. Is there a purpose to unrelenting negativity about the status of the team? Well, I'd say yes an honest assessment came from a management team that is willing to admit that most of the decisons they've made have not worked out.

Not Much, but It's All We Have

Could it be? A two-game winning streak for the Pirates? Yes, the Pirates of Penance is happy to note another dominating performance by the Buccos over the reeling Reds of Cincinnati, 7-2. As Tuesday night's victory provided a Jeromy (hate that spelling!) Burnitz sighting, tonight featured a rare strong performance by the enigmatic Oliver Perez (six innings, two runs), who garnered his second victory of the year while bringing his ERA below the Jose Lima Line, to 6.98. Freddie (I'm not Joe Randa, thank you) Sanchez, now filling it at shortstop, collected three hits to raise his average to .333.

Given these two performances by the Reds, the reader will fairly ask why the Pirates of Penance and its faithful correspondent, the Buccin' Ear, spent yesterday's post on a comparison of the Buccos with the squad from Cincinnati, seemingly destined to return to the mediocrity from which it has briefly risen. Precisely because the Reds are mediocre is the reason. One would never accuse us of choosing a big-spending, big-market, highly successful team to measure against our hapless Buccos. The disparity between the two teams that we claim to have shown is made all the more stark when we realize how modest is the standard against which our team is measured.

The tiredness of the small-market argument as an explanation for the Pirates' continuing lack of success is best illustrated by looking to the example of the Cleveland Indians. In 1992, the last winning season for the Pirates, the Indians were a woebegone franchise that finished 10 games under .500 and had had precisely one winning season (1986) in the previous 11. They had not won a title of any kind since 1954. Yet this perennial failure and nonentity was quietly compiling a roster of talent that would soon count among the best in the game. The 1992 team included the likes of Albert Belle, Sandy Alomar, Paul Sorrento, Kenny Lofton, Jim Thome, Charles Nagy and Jose Mesa. In 1993 they added Manny Ramirez. In 1994 Omar Vizquel joined the team, which was 19 games above .500 when the strike ruined the season. The Indians claimed American League pennants in 1995 and 1997, when they barely missed winning the World Series. They remained very competitive until 2002, when trades and various defections to free agency sent them into a rebuilding period.

Now, the Pirates, as we have seen, languished through the '90s as the Indians, flush with success built by the stars they had developed and kept, built a new stadium and fan base. What really distinguishes the two franchises, however, is what the Indians did after the great run of success they had had ended. While the Pirates proclaimed one five-year plan after another, none of which showed even a glimmering of success, the Indians quietly put together a real rebuilding plan. While the Pirates have attempted to build artificial success by recycling past-their-prime veterans like Matt Stairs, Derek Bell, Joe Randa, and Jeromy Burnitz in (failed) hopes of quick-fix success, the Indians have recruited a new roster of stars and created a genuinely competitive team. Goodbye, Sandy Alomar, hello, Victor Martinez. Goodbye, Omar Vizquel, hello, Jhonny Peralta. Goodbye, Kenny Lofton, hello, Grady Sizemore. Goodbye, Eddie Murray, hello, Travis Hafner. Goodbye, Charles Nagy, hello, C.C. Sabathia. And so on...

A tale of two cities, indeed. One might be tempted to say that the Pirates play the Browns to the Indians' Steelers. To what can this startling success gap be attributed except to a failure on the part of Pirates' management to recruit, develop and retain good young talent? And yet that only explains part of the story. There is also the Pirates' nearly unparalleled success in getting mediocre results from the talent that they do get to the Major Leagues or acquire from other teams. One by one, promising pitchers such as Jason Schmidt, Jon Lieber, Esteban Loiaza, Kris Benson and Bronson Arroyo have achieved little with the Pirates and go on to greener pastures with other teams.

It says here that the failure of the Pirates lies at the door of management teams seemingly incapable of building a plan for the future. Barring a miracle recovery in '06, it is time for the house to be cleaned.

Why We Lost to the Reds

The Pirates of Penance checks in with a muted note of happiness: The Pirates win tonight, over the Reds, 9-3. The win is notable on several fronts: 1) It's only the 12th win of the season for the woeful Buccos. They have averaged two wins a week thus far, so they are already halfway to their quota, and it's only Tuesday! 2) The win comes at the expense of an old rival that has gotten off a surprisingly good start (23-17 after tonight's loss). 3) The offensive fireworks were led by Jeromy Burnitz, the expensive offseason acquisition who had hit a miserable .185 coming into the contest. 4) Paul Maholm, the much-touted rookie who has gotten off to a bad start on the mound, pitched into the eighth inning. Good starts have been few and far between for this pitching staff in 2006.

