Coverage: A new Stew brews

Sanchez was sent down because he had an option left.

And thus begins the awkward task of giving playing time to both Sanchez and Diaz in Indianapolis.

Three walks and 12 strikeouts, Pedro is Pedro, it just as of right now 4 of the 9 balls he has hit in the air have gone over the fence.

The biggest difference is that Pedro is driving and taking the ball to left field. He seems so much more relaxed at the plate which I believe goes hand in hand with his move to first base. He's not struggling defensively which I believe his struggles last year carried over to his offense.

That's the silliness of stats this time of year. If Pedro maintains the current pace of a home run every three games he will hit 54. And if he maintains the current pace of a strike out per game average he will strike out 162 times. Both stats we would gladly accept.

Pedro is Pedro, but he's at least shown enough to give a marginal improvement a chance once the sample sizes stabilize. Career-low swinging strike rate and swinging at about 4% less balls than last season combined with the power returning would almost certainly lead to his best season as a pro if all can be maintained.

Has to stop hitting so many ground balls.

Yea, hes banged into quite a few shifts already that are basehits for Cutch or JHey.

If I'm getting excited about Pedro's marginal improvements, I need to be pulling fire alarms about some other Pirate hitters early returns.

Sounded like he's gonna sleep on it and see where it is tommorow. I broke a rib in the Marines. Hurt to breath for a few weeks, took over a month to get back to normal. Hopefully it's just a bruise that's fine in a week.

That might get Kang some playing time

X-ray negative, no broken bones

Nobody is more upset about Mercer getting hurt than the business office. NOT!

totally agree - - they want to justify the $$ spent to acquire Kang + his contract, which is much more than any other bench warmer. If Korean baseball is equivilent to A or maybe even AA, it doesn't seem logical to jump right into MLB, even for the very best player.

I think its more likely that they are negotiating advertizing deals with Korean companies and it is way better that Kang is on the team in Pittsburgh. Sometimes it is easy to forget that this is more of a business than a sports team.
http://triblive.com/sports/pirates/7578605-74/korean-companies-pirates#axzz3XqvXybDf

You know if he was LH bat, I could understand it more. Think a few people said that when he first signed. The power would have translated better better to Right than left (though it doesn't feel like that in PNC sometimes with Clemente wall).

Not sure the leg kick is gonna work facing ML heat and offspeed. Think that was also said when he signed. I'll give it more time.

I also believe there is a financial aspect to Kang being in the "Bigs". The PBC may feel the possible revenues are maximized with Kang in a Pirate uniform. And now the pipeline from Korea to the majors starts in Pgh.. Long term this may pay off much more than anything Kang does.
Not to be too dramatic, but look at how Clemente being the first great Latin player had a long term positive effect on how other Latinos viewed the Bucs. For decades Latin players wanted to play in Pgh. more than other clubs.

Is that what they're calling it these days?

I remember when we had that discussion in 7th Grade Health class at school.

I think the odd man out should be Morton. Why does he automatically get a starting spot over Worley or Locke. Morton has never done anything to deserve that spot.

Melancon getting through a clean outing without pain was a good sign, even if the velocity was still down. The team isn't using the term, but pitchers will go through "dead arm" periods where the velocity just isn't quite there, and hopefully that's the case with him.

As for Kang, I thought their handling was odd at first, too, but it seems they pretty clearly have a unique plan for him that's different than your typical prospect, and I guess I can't claim to know nearly what goes into such a transition enough to argue. For now.

He looks fine at short, and to his credit hasn't been over-matched at the plate in his very limited at-bats. With Corey Hart as the primary bench bat, using Kang in this 25th man role isn't exactly crippling. I do think they need to look at Decker if Lambo doesn't start producing after a month or two, though.

Yea, guys yesterday were telling me they still have some time to keep him here and get him right.

Dejan said last night on the showdown and its kinda how I feel. I'm not writing him off yet, but at some point they got to get him engaged and put him in a position to succeed....thankfully Jordy was okay otherwise this would be probably a bigger issue.

12 games bpn. Deep breaths. ;)

Hughes has been impressive. I was wrong there.

Them again, a lot of this damage was done against Milwaukee which looks like their gonna lose a lot of games. We'll see.

I dont know about that. The Brewers are still a major league team with a couple of scary guys in that line up. And it has seemed that no matter what they have always beaten the Bucco's. Well not this season so far. I tend to believe thats a good sign for our club.
Keep in mind that the brewers have the same amount of losses as the revamped Florida Marlins and the 2014 world series champs.

Hughes has been incredible. Far greater command than he's ever shown before and getting more swings and misses because of it.

@steelkings brewers

hahaha

What makes you think he is mentally soft?