Important Start For Lincoln

Today Brad Lincoln is scheduled to make his his third straight appearance as a starter against the Cleveland Indians instead of his normal role as reliever. Brad Lincoln is 3-2 on the year with a 3.15 ERA sounds pretty good right? Well not really, Lincoln's past two appearances have been starts and he has gone just 4 and 4.1 innings giving up five then four runs in those starts.

Basically the reason Lincoln's ERA is as low as it is, is because of the remarkable work he has done as a reliever. If I have done my math correctly I believe that Lincoln stands somewhere around a 0.41 ERA out of the bullpen with a 3-0 record, but don't quote me on that. This is one of the best reliever ERA's in the National League, so this might leave you wondering why is there such a big difference between Lincoln as a starter and a reliever? 

The reason is that Lincoln basically only throw's two pitches and this catch's up to him as a starter. Last start against Baltimore Lincoln threw his fastball 60.9% of his pitches and his curve-ball 39.9% of his pitches. If you do the math Lincoln throws these two pitches just about 91% of the time, which is way to much when a hitter gets to face you multiple times in a game. Major League hitters are the best hitters in the world, and part of what makes them so great is the ability to be able to adjust to the pitcher. Lincoln has a very good curve-ball don't get me wrong but if a Major League hitter see's it enough they will be able to hit it, and hit it well.

That is what make's Lincoln so successful as a reliever is that most of the time the hitters will only get to see his curve-ball one or two times a game making it a lot harder to adjust to. Also when Lincoln comes out of the pen he throws his fastball about one MPH faster. I talked about this in a previous article but believe it or not one extra MPH on a fastball makes a big difference, trust me. I am not quite sure why Lincoln does not throw his change-up more often, last year Lincoln would throw his change-up as much as 15% of the time while this year he hardly throws it 5% of the time. Clint Hurdle went as far as to call his change-up "a good major league pitch" recently which just makes me wonder even more why he is so hesitant to throw his change.

If Lincoln does not perform well today against the Indians I cant say it will be his last appearance as a starter because that is what I said last time, but I can say that I hope it would be his last appearance as a starter this year at least. I talked about it a little bit earlier this week but the Pirates have two maybe even three guys at the AAA level that could easily come in and start a few games if they needed them to, so I am not quite sure why they are so determined for Lincoln to be successful. I am not sure what the Pirates future plans are for Lincoln but I would think that they would be as a reliever especially with all the pitching depth they have in the minor leagues but the longer they keep Lincoln as a starter the more I wonder what they actually have in mind for Lincoln.

Pirates Promote Gerrit Cole To AA

On Friday the Pirates announced the promotion of the 2011 first overall draft pick, Gerrit Cole to AA Altoona. This is no major surprise to anyone who has been following Cole this year being he has posted a 2.55 ERA so far this year in just 67 innings in High A Bradenton.

The Pirates promoted Cole the day after his stellar performance of five shutout innings and 7 K's. This promotion is going to make Cole the least professional experienced pitcher to ever play for Altoona with his short 67 innings in Bradenton. The previous owner of this title was Paul Maholm whenever he reached Altoona with just 94 innings of professional experience.

Cole has been surprisingly consistent in his first year playing professional ball. Most people probably expected Cole to have his great starts and his bad starts but instead he has just had a whole bunch pretty good starts which is good thing. If Cole can keep this consistency in AA then you might see Cole start his season in AAA next year with Indianapolis with a target date in July to see him make his major league debut in Pittsburgh.

Recap 6/15 vs. Indians

The Pirates and the Indians both came into this game on three game losing streaks, but, unfortunately for Bucco fans, it would not be the Pirates that ended their streak tonight.

James McDonald took the hill for the Pirates in this one, and continued to prove himself as the Pirates ace.  J. Mac went 6 innings giving up 1 earned on three hits, and striking out 5. But, the real story in this game was the lack of offense for the Pirates.