Well, we'll take it, even if it is just one win and the team is still 15 games below .500. The arrival in town of the Reds offers a chance to look at two once-proud franchises that have lost a bit, if not most, of their luster since 1980 (see previous blog for details on the decline of the Pirates). The Reds, of course, were probably the best team of the '70s, going to four World Series and winning three. Like the Pirates, they staggered a bit in the '80s, but they won another ring in 1990. Since then, success has been spotty, and they haven't recorded a winning season since 2000. They have won just one division title since the World Series triumph (1995), although they were probably robbed of one in the strike-obliterated season of '94 and lost a one-game playoff in 1999.

Still, that record positively glows when it is compared to the numbers posted by the Pirates. Why? Well, to start with the most recent teams, the Reds simply hit better than the Pirates, particularly in terms of power. For example, in 2005, three Reds players -- Ken Griffey Jr., Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns -- combined to hit 93 homers. The Pirates as a team hit 139 dingers.

In 2005, the Pirates ranked 12th in the league in home runs, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. It is too early to project where they will land in 2006, but there is precious little evidence that they are on course to improve in any of those categories. The players signed to protect their young slugger Jason Bay are either ineffectual (Burnitz) or hurt (Sean Casey and Joe Randa). In addition, they are terrible again at getting on base. The team has three players so far in 2006 (Bay, .418), Jack Wilson (.360) and Craig Wilson (.355) with superior OBPs. After Craig Wilson (among players with enough ABs to qualify), the fourth spot is occupied by Jose Castillo with an abysmal OBP of .311. The aforementioned Burnitz has an almost comically bad OBP of .236.

The Reds have also been able to put together some decent, certainly not great, pitching, led by Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang. They have four pitchers (Arroyo, Harang, Elizardo Ramirez and Brandon Claussen) who have combined for 28 starts, and none has an ERA over 5.00. Doesn't sound like much, but compare that with the Pirates' staff, of whom so much was expected. Going into tonight's game, Zach Duke, Maholm, Victor Santos, Ian Snell and Oliver Perez had combined for 38 starts and only Duke had an ERA under 5.00, although Maholm's will dip slightly below that line after Tuesday's game.

The issues go beyond this horrible year, however. As discussed in the previous blog, after the season-ending playoff loss to the Braves, the Pirates jettisoned every big-name player on their 1992 roster except Andy Van Slyke. Since 1993, the list of players who have performed at an above-average level for any significant period of time for the Pirates is exceedingly short. My list would include only Van Slyke, Jeff King, Jason Kendall, Brian Giles and, possibly, Denny Neagle. The Reds? On a succession of simply OK teams, they still managed to field Barry Larkin, Jose Rijo, Hal Morris, Reggie Sanders, Jeff Brantley, Sean Casey, Ken Griffey Jr., Danny Graves and Dunn. They also had numerous short-term contributions from the likes of Greg Vaughn and Pete Harnisch.

The larger question for the Pirates, to be considered in the next blog, is why so many players have performed poorly or merely passably in Pittsburgh and then have gone on to success with other teams.

I Believe in Something but I'm not Sure What

Welcome to my blog on the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club. If you are like me, you are spending this sorry season in a state of frustration as the team I have followed for more than 35 years plods toward a 14th consecutive losing campaign, ending any glimmer of hope early with a pitiful start that has, as of this writing, found them on the losing end of 27 of their first 38 contests. I guess if I were to view the 2006 Pirates' season in a favorable light, I would say that they have freed us of the burden of caring about their games at the earliest possible date. Maybe they wanted us all to catch up on our reading this summer.

It was not always thus. The Pittsburgh Pirates have been a Major League Baseball team so named since 1891. Despite a record of 55-80 that year, they finished the nineteenth century a cumulative 16 games over .500, albeit without a pennant to their credit. By the end of 1979, when they last reigned as the kings of baseball, they had won nine pennants and five World Series championships. During the 1970s, they were surely on the short list of best teams of the decade. In addition to the '79 triumph, they scored a world championship in 1971. They posted only one losing season (1973) during the '70s, and won their division six times. In 1977, they won 96 games, but came in second to a Philadelphia Phillies team -- outstanding in its own right -- that won an even more impressive 101 games. In 1978, they took their season to the next-to-last day, but fell just short -- again to Philadelphia.

Watching baseball in Pittsburgh during the '70s was a vibrant experience. True, they played in a cement bowl, the late and unlamented Three Rivers Stadium, that failed to provide a suitable backdrop for the great baseball being played on the field. But what baseball it was. The Pirates fielded consistently outstanding offensive teams that included future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, as well as a host of other fine players from Manny Sanguillen to Rennie Stennett to Richie Hebner to Bill Madlock to Dave Parker (who, in my opinion, should be in the HOF) to Al Oliver (maybe the least-known guy with more than 2,700 career hits that anybody could name) to Phil Garner...the list goes on and on. These teams had guys who could hit no matter where the pitch was. The Pirates of those days went to the plate hacking.

