Opening Day in 125 Seconds

The Post-Gazette made an awesome little vid that compiled hundreds of stills by Rebecca Droke and Steve Mellon into a roughly two-minute featurette. Definitely worth a look.

You can watch it here.

Let's Go Bucs.

The Church of Jones and Doumit. Bucs WIN

	R	H	E	LOB
	5	12	2	10
	11	10	0	6

1st

Things started slow with the Pirates giving up 2 in the 1st and it seemed like it was going to be one of those days.

2-0

But then The Duke struck out Loney to end the half. It was all over for LA after that. They never led again.

Why?

Garrett effin Jones. Into the Allegheny it goes.

2-2

2nd

Dodgers were able to get one hit but otherwise couldn't beat Duke, who had a very solid game.

The LA joke catcher Martin can't pick up the ball on a Duke bunt, which allowed Duke to reach and runners advance, but the Bucs can't do anything with it.

3rd

More of the Duke. Manny "women's fertility drug" Ramirez gets a meaningless double. Duke kills that by taking care of Kemp.

Garrett Jones decides he's getting bored with this tie and breaks out his homer machine one more time.

3-2

Only the 6th Pirate in opening day history to hit two home runs.

4th

Duke decides to change it up and allow the Dodgers to get two hits in the 4th. What a tease. Shut down.

Ronny Cedeño stole a base in an otherwise uneventful half.

5th

Previously mentioned joke Martin decides to wander off second base when a Manny grounder is hit to Cedeño. Rundown commences.

Tag, you're a jobber.

In the bottom of the fifth the floodgates opened. Cutch was hit by a pitch, and then stole second. Garrett Jones's grounder to first moves Cutch to third. Then Doumit walked. Lastings Milledge hits a GRD to score Cutch. Clement is walked intentionally. Bases are juiced, but The Duke is up. So JR makes the decision to pinch-hit Ryan Church.

Everybody come home.

Cedeño drives in Church.

8-2

6th

The bullpen circus started in this inning. Taschner came in to pitch .6 of an inning, and is replaced by Carasco for the remaining .3. Still, no worries at this point.

Pirates go down in order for the only time in the game.

7th

Dodgers try to rally, scoring 2. Carasco is replaced by Meek. He lets in another run.

8-5

Clement reachs on another Dodgers error, but otherwise nothing interesting.

8th

Veteran Brendan Donnelly gets the nod for this inning. He takes care of business.

Then Doumit decides to kill the Dodgers dreams. 3-run homer.

11-5

9th

New closer Octavio Dotel comes in. Takes them down in order, with one K.

Pop the champagne, raise the jolly roger, the Bucs are in 1st place.

GAME.

SERIES 1 - Dodgers

Los Angeles Dodgers: April 5, 7, 8

PNC Park

Listen live on [WPGB]

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Opening Day. For the last 17 years, it's been the brightest spot in most of the Pirates seasons during that time. The one time of the year when the Bucs are equals with the rest of the league. If the Pirates win, it's usually the only time of the season they hold the division lead. A sellout crowd. Exciting stuff.

This year, the Pirates are opening their season at PNC for the first time in 5 years. Since that 9-2 loss to the Brewers on April 4, 2005, the Bucs are 3-1 on Opening Day, winning their last 3 in a row. Keep that streak going. In addition, the last time the Bucs faced the Dodgers, they took 3 games of a 4 game series, including the 11-1 utter domination near-complete game for Zach Duke on September 28, 2009, in which Andy LaRoche had the game of his career, with 4 RBIs and 4 runs, 2 of which were homers. Duke will be the starting pitcher for Opening Day this year.

The Dodgers are coming off of a season where they swept the Cardinals in 3 games in the NLDS, only to fall to the Phillies in 5 games in the NLCS. Still, they had the best regular season record in the NL last year, and while they lost a few players through free-agency, there's no reason to believe they won't be in the playoffs at the end of this season, as their only real competition in the NL West is Arizona, with an outside chance for Colorado to make a push.

The Pirates, meanwhile, are coming off their 3rd consecutive season in the NL Central's basement. While there's certainly the possibility that this team could extend that streak to four years in a row, it's possible for them to finish fifth or even fourth in the division. Even optimistically, I don't see them doing better than that unless several players have breakout years.

With this team, more so than teams in previous years, there's a bit of mystery as to how they will perform. Almost all the vestiges of the previous management have been removed, for good or for ill. Only 4 players remain that came up under that system (Maholm, Duke, Doumit, and Andrew McCutchen). Doumit may be dumped later in the season, but that remains to be seen.

