Brad and the Brewers

I spent a lot of virtual ink over the break talking about Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata and Lastings Milledge and Neil Walker, but not nearly as much talking about Brad Lincoln. Lincoln is hugely important to the Pirates, too, of course, and it’d be great to get him going as the second half wears on. He hasn’t really matched his exceptional start at Wrigley Field on June 30th in the two starts since then because of home run troubles (he’s allowed four in his last 11 innings). The Brewers feature plenty of home run hitters, of course, and one of them is lefty Prince Fielder. That more or less encompasses the two things that Lincoln has struggled with in his seven starts. That means you can choose to be concerned about how this game is going to go, or you can be hopeful that a good start will mean he’s starting to settle in.

I’ll go cautiously with the second one (I want to believe!) for now. Mostly what I want to see tonight, though, is the bats break out again after being silenced by Chris Capuano last night. As much good as last weekend’s explosion did, last night pretty much undid it all in my mind.

First pitch tonight is 7:05 with Dave Bush on the mound for the Brewers. Clemente/Cangelosi is after the break.

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 so far and now’s as good a time as any to join in.

Pedro Alvarez nabbed the Clemente nod with his three walks last night (the one in the ninth inning being a very clutch walk). That was good news for the passel of contestants who had Ronny Cedeno as Cangelosi, as they would’ve lost points if he had edged out Pedro for Clemente. Instead, he finished second and no one picked up any points. Cangelosi was Ryan Doumit, who moved a lot of points (all of the +2s you see from today were for Doumit except for mine and J Latrobe, who both picked Alvarez for Clemente). Runner up was Ryan Church, who also got some readers points.

The big winner on the day, though, was J. Latrobe, who got both Alvarez and Church and moved into first place early on in the contest. It’s still plenty early, so feel free to jump in tonight if you haven’t yet.