Look, no baseball team is as bad as the Pirates have been over the last week. It’s just not possible for them to keep on playing at such a terrible, hopeless pace. Things have to balance themselves out eventually. They can’t lose in Milwaukee forever. They can’t give up 10+ runs a night indefinitely. It seems like they can right now, but honestly, they can’t. At some point, everything is just going to come flowing out and they’re going to beat the crap out of someone.
Will that night be tonight? Uh, probably not. With Ross Ohlendorf still recovering from his shoulder trouble, Chris Jakubauskas still on the DL after his scary incident the other night, Dan McCutchen pitching badly enough to earn a demotion in the middle of all this carnage, and the Brians being used in relief over the weekend, Jeff Karstens makes his return to the Pirates tonight to start (as I mentioned below, the corresponding move is a John Raynor DFA with Neal Huntington saying that they’ll try to work something out with the Marlins to keep Raynor in the Pirates’ system). Because someone has to start, presumably. We all know what Karstens is, which is what Dan McCutchen theoretically is — a medicore at best pitcher who will struggle and give up his share of runs but probably not embarrass himself and usually at least keep his team in games, provided they can score some runs. The problem with this equation is that McCutchen has embarrassed himself and pretty much everyone involved with the Pirates this year. At the very least, hopefully Karstens won’t do that.
First pitch is again at 8:05 ET. Projected jump-off time (usually around the third inning) is 9:08. 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.
With an early hit and a walk yesterday, Akinori Iwamura made himself the Clemente of the blowout and cost a whopping seven contestants a point with only edgeman2k putting him in the right column. The runner up was Andy LaRoche and his three hits, which did manage to garner a few people points. Zach Duke’s awful outing made him the Cangelosi, which was surprisingly only picked by Adam Reynolds. Cangelosi #2 was Ryan Doumit, who managed to give contest leader Woodward one point and the karmically positive score of 21 overall.Putting the Pirate starter down as the Cangelosi has been almost free points in the past week. Can Jeff Karstens break the trend?
Today’s standings:
- Woodward: 21
- dafletch: 15
- hisjazziness: 12
- hwtrine68: 11
- brian2: 9
- whygavs: 8
- Wizard of Woz, UtesFan89, North Shore Ryan: 7
- Carnegie Chip: 5
- dboz, appeal2smail, Garrett122,
edgeman2k,
Don_Madden, bwzimmerman: 4
- TomKaikis, Joek, tylerrcurtis, TheJewelryMan!, fruitbat, IndianaJohns04
, jac8: 3
- PatrickHealy, apk, Tate, MattB, SteelCity66, BadAndy, spazaru, TuckerD13, Adam_Reynolds: 2
- FSU Bucs, Christy, appeal2smail, SeanGentile, shsteimer, TheHulk: 1
- Everyone else: 0
- NSN, CoryR, Mosca, wk kortas, danatural, J Latrobe, Teflon, Nate, Cecilio_Guante: -1
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