Josh Harrison Sees Early Playing Time at Shortstop

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Pirates Daily Notebook is Now Free of Charge

I made some serious improvements on the Pirates Daily Notebook today, and the best part is it's FREE now. So check it out! Click the image below to download it.

3/4 Recap | Blue Jays 8 Pirates 5

The Pirates brought the bats to Bradenton today, but they had some rough pitching outings and dropped their second consecutive Grapefruit League game.

Erik Bedard made the start for the Pirates and had a rough first inning. He hit the first batter, gave up a double and a sac fly for the first run, and the second run came in on a groundout shortly thereafter. Bedard added another walk before getting out of the inning. His second frame went a bit smoother, getting a double play ball and a strikeout after a lead off walk.

Evan Meek also made his spring debut and got roughed up a bit. Meek walked two, gave up three hits and four runs in his two-thirds of an inning. Joel Hanrahan was very good with a quick one-two-three inning with two strikeouts, and Doug Slaten, Jason Grilli, and Danny Moskos also posted scoreless innings.

Obviously it's not good seeing two of your big league pitchers having rough outings, but it's the first outing of the year so you can't read anything into this. I fully expect Bedard and Meek to be two of the Pirates better pitchers this year.

The positive side of today was the offense. The Pirates got nine hits including a home run from Nick Evans (which was apparently helped a bit by the wind). Rod Barajas had a pair of hits and a pair of RBI. Pedro Alvarez got two at-bats and looked like Pedro Alvarez in them. He struck out on three pitches in the first at bat and rolled over a ground ball to the right side for an easy out the second time. Hopefully we won't see a ton of that this spring, that would be a real downer.

In other news, somebody was rocking a McEffect shirt at the game today, you can buy your own

right over there ----->

Blue Jays vs. Pirates, Spring Training Game 2

Pittsburgh Pirates (0-0) vs. Toronto Blue Jays (0-0)
1:05 at McKechnie Field

Pitchers

Pirates	Blue Jays
Erik Bedard Joel Hanrahan Evan Meek Jason Grilli Doug Slaten Daniel Moskos Shairon Martin	Aaron Laffey Jesse Chavez Robert Coello Francisco Cordero Evan Crawford Casey Janssen Darren Oliver Sergio Santos Rick VandenHurk

Lineups

Pirates	Blue Jays
1. Alex Presley, LF2. Nate McLouth, RF3. Andrew McCutchen, CF4. Rod Barajas, C5. Garrett Jones, 1B6. Matt Hague, DH7. Pedro Alvarez, 3B8. Chase d'Arnaud, 2B9. Anderson Hernandez, SS	1. Rajai Davis, CF2. Travis Snider, LF3. Ben Francisco, RF4. Brett Lawrie, 3B5. David Cooper, 1B6. JP Arencibia, DH7. Luis Valbuena, 2B8. Jeff Mathis, C9. Adeiny Hechavarria, SS

Game Notes

Pedro Alvarez gets his first start of the spring; he's the guy that everyone has a close eye on. Interestingly, Rod Barajas hits clean up instead of Garrett Jones. Former Pirate Jesse Chavez is pitching the second inning, Chavez has been awful ever since leaving Pittsburgh

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Remember When We Liked Tim Alderson?

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Introducing the 2012 Pittsburgh Pirates Daily Notebook

Baseball season is upon us, and I have been working hard on an idea I had recently, it's called the Pittsburgh Pirates Daily Notebook.

Basically what it is is a journal (eBook/pdf style) that I will update daily (as as often as possible) with everything you need to know Pittsburgh Pirates wise. Rosters, statistics, game notes, game recaps, pictures, links, all kinds of stuff is going to be in this thing. The coolest part about is that you're going to be able to go back to any point in time during the season and see how things stood. At least once a week I'll post the Pirates current place in the standings and their statistics for the year. That will make it so if you ever want to reminisce on where the team was at on a certain date, you will be able to easily find that information.

There isn't going to be much stuff in this book that you won't be able to find elsewhere, but the nice thing about is that pretty much everything you'll need is in one place. You can view the Notebook on your smart phone (it has iBooks support for iPhone and iPad), so you can always have it with you. It's like taking this blog and cramming it all into your pocket.

Click Here To View The Pirates Daily Notebook

3/3 Recap | Pirates Get 3 Hits, Lose 7-1

The Pirates started off their Grapefruit League schedule with a dud of a performance, losing 7-1 to the Toronto Blue Jays. The Bucs got three hits all game, coming from Gorkys Hernandez, Michael McKenry, and Starling Marte. McKenry singled in Hernandez in the 5th for the Pirates lone run of the afternoon.

James McDonald started the game and gave up two runs in the second after a 1-2-3 first inning. McDonald got into trouble with a four-pitch walk and a tough broken bat single before Brett Lawrie got the barrel on one and drove it for a double. All-in-all it wasn't a great outing for McDonald, but it could have been worse. I'm not going to keep repeating myself saying that you shouldn't take much from these early outings, but you shouldn't take much from these early outings.