Pitching? Well, it was overlooked, to say the least. Over the decade of the '70s, the pitching staff ranked no lower than fifth (among 12 teams) in team ERA in eight of the 10 years. The other two years ('73 and '74), they ranked seventh. There were no HOF'ers, but there were some fine pitchers, both starters and relievers, such as Steve Blass, Dave Guisti, Bruce Kison, Bert Blyleven (who should be in the Hall), Dock Ellis, John Candelaria, Kent Tekulve and Jerry Reuss, just to name a few. Pirate pitchers didn't win 20 games, but lots of them won 10 to 15 games, and they all knew their roles. Candelaria, who pitched a no-hitter, was not above coming in to relieve when the situation called for it. Reuss, who pitched five seasons with the Pirates, topped out at 18 wins in one year, but won 220 over the course of a 22-year career. The team found guys who could work.

The team had a reputation as a heavy-hitting, slow-footed lot, and that reputation was earned in the first half of the decade. However, by 1976, with the arrival and development of shortstop Frank Taveras, Stennett and Parker, they had transformed themselves into a speeed and power team, and in '77 and '78, led by newcomer Omar Moreno, they led the league in stolen bases. In '79 they finished second. This combination of fat bats and fleet feet has rarely been seen since.

They were underappreciated, in part because they played in a town that rarely attracted media attention and that also just happened to have a love affair with another pretty good sports team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, who did nothing more than win four Super Bowls during the same decade. Although they were a colorful team (both in their style of play and in their racial diversity), there were few headline grabbers among them. They preferred to play the game hard and cleanly, much like the residents of the community they represented.

The '70s came to an end, and with it, much of the success of the PittsburghPirates franchise. This particular blog won't be about politics (much), but I'll tip my hand on my leanings and say that I knew that the '80s were going to be rough when the defending champs crashed to end the decade's inaugural season and shortly thereafter Ronald Reagan was elected president. There were glimmerings of hope in '83 and '84, but the team collapsed with a 104-loss season in '85, before beginning a slow ascent during the second half of the decade. Interestingly enough, the rise began with the entry to the Majors of a promising young talent named Barry Bonds.

Then there was the final burst, a three-year stretch of NL East division titles from 1990 to 1992. Bonds emerged as a quality player (sandwiching MVPs in '90 and '92 around a near miss in '91), Bobby Bonilla arrived from Chicago and put up some great numbers, and Andy Van Slyke reversed years of disappointment in St. Louis by emerging as a star defensive outfielder, dangerous offensive force and team leader with the Pirates. The team stole Doug Drabek in a trade with the White Sox (he won 92 games between '87 and '92), and despite no pitcher winning more than 15 games in 1992, they stood on the doorstep of a pennant in a seventh game in Atlanta. Drabek pitched eight shutout innings, the Pirates led 2-0 going into the bottom of the ninth, and then it all fell apart. The game ended when a non-entity named Francisco Cabrera singled to left field, scoring Sid Bream (a former Pirate, in a cruel irony) ahead of a throw from Barry Bonds. For all intents and purposes, the competitiveness of the Pirate franchise ended when Bonds' throw went a tad up the first base line and the notoriously slow Bream slid in a fraction ahead of Mike Lavalliere's tag. Bonds and Drabek left to free agency the following year (Bonilla had departed the year prior), and the current streak of losing seasons began.

What has been unusual about those 14 years has been the almost total absence of real hope that the franchise will turn around. The longer the frustration has gone on, the more curious I have become about the inability of those in charge of generating a turnaround. Oh, sure, we have the usual platitudes about a small-market team with a small payroll. I won't waste time with the argument other than to point out that the same was said about, for example, Minnesota and Oakland, to name two of the most obvious examples about whom the same pronouncement was made. Both have won several division championships since being pronounced dead by conventional wisdom.

The Pirates now occupy the netherland space of baseball team along with the once-proud Kansas City Royals. In other eras ('60s, '70s and '80s) this downtrodden status was best exemplified by the Cleveland Indians. Like the Pirates, these are and were teams who generate no interest among nonfans and no hope among those who follow them. The ineptitude of the team during this stretch of lost years can be measured by the fact that its "dream season" was 1997, a year in which they posted a mediocre 79 wins, yet stayed in contention into September because of a particularly weak division. The "best" pitcher on the staff, Francisco Cordova, totaled 11 wins (although he did combine with Ricardo Rincon on a no-hitter without getting the win). Their "best" hitter was Kevin Young, a first baseman who slammed 18 homers and drove in 74 runs, in other words, what would turn out to be about a half-season's worth of work for the departed Barry Bonds. Other than that "dream" season between '93 and '06? Not much a desperate fan can cling to, the occasional Brian Giles, Jason Bay and Zach Duke not withstanding.

The current team, which I will comment on in coming blogs, is so bad as to nearly defy description, and because of the team's penchant in recent years for signing over-the-hill "talent," is also nearly devoid of hope. My hope, on the other hand, is to find from readers of my musings here a reason to care and memories that have compelled them to stick with this once-proud team.

Takers?