On the minor league side of things, the new management's attempts to rebuild the disaster that was the McClatchy/Littlefield minor league system are slowly coming to fruition. Pedro Alvarez will almost definitely see playing time in the Majors this year, probably sometime between June and the All-Star break in mid-July. José Tábata and Brad Lincoln may also see some playing time, although this is not nearly as definite as it is with Alvarez and will probably only happen if there are a lot of injuries on the team.

It's an exciting time to be a Pirates fan, as they seem to be on the right track for the first time in a long while. There are no huge contracts with dead-end players, which is always a plus. This excitement will always be tempered in the fans' minds, however, until the Bucs finally win that 81st game. Probably not gonna happen this year, but there's actually some hope for the future now.

---

Proposed Lineups

Vicente Padilla will start for the Dodgers, while Zach Duke will get the nod for the Bucs.

Dodgers

1-R. Furcal SS

2-R. Martin C

3-A. Ethier RF

4-M. Ramirez LF

5-M. Kemp CF

6-J. Loney 1B

7-C. Blake 3B

8-B. DeWitt 2B

9-V. Padilla P

Pirates

1-A. Iwamura 2B

2-A. McCutchen CF

3-G. Jones RF

4-R. Doumit C

5-L. Milledge LF

6-J. Clement 1B

7-A. LaRoche 3B

8-Z. Duke P

9-R. Cedeño SS

Starting pitchers for the next two games in the series are expected to be Ohlendorf and Maholm versus Kershaw and Billingsley, respectively.

Let's Go Bucs.

The View From Peanut Heaven - trying to stay optimistic about the Pirates

Okay, this is going to be a blog about the Pittsburgh Pirates. I am going to attempt to follow the style that The Pensblog uses in their blog (as outlined at the bottom of this post and probably elsewhere in their archives, but I don't feel like searching). I am going to try to use their style, a style which I highly admire and probably won't even come close to duplicating, to talk about the Pirates. Like the Pensblog, for the most part I will try to focus on the positive aspects of the Pirates and not focus entirely on negatives (although unlike the Pens, the overall journalist impression of the Bucs, outside of Dejan Kovacevic and a few others, is one of apathy). Obviously, there will be some negatives (this is the Pirates we're talking about after all). I am not going to bog down this blog with tons of statistics (if you are interested in that sort of thing, I suggest reading WHYGAVS, one of the Pirates blogs that I read), although there might be a few basic references.

As the Pirates losing streak is almost old enough to vote, I figured now is as good a time as any to start a blog like this, especially seeing as today is Opening Day (you know, the only sellout game besides maybe a SkyBlast game). One thing I love about the Pensblog is that even when the Pens were the crypt-keepers of the NHL's basement, they were always able to take something positive from most games, and I will try to do the same with the Pirates. For now, I will probably try to do a preview and summary for each series the Pirates play, although if I feel it is appropriate I might do individual game posts. This blog will be mostly concerned with the Pirates, but I am a follower of all Pittsburgh sports, so if I feel something is noteworthy not related to the Pirates, I will write a post about it. I am still a college student right now, so I will try to keep up with this blog as best as I can.

A little about me

I have been an off and on Pirates fan nearly my whole life. I went to my first game around 1990 (I was 3). I played little league baseball for about 6 years, and volunteered as an umpire for a few years afterwards. When I was a kid, I didn't watch many sports games and only started seriously watching sports about three years ago, except for the Steelers, where I have watched almost every game since about 2003. Football is different from other sports though, in that it doesn't require as much of a commitment as hockey and baseball do. For the most part in football, there is only one game a week. Hockey averages about 3 games a week and baseball about 6. For a kid with as short an attention span as I had, especially with Pittsburgh's hockey and baseball teams not doing so well (baseball more so than hockey) as I was growing up, I missed out on a lot of games, which I regret now. We went to a few baseball or hockey games every year, and that is what I remember most about those teams. Not necessarily who was playing, but having fun at the stadium or arena with my family and friends, regardless of how bad the team was playing that day. Things like Mario burying it on some joke and the Igloo erupting. Things like Bluto asking if it was "over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" when the Bucs were down by 7 runs in the bottom of the ninth. I remember a few names (Drabek, Van Slyke, Bonilla, Bonds, Kendall, Bay, Giles, Wilson, Sanchez, and others), but I couldn't tell you who was playing what position in a certain year. Maybe I was a bandwagon fan, I don't know. All I know is I decided to seriously pay attention to the sports teams in Pittsburgh a few years ago, and I don't ever plan to change that.

One reason I started this blog is to help me learn more about baseball outside of the Pirates. I know a few players on other teams, but nowhere near the level of knowledge that some fans possess. The more I write about the other teams, the more I have to research and the more knowledge I will gain. This will benefit this blog in the future.

First game of the season in a little over 11 hours.

Preview later today.

Go Bucs.