It's almost time. The Pedro Alvarez era is nearing. The expectation is for Pedro to be called up Monday and debut Tuesday against the Chicago White Sox. Freddy Garcia will be on the mound on Tuesday, a pretty good name to have on the mound when you're looking for a good debut for a future superstar. In addition to Alvarez, Brad Lincoln will be making his 2nd big league start and his first start at home. It should be a great game to watch and I expect there to be a lot of people in the ballpark that night, myself included.
With all the recent call-ups, our lineup has been changing a lot. Once Alvarez comes up and Steve Pearce comes off the DL, some more moves will be made to set up the lineup for how it should look for awhile. Here's what I'm thinking it's going to look like for the rest of the season:
1. Jose Tabata, LF
2. Neil Walker, 2B
3. Andrew McCutchen, CF
4. Garrett Jones, RF
5. Pedro Alvarez, 3B
6. Ryan Doumit, C
7. Steve Pearce, 1B
8. Ronny Cedeno, SS
9. Pitcher
That's a pretty good looking lineup there, especially when you compare it to what we've had in the past, especially earlier this year. The Pirates 4 worst players this year have been Akinori Iwamura, Jeff Clement, Lastings Milledge, and Andy LaRoche. After these moves are made, none of those 4 will be in the starting lineup, and hopefully only Milledge and LaRoche will still be on the big league club (that's hoping the Pirates DFA Iwamura to make room for Pedro).
It would seem to me that whenever a team gets rid of their 4 worst players and replaces them with high-upside young players, they have a pretty good chance to be a pretty good offense.
It's gonna be an exciting time watching the Pirates for the rest of the year, hopefully the pitching can be better than it has been lately. Paul Maholm has been the only starter that hasn't looked terrible in the last month or so. You can't win without good pitching, and of right now, the Pirates don't have that.
Despite that, it will be a pleasant change watching the offense score some runs.
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