Way out west

I’m working on the first part of the promised prospects posts, but I’m not sure I’ll have it ready for tomorrow. Whatever the case, I’m going to proceed ahead with the “Were we wrong about … ?” stuff on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule until I run out of things to talk about. At that point, I assume I’ll launch into an intensive, three-month-long study of Ross Ohlendorf’s outings by examining each pitch individually (I’m kidding, I think … at least partially).

Anyways, the Pirates are out west, playing the NL West leading Dodgers, who’ve kind of coasted along at the front of the division since 2009 started. Dan McCutchen gets his third start tonight against Jon Garland, as he searches for his first big league win at some point long past when most of Pittsburgh has gone to bed.

I also do want to point out one thing about the Pirates current streak of terribleness. Remember last August and September? When the offense fell off of a cliff and people wondered how the Pirates could ever possibly bounce back and how awful 2009 was going to be? The Bucs went 17-37 over that span, but bounced back very nicely in 2009 and probably would’ve won 70-75 games, had the roster not been gutted in the name of rebuilding. Right now, the Pirates are 11-28 since the trade deadline, but there are still games left against San Diego, Cincinnati, and the lifeless Cubs. They could easily wrap up with a similar record to the one they had over the last two months last year. Even if they don’t, I’ll start saying now exactly what I said last year: don’t take what’s happening now as something that’s necessarily predictive of 2010. They won’t be this bad next year. And I don’t mean to leave you guys hanging on a teaser, but I’ll certainly talk about why I think that in the coming months.

(Does this set a record for lowest game talk/other talk ratio in a game thread? I think it might.)

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