This and That.....

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box....

Back on November 18, I wrote a post entitled "Quite  A Football Weekend for Pittsburgh" wherein I waxed rhapsodic about the recent fortunes of the city's football teams.  We were coming off of a six week stretch where the Steelers had gone 6-0 and Pitt had gone 5-1.

Since that post, the Steelers have gone 0-3, and have not looked at all good in doing so, and Pitt has gone 0-2 and looked even worse.

Guess it's all my fault.

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The Steelers now have a one-half game lead over Baltimore in the AFC North. The Steelers have a schedule of Patriots, @Saints, Bengals. The Ravens schedule is Buccaneers, @Chargers, Browns.

Hope I'm wrong, of course, but, frankly, I'm not liking the Steelers chances of making it to the post season.

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Then there are the Pirates.  Here's what our favorite baseball team has been up to this Hot Stove Season:

• Traded a marginal outfielder and a marginal infielder to Cleveland for a utility infielder and two pitching prospects.
• Signed oft-injured free agent outfielder Lonnie Chisenhall.  Once a top prospect of the Indians, Chisenhall has spent much of his career, it seems, on the DL.  It is hoped that he will adequately fill in for Gregory Polanco until he is able to play sometime in June.  Chisenhall will then become the fourth outfielder.
• Re-signed Jung Ho Kang to a more team friendly contract (always important to the Bucs).  
• In news just in, they traded pitcher Ivan Nova to the White Sox for a 19 year old pitcher and $500 K in "international slot money" which no doubt excites GMNH.

And while the Pirates were doing all of this, the Cardinals engineered a trade with Arizona for Paul Goldschmidt.

Who should feel more optimistic at this point, Pirates fans or Cardinals fans?

Actually, of the moves listed above, the one that may - MAY! - have the most impact on the 2019 squad will be the re-signing of Kang.  If - IF! - he can regain the home run stroke he exhibited in 2015-16, he will give the team some middle of the line-up power that they sorely lacked in 2018.  I will remind you, though, that Kang had had exactly six (6) at bats and two (2) hits over the last two (2) major league seasons.  So he is far from a sure thing as the Bucs get ready to open Spring Training in couple of months.

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If we have learned one thing of value over these last few football weekends it is this existential fact:

Bad Steelers losses = better and funnier episodes of Pittsburgh Dad.