Early Pirates Thoughts

It is early, very early, but how about a few thoughts on your 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates.

• Neil Walker, with 7 hits, 7 RBI, and an OPS over 1.000, has been the Pirates best player, and his scoring the winning run on Sunday from second base on an infield single has been the Pirates' best play of the four game season.


• Not bad for a guy who the Pirates last year were grooming to be a utility infielder.


• While Walker has been the best player so far, Andrew McCutchen and Jose Tabata have not been far behind.


• The biggest surprise has been the fairly strong performances of the four starting pitchers. Correia, Maholm, Ohlendorf, and Morton, especially Charlie Morton, all have done good work in their starts, each of them lasting six innings.


• How about Clint Hurdle coming out of the dugout on Sunday in Chicago to vociferously argue an umpire's call? After the three years of sleep-walking John Russell, I didn't think that Bucco skippers were allowed to do that.


• And kudos again to Hurdle for yanking his ineffective Eighth Inning Set-Up reliever, and bringing in his Closer with two outs in the eighth inning to put out the fire last night. Used to be that your best relievers were often called upon to pitch two or even three innings at a crack.


• On the minus side of the ledger has been Even Meek and Ronny Cedeno. You have to think that Meek will turn things around and be an effective reliever. You have no such hope that Cedeno will be an effective short stop. He has butchered two seemingly sure fire double play balls two games in a row, and the team is extremely fortunate that those two blunders didn't cost them the last two victories.


• GM Neil can be criticized for many things, and the fact that Ronny Cedeno is the best SS the Pirates have to offer four years into the Huntington Regime ranks very high on the list.

Switching from the diamond to the hardwood, congratulations to the Connecticut Huskies for winning the NCAA Championship last night. The game was, shall we say, far from an artistic masterpiece. I was glad that I had a baseball game to switch too for most of that hoops game. However, that takes nothing away from the well-earned Championship for UConn.

Incidentally, Loyal Reader Bill had pointed out to me over the weekend that the two teams that played for the Championship last night, UConn and Butler, were the same teams that handed Pitt it's two post-season losses in the Big East and the NCAA, respectively. Those victories over Pitt came by a combined score of a whopping three - count 'em - THREE POINTS. Kind of adds a bit of perspective to the Panthers' season.