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.