The big news before today’s game against the Reds is that Ross Ohlendorf is headed to the DL with back spasms and that Dan McCutchen will be taking his spot in the rotation today. He’s eligible to return to action on April 27th, so the Pirates may need one more spot start from a minor leaguer (Jakubauskas or Burres, perhaps) before then.
McCutchen is one of those guys who isn’t really that great, but is certainly serviceable and shouldn’t be entirely written off based on his role in the 14-run inning debacle in Arizona. If he can keep the ball down a little more, things like that won’t keep happening to him. That’s the hope tonight, at least, against Johnny Cueto and the Reds. We’ve seen Cueto quite a bit in the past, of course, and a full six of his 20 career wins have come against the Pirates, which is insane. He’s another guy that we should be able to force a decent-sized pitch count on (in his two starts this year he’s thrown 109 in six innings and 110 in five) with some patience, but who will strike us out like crazy without it.
First pitch is 7:05, 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.
A few people apparently had trouble logging in last night with the new comment system. I think the problem may be that they weren’t registered or forgot to log-in up in the top right corner of the site. Make sure you try that out today.
Yesterday’s WPA hero was of course Lastings Milledge, who’s walk-off single took the Pirates from a win probability of 60.7% to 100%. Zach Duke’s strong start places him second for the game, while poor relief performances make Octavio Dotel and Javier Lopez the Cangelosis.
Here are today’s standings:
- Woodward -13
- hwtrine68 – 8
- Wizard of Woz, – 7
- Carnegie Chip – 6
- North Shore Ryan, dafletch, brian2, UtesFan89 – 5
- IndianaJohns04, dboz, appeal2smail, hisjazziness, – 4
- TomKaikis, apk, Joek, tylerrcurtis, apk, whygavs – 3
- PatrickHealy, TheJewelryMan!, Fruitbat, shsteimer – 2
- FSU Bucs, Christy, MattB, Mr. Ando, appeal2smail – 1
- Everyone else – 0
- NSN, CoryR, Mosca, ndbrian, J. Latrobe, bwzimmerman, IndianaJohns04, wk kortas, danatural – (-1)
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