Let’s avoid more upchucking

Let’s start by discussing tonight’s starter Brian Burres. Over four seasons in the AL East with the Orioles and Blue Jays, he’s racked up an ugly 6.08 ERA that’s only made marginally better by his career 4.98 FIP and 5.25 xFIP. He walks a lot of hitters but doesn’t strike a huge number out, and he doesn’t have a particularly great career GB/FB ratio. He’s around to do exactly what we all hope he’s doing tonight; make a spot start in a pinch.

At least the Pirates get to pair him up with Barry Zito and not one of the Giants’ seemingly invincible young starters, so if they need some runs it’s at least not a ludicrous proposition to think they’ll get some. Zito was excellent in his first start, but then that first start was against the Astros. Honestly, I’ll just be happy to see some kind of a pulse tonight after yesterday’s debacle.

First pitch is at 10:15, Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump.

Not sure what this is? Check here and here. Short version: in the comments pick the Pirates you think will be most and least valuable in today’s game. If you haven’t jumped aboard yet, it’s been a lot of fun through so far and now’s as good a time as any to join in.

I don’t want to talk much more about yesterday’s bloodbath, but Dan McCutchen was of course the goat in a huge fashion, putting up a ridiculous -0.636 WPA yesterday by allowing the score to swing from 4-2 Pirates to 9-4 D’Backs on his watch in the fateful fourth inning. He was so bad that there wasn’t much more room for Hayden Penn’s awful performance to move the meter any more in the wrong direction, which means that Garrett Jones is the surprising Cangelosi runner-up. The two best Pirates by WPA yesterday were unsurprisingly Andrew McCutchen and Delwyn Young, who had big hits early in the game when such things still mattered.

Here are today’s standings.

1. Woodward – 5

2. IndianaJohns04, dboz, appeal2smail – 4

3. TomKaikis LRNeub, Joek, UtesFan89, Wizard of Woz, North Shore Ryan, dafletch – 3
4. PatrickHealy, brian2, appeal2smail, apk – 2
5. FSU Bucs, Nate, Christy, MattB, hisjazziness – 1
6. Everyone else – 0
7. bwzimmerman, MattB, NSN, Mr. Ando, CoryR, Mosca, ndbrian – (-1)