The weekend in review

I have very little to say about the Pirates/Astros series from this weekend other than that battering Wandy Rodriguez, who’s been spectacular this year, sandwiched around getting dominated by Brian Moehler and Mike Hampton pretty much sums up how frustrating it is to watch our offense so far this year. There’s potential, but it’s incredibly inconsistent. I’m not expecting the Pirates to have the best offense in the league, but only scoring two earned runs against Moehler and Hampton is bad.

I spend the weekend in Baltimore with a couple of friends from high school, mostly hoping to watch Nolan Reimold play for the Orioles. This managed to coincide with Matt Wieters first weekend in Baltimore. I’ve tried to not mention the Wieters debacle here too much because it’s in the past, but man, I was jealous of Orioles’ fans this weekend. My friend and I got to Saturday’s game a little late (and left a little early to watch hockey, but that’s neither here nor there) and there was a line that had to be a thousand people long, just waiting to get in and get a glimpse of the best hitting prospect in baseball. This was after a sellout on Friday night and on Sunday, I could already see a crowd building up around the stadium when I left the city. The excitement over Wieters’ arrival was palpable.

He didn’t disappoint on Saturday, either. He launched a triple into the left-center notch in his first at-bat and hit a ground-rule double in his second at bat that (seriously) might’ve been the hardest hit ball I’ve ever seen hit in person. It didn’t ever get more than 20 feet off the ground and more or less skimmed off of the grass and just kept on lasering over the fence. It was unreal. In the stands at Camden, it felt like four of every five fans was either wearing a Wieters, Adam Jones, or Nick Markakis shirt. With those three coupled with Reimold, who’s killed the ball since his recall, they’ve got an amazing young core of hitters in Baltimore right now. I hope that’s how I feel about the Pirates in a year when McCutchen, Alvarez, and Tabata are making their way to Pittsburgh.