Pittsburgh Pirates

Column: Pirates’ smarter target is behind plate

by • Columns •

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

If the Pirates really want to make an immense impact on their franchise and its fan base at Major League Baseball’s perpetually overhyped trade deadline, if they really want to do right by the present and future, if they really want to put the collective in the best possible position to end what Kent Tekulve rightly refers to as “the real streak around here” at 35 years, they’d do nothing more than tap their catcher’s shoulder today in Phoenix and make him an unimaginably wealthy man.

Don’t kid yourself: Russell Martin is the window.

Martin, more than anyone, is the source of all this angst over whether or not Neal Huntington will wind up acquiring Jon Lester, David Price, Ian Kennedy or any other big-name pitcher on the block today.

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Tuesday 12 Qs: Pedro, Jarvis, Scuds, more

by • Tuesday 10 Qs • , , , ,

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Welcome to Tuesday Twenty Qs, a better, fairer format, I think, for the weekly chat. We’ll do it every week at this time, and this time was chosen so that, in football season, it can immediately follow Mike Tomlin’s weekly press conference.

The format is simple: Use the comments below to submit an entry, no more than one per person. Submit them anytime you want. I’ll pick from those to get the thing rolling. I’ll then keep monitoring new entries, even as the session is ongoing, to cover follow-ups or updates.

Again, all I ask is that it’s one entry per person. Most of the complaints I heard in the old format were about the same people getting chosen too often.

As always, all topics are on the table. Really, anything at all.

UPDATE 12:56 p.m.: OK, I guess we’re about to get going … except that I said 20 questions, not the 72 I’m seeing down there right now! Come on!

Milo Hamilton: What have these past three weeks or so been like for you ?

DK: Kind of like this new format, Milo: Bitten off more than I can chew!

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Column: What’s not to like about Ike?

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

The simplest way to dissect these Pirates’ needs leading up to Major League Baseball’s trading deadline is to point to the pitching: If one or both of Francisco Liriano and Gerrit Cole is at peak form, then there’s no need — emphasis on need — to acquire a starter.

To look at Liriano in Wednesday’s 6-1 slapdown of the Los Angeles Dodgers at PNC Park, it’s eminently clear he’s at least close. One run, four hits over seven innings tell part of the tale. Vastly improved fastball command, the result of Ray Searage stressing keeping his shoulder from flying open, tells a lot more of it.

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Column: That’s baseball, man

by • Columns •

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Here’s a story I’ve never told publicly, but hey, if not here, if not now, then when?

It’s about the Pirates and Dodgers, but about a very different group of Pirates in a very different place: It was the first of May, 2010, at Dodger Stadium, and Ramon Ortiz of the Dodgers threw high at Andrew McCutchen. Cutch was a promising player at the time, not yet a star but by far the best of a train-wreck roster well on its way to 105 losses.

See, Cutch had homered in the opening inning, and the Dodgers thought they saw him make some celebratory gesture rounding second base. I was there. No such thing occurred. But perception can be reality, and reality in baseball can be retaliatory. Some Rule 5 scrub named Carlos Monasterios started for L.A. that night, and he went high and tight at Lastings Milledge and Ronny Cedeno in the next inning.

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