Friday Night Thoughts

Some quick thoughts on a Friday night....

The Pirates start the weekend with a record of 69-87 and have six games remaining. As each miserable Bucco season unfolds, the goals become more and more compressed, so here are my final thoughts for the last six games:

If they go 4-2, they will avoid a 90 loss season. Isn't that a grand goal to have when in July we were talking about a possible pennant chase? In all honesty, I don't think that they're going to achieve four wins in these last six games, not when three of them will be played in Miller Park

If they go 1-5, they will have won 70 games, the number that I said would represent a successful season if they achieved it. I think that they will win at least one of these final six games, but the route that they have taken to get to 70 wins will not make this season seem to be the success that we might have envisioned it to be back on Opening Day. To further that thought, I would suggest that you check out Dejan Kovacevic's column in today's Trib.

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All speculation on the matter ended earlier in the week when Pedro Alvarez indicated that he would not be playing Winter League baseball, despite the Pirates' request that he do so. Opinion is divided on the matter. Both Gene Collier and Bob Smizik feel that it is probably a good idea that Alvarez hang it up for the winter, clear his head, and come to Spring Training with clean slate. Kovacevic's has blasted Pedro for his "selfish" decision not to honor the team's (which has paid him $6 million, by the way) request. I can see both sides of the argument, and probably lean to the Collier/Smizik opinion, but I will say this. If Pedro begins 2012 with the same level of performance we saw this season, his decision not to do as the team asked concerning winter ball will set him up, fairly or unfairly,to join Derek Bell and Kordell Stewart in the pantheon of Pittsburgh athletes who will get merciless treatment form the fans in the stands .