4/9 Pirates Opinions and Comments

Did you guys know that Brad Lincoln plays for the Phillies now? Remember the trade the Pirates made in 2012 that sent Lincoln to Toronto for Travis Snider? Remember how mad all the idiot hosts on The Fan were about it (namely Paul Alexander, who no longer has a job in Pittsburgh sports)? Can we revisit that trade real quick?

So since the trade, Brad Lincoln has pitched 60.1 innings (58 of which were with the Blue Jays in 2012 and 2013) and he has allowed 35 earned runs in those innings. Lincoln has a 5.24 ERA since the trade. Mind you, he went from one of the worst hitting divisions in the league to the best, but needless to say he hasn't lived up to his closer potential that everyone was seeing when he was in Pittsburgh. On the other side of the deal, Snider hasn't helped the Pirates much either with a .228/.298/.327 triple slash line, so you can't say the Pirates necessarily got the best of the deal, but you'd rather have potential in an outfielder than in a bullpen pitcher after all. And nobody misses Paul Alexander's blabberings.

I haven't talked about the Jameson Taillon Tommy John surgery news on here yet. I have nothing to say, that news really bites.

The Pirates have looked very good early on. You can't hope for much better than a 5-2 record to open the year (you could have hoped for 6-1 or 7-0 I suppose, but we have the 3rd best guess which is a bronze medal right?). It was nice to see them win a game in which they didn't pitch well last night. You don't expect this club to score seven runs very often in a game, but it's always relieving to time those games well. Pedro Alvarez has hit the ball hard this year, Andrew McCutchen is getting out of his early slump, and they've gotten surprising performances from Travis Ishikawa and Edinson Volquez, can't ask for much more than than seven games in right? And it's always nice to win some games against division foes. Nobody expects the Cubs to be in the race at the end of the year, but every game against the Cardinals really counts, because you never know if that head-to-head record is going to be a determiner at the end of the year. A win in April could mean the difference between winning the division or having to play another one game wild card series. As of right now, the Cardinals have to have one more win than us to be in first place, so that's always nice.

Bucs started a long stretch of games last night with their win in Chicago, and they pick it back up tonight at 8:05 as Wandy Rodriguez faces Jason Hammel. The Pirates made Hammel look like a Cy Young contender last Thursday in a game they lost 3-2. I'm not a baseball genius, but I'm pretty sure Hammel isn't a Cy Young contender, so hopefully the Pirates can prove that to me tonight. After that it's a classic 2:20 game in Chicago then a flight to Milwaukee for a weekend series with the Brewers, who have also started hot with a 5-2 record and a rejuvenated Ryan Braun, who hit three home runs yesterday in Philadelphia (one off the aforementioned Brad Lincoln). So we can get back to cussing out Braun this weekend for how good and douchey he is. That'll be fun, right?