The Pirates were shutout, picking up 5 hits, and stranded 7. Every player in the Bucco lineup, except Casey McGhee struck out at least once tonight.  McGhee has been lighting it up in June so far hitting .357 with 2 homeruns, one of the few bright spots in the Pirates lineup right now.

All in all, it's been a rough few days for Pirates fans, and it feels like deja vu from last year after we were in first.  I am confident though that the team can hopefully fix their mistakes, and prevent falling off like they did last year.

Charlie Morton Scheduled To Have Tommy John

Well today the Pirates found out that their sinker ball thrower, Charlie Morton  is going to have to have season ending Tommy John surgery in the next few days. The right hander had appeared in nine games in 2012 posting a 4.65 ERA and a 2-6 record before heading to the 15 day DL with right elbow inflammation.

Although his stats do not look good this could be a pretty big hit to the Pirates because although their pitching had been good it still has problems. One of them I mentioned in a post earlier today which you can read here talking about Brad Lincoln and his struggles as a starter. The other problem is about Kevin Correia who at this point I am all to feed up with. Even Erik Bedard has showed struggles at times this year with his control and he is always a injury threat as well.

At this point Morton's return should be scheduled around July of next year. I think with this injury the Pirates are just one more lost starting pitcher away from having big pitching issues. All the Pirates should be looking forward to should be getting Jeff Karstens back on the mound to remove Brad Lincoln from this rotation. I think that once Karstens returns this club will get back on the right track having four quality pitchers out of the five that they will send out there. If Karstens can come back be healthy and perform like he did last year this team can continue their successes, if not the loss of Morton could come back to haunt the Pirates later in the year.

Brad Lincoln To Start Again

Ugh. Well yesterday manager Clint Hurdle announced that Brad Lincoln will be making his third straight "spot start" against the Indians on Sunday. Lincoln is filling in for the injured Charlie Morton and was only supposed to make one start and then Jeff Karstens was going to take over from there but then Karstens re-injured himself in a rehab start at Indianapolis giving Lincoln a longer life as a starter.

I am very confused on why they let Karstens start Tuesday against the Orioles and I am just stunned that they are letting him start again against the Indians. In Lincoln's past two start he had gone no longer then 4.1 IP and has given up four and five earned runs. Lincoln is a great pitcher out of the bullpen having a sub 1.00 ERA there but when he is a starter his ERA is way over 6.00, just not even close to being good enough.

The Pirates have other options as well which just makes this move even more confusing. The Pirates could easily call up Jeff Locke of Rudy Owens to start for a few games without screwing up their routine much at all. This also can't be good for Lincoln going back and forth from starter to bullpen guy, I'm sure he would rather just find out if he is one or the other and stick to it. If Lincoln has another bad start on Sunday and they give him another shot because Karstens is not ready, I'm going to be upset to say the least.

6/13 Recap vs. Orioles

Tonight the Pirates sucked, they lost by a total of 7-1 and just about nothing looked good for them. This one went the wrong direction all the way from the first inning when Kevin Correia let up a one run double to Chris Davis scoring J.J. Hardy all the way from first giving Baltimore a 1-0 lead which they would never let go of.

Kevin Correia ended up recovering from his terrible first few innings going 6.0 innings on four runs. But I'm not going to sugar coat it Correia was terrible. Correia only had one, yes one strikeout the entire six innings that he pitched. You can just not be a successful major league pitcher if you don't have the ability to strike anyone out. Correia also let up 10 hits in just six innings, most teams should not get 10 hits in a whole game let alone six innings. Hopefully it is just a matter of time before they forever move Correia out of this rotation because it just seams that whenever he pitches you start the game down four to nothing, which you can't have one every five days.

The Pirates did come through with one run this game and it came in the seventh inning whenever Neil Walker grounded out to first base with the bases loaded. Jose Tabata scored on a close play at the plate, frankly a lot closer then it should of been.