The Pirates got scoreless innings out of Brad Lincoln, Chris Resop, and Ryota Igarashi. Daniel McCutchen and Chris Leroux gave up a run each (Leroux gave up a home run and struck out the side), and Tony Watson got roughed up allowing three runs on four hits in his inning.

While it's always nice to win any game you play, it really doesn't matter that the Pirates lost this game. At the end of the day you can be happy that the Pirates are playing games again, and everyone finishes the day with both orbital bones in good shape.

The Pirates are back in action tomorrow in Bradenton against these same Blue Jays. Erik Bedard is scheduled to make the start and throw two innings.

McWriters Wanted

The season is ramping up and I realize that for this site to be as good as it can be, I'm going to need some help. I'm a college student who also plays a varsity sport so I just don't have the time to do all I want to.

So I'm taking "applications", if you will, for people that want to write for my blog. I'm really just looking for someone that can write game recaps and news updates. Anything else you can contribute is gravy.

Knowing HTML is a plus as well, but the biggest thing I am looking for is consistency, I can't have someone disappearing on me after a month of writing.

So if you're interested please email me at Jon2Anderson@comcast.net, include a writing sample if you have one (I hate spelling and grammar errors) and just a little bit about yourself. I'll pick one or two people in coming weeks.

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Pirates vs. Blue Jays, Spring Training Game 1

Pittsburgh Pirates (0-0) vs. Toronto Blue Jays (0-0)
1:05 at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium

AUDIO LINK
Pitchers

Pirates James McDonald Brad Lincoln Tony Watson Daniel McCutchen Chris Resop Chris Leroux Ryota Igarashi Juan Cruz

Blue Jays Brett Cecil Kyle Drabek Jerry Gil Jim Hoey Danny Farquhar Luis Perez Ryan Tepera Joel Carreno Scott Richmond

Not the best series of pitchers there that Toronto's throwing out, but there's a few major league arms in there, so it's a good way to start the Grapefruit League Schedule. Here's the lineup the Pirates are sending out today:

1. Jose Tabata, RF 2. Clint Barmes, SS 3. Neil Walker, 2B 4. Casey McGehee, 1B 5. Yamaico Navarro, 3B 6. Nate McLouth, CF 7. Jake Fox, DH 8. Gorkys Hernandez, LF 9. Michael McKenry, C

It's great to have baseball back.

Saturday 3/3 | News, Notes, and Links

The day has come. The Pittsburgh Pirates play a real life baseball game today. They open up their Grapefruit League schedule as the visitor team facing the Toronto Blue Jays. First pitch is at 1:05, I'll try to get a post up with audio links if I can find them.

Anyways, since there are going to be games nearly every day from here on out, these morning posts should become more frequent.

• I'll be on TribLIVE Radio today from 12-1 talking Pirates, speeding tickets, and whatever else D.D. and I can come up with.
• The Pirates played an intrasquad scrimmage yesterday. Jeff Karstens pitched two scoreless innings, Kevin Correia pitched one scoreless, Tony Sanchez hit a three-run homer, Andrew McCutchen went 2 for 2, Matt Hague went 2 for 3, Jeff Clement was 2 for 2, and Yamaico Navarro started at shortstop and also went 2 for 2.
• McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, Rod Barajas, Alex Presley, and Garrett Jones are not making the trip to Dunedin for the game today.
• I'll have the lineups up an hour or so before the game.

Pirates Pitchers For First Four Spring Games

Saturday, March 3rd @ Blue Jays James McDonald (2 IP) Brad Lincoln Tony Watson Daniel McCutchen Chris Resop Chris Leroux Ryota Igarashi Juan Cruz	Sunday, March 4th vs Blue Jays Erik Bedard (2 IP) AJ Burnett (2 IP) Shairon Martis Joel Hanrahan Jason Grilli Evan Meek Doug Slaten
Monday, March 5th @ Orioles Jo-Jo Reyes (2 IP) Justin Wilson (2 IP) Daniel Moskos Jared Hughes Bryan Morris Michael Crotta Tim Wood	Tuesday, March 6th vs. Yankees Kevin Correia (2 IP) Justin Wilson Daniel McCutchen Chris Resop Chris Leroux Doug Slaten Ryota Igarashi

How To Watch Spring Training Baseball

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A.J. Burnett to have Surgery on Broken Orbital Bone

New Pirates pitcher A.J. Burnett fouled a ball off his right eye yesterday, and today we learned that he has a broken orbital bone around the eye and will miss some time. He is scheduled to have surgery tomorrow (Friday).

This isn't good news for the Pirates, who had Pittsburgh pretty excited with the addition of Burnett. However, I don't think this is going to cost Burnett more than a couple starts, if any. He should be able to throw bullpen during spring training even just days after the surgery, although it will almost certainly hold him out of a good amount of spring games.

The biggest concern with pitchers in spring training is getting their arms stretched out to get ready for the long season. I don't think this injury is going to hold Burnett back too much from that. It also helps that Burnett has been around for a long time, so I'm sure he knows how to handle something like this.

The Pirates will release the timetable for Burnett's return tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that.