Pirates Weekly Preview 6/4/12

Current Record: 26-25 (#Winning) (3.0 GB)

Upcoming Schedule
@ Cincinnati 6/5 to 6/7
vs. Kansas City 6/8 to 6/10

Well, here we are.  51 games in, 26 of them won.  Do the math folks.  The Buccos have a winning record.



First of all, I'd like to officially declare Pirates ace, James McDonald, a stud.  The guy has won his last three starts, and five out of his last six.  His 8-strikeout effort in the win over Milwaukee yesterday was by far the performance of the week.

The Pirates started off last week with a 2-1 series win over the Reds, and capped it off with a 2-1 series win over the Brewers.  Couldn't ask for much better than that.  Sure it would have been nice to have gotten the sweep against the Brewers, (Who had a pathetic performance on the mound), but we'll take the series win.  Garrett Jones FINALLY hit a home run on Saturday after a long, long draught, and then decided to hit another on Sunday.  How about that?  Mr. Jones is actually hitting the ball again.  McCutchen was nothing short of spectacular as usual.  Tabata sucked and only had one hit the whole week, and Alvarez was offensively bad, but made a couple of highlight plays on defense.

The Bucs travel to Cincy tomorrow to face the Reds yet again.  Burnett (4-2) is set to face Homer Bailey (4-3) tomorrow night.  Last week, Homer pitched in the Reds only win of the series.  Hopefully our offense can put up more than one run against him this time.  It would be much appreciated.  A 2-1 series win against Cincy would put us one game back, while a sweep would put us tied for first.

Players to Watch


James McDonald - Having a great season thus far.  Then again, so was Kevin Correia up to this point last year.  McDonald is still going to have to win a few more games to achieve official stud status.

Garrett Jones - Will he hit a few more homers?  Or will he go into another 20+ game slump?

Gorkys Hernandez - Yeah that's right.  I said it.  Gorkys was just recently called up by the Buccos, and has just 9 Major League games under his belt.  But damn, he's fast.  If he can learn how to hit the ball, he may be the future lead-off hitter for this team.


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