Tomorrow the Pirates will send Erik Bedard (4-6, 3.59) to the mound to try to stop the little two game skid they find themselves on. He will oppose the Orioles Tommy Hunter (2-3, 5.40). The Pirates have done pretty well avoiding the sweep in the third game of the series so far this year going 3-1 in those games. The Pirates really need a quality start from Bedard tomorrow if they want to have a chance to avoid the sweep, they can not let these average American League teams weigh down their record.

Could Derrek Lee Be A Pirate...Again?

So the other day Ken Rosenthal a reporter for FOX sports reported on twitter that former Pirate Derrek Lee would be open to returning to play baseball this season if it was the "right opportunity". Most likely what Lee means by this is that he will come back and play if it's for a good team with a chance to win and that team is in a town that he likes. Lee is 36 years old so he is not exactly looking for somewhere where he can spend the next five years more like somewhere he wouldn't mind staying for a few months to play playoff baseball.

This quote by Lee really got people around Pittsburgh thinking yesterday, because Lee is looking for "the right opportunity" and right now the Pirates are four games over .500 and one game out of first place so couldn't Pittsburgh be the "right opportunity"? If Lee is looking for a playoff team to play for and have a shot to win the World Series at this point the Pirates chances of doing this are just as good as anyone else's in the NL Central right? The reason I bring up the NL Central is because Lee spent a large majority of his professional time playing in that division so couldn't that mean that if he was going to return to baseball he would want to return to that division?

As you know the Pirates took their chances with Derrek Lee last year at the trade deadline, a move that ended up being meaningless because of the Pirates collapse in the second half of the season. Although the Pirates did not win the games they were hoping to with Lee on the roster, Derrek did have himself a pretty good 28 games in a Pirate uniform. During these 28 games Lee hit 7 home-runs and had a .337/.398/.584 triple slash. These are pretty good numbers for a 35 year old acquired at the trade deadline, so I guess you can consider Lee's time with the Pirates pretty good as far as the number's go.

The downfall to Lee's time in Pittsburgh last year is that he missed a lot of time with a injury to his hand. Some people in Pittsburgh were not happy with Lee for that reason because a lot of the time people thought that he was faking this injury because he didn't feel like playing. I frankly think this is a ridiculous accusation to make. I do not understand why people thought that Lee would all of a sudden in the middle of his career just decide that he didn't feel like playing so he would make up a hand injury instead. More realistically there were rumors that Lee didn't like Pittsburgh and that he thought that the fans were not true fans. Some people thought that Lee just wanted to serve his time in Pittsburgh and then leave which I can understand a little bit more than faking and injury.

From the Pirates stand point Lee would probably be a pretty good sign because they could get another good bat in the line-up without giving up any young players that they will need for the future. Lee will most likely be demanding a ton of money though to only play half of a season. Lee also rejected the Pirates in the off-season through arbitration. The Pirates tried to get Lee back for a full season but Lee was so stubborn about the amount of money that he wanted that he decided to say goodbye to Pittsburgh and hello to an extended off-season which is still going on for him.

I just do not think that Lee liked Pittsburgh enough to come back and give it another shot, especially considering how the Pirates season turned out after he got here last year. But if I was the Pirates I would be going after this guy hard, but most likely they won't because they are not willing to give up the kind of money that Lee thinks he is warranted. Who knows by the time Lee is finally ready to come back to baseball it might be around the trade deadline and the Pirates might be way out of contention by then anyways. Lee could also come back to baseball and do nothing productive at all. I'm sure that Lee is taking swings in the batting cages everyday and getting good work in but it is still hard to go from your pitching machine to guys like Roy Halladay and other major league pitchers on an everyday basis with out any spring training or any real live pitching. It will be interesting to see where Lee ends up if he does end up anywhere, but with the Pirates luck he will probably end up in Milwaukee and hit a game winning home-run against us in September.