While I was working up a frenzy yesterday to get the last Spring Training picture post and the first part of my Neal Huntington interview posted, I kind of glossed over the Opening Day starter hubbub. As we now know, Kevin Correia will start the opener in Chicago and Paul Maholm will start the Home Opener against the Rockies the next Thursday. There are a few people that are predictably freaking out over this because neither pitcher is very good, but this is really the only viable option right now. It was such an easy pick that I called it about two hours before the announcement even came.
Maholm is the longest tenured pitcher. On teams without an obvious ace, that’s who gets the nod at the Home Opener. James McDonald may have been a possibility here, but with no off-days between April 1 and April 7, the home opener starter has to be ready to start the second game of the year. I don’t know if McDonald is going to miss any starts yet, but even if he doesn’t it seems unlikely that he’ll be ready for the season’s first weekend. Morton was an unqualified disaster for much of last year. The Pirates can’t start him on either opener without themselves up to ridicule, even if he’s talented as hell and dominating this spring. Ross Ohlendorf would probably be the natural nod for Opening Day, except that he went 1-11 last year and letting him start Opening Day would be a PR nightmare from hell. It’s not helping that he’s getting rocked this spring. That means that it has to be Correia. Correia and Maholm are the only two that make sense. This is why pitching is such a huge concern for the Bucs this year.
While I was getting ready for/enjoying/traveling back/recovering from spring training, I didn’t have a chance to post a couple of links to other sites that I’ve lent a hand to in the past couple weeks. I did a Pirates’ Fantasy Preview for Razzball, which ran last week. I also combined with Brian from Raise the Jolly Roger for C70 At the Bat’s Playing Pepper feature. Sorry to both Dan and Grey for not getting the links up sooner.
Nice story by Jayson Stark about Clint Hurdle, but I have to say that the part about his daily inspirational e-mails reminds me a whole lot of this webcomic.
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