TUESDAY PIRATES RANT - Washington DC edition!

Blogging from DC (The Butterfly will have the orchid blogging to prove it this evening), so this will be a short rant. Things to do, people to see.

What happened since last Tuesday's Rant? Well, the Pirates won the next game, making them 5-1 following a Rant. They then won again, setting up an opportunity for their first 3-game winning streak (and first series sweep) of the year. In that third game, they scored 6 runs in the 1st inning...and lost 9-8. That's fine, teams blow leads...nothing new. What was 'more things change, more they stay the same' about this game? Well, Jose Hernandez went 0-for-4 to lower his average to .152. Craig Wilson didn't play...didn't even pinch hit.

However, against the Indians over the weekend, Jim Tracy actually FREAKING PINCH HIT for Craig Wilson with Jose Hernandez over the weekend because Hernandez had a "long history" against Indians pitcher Bob Wickman. If I'm not mistaken, that long history consisted of 3 hits in 7 AB's. Yeah, Hernandez sucked and the Pirates lost.

Since beating the Reds those two games in a row, they've now lost 4 of 5. More of the same. They're now 14-31. The good news is, those two wins upped their win % to where they're now on pace for 50 wins this season!! Woohoo!!

Oh, and centerfielder of the future Chris Duffy, who batted .341 last season in limited playing time, was sent down to the minors after failing to get his BA over .200 two months into the season. Before he left the club, he went on a tirade, complaining that manager Jim Tracy had tried to change his game and alter his approach before even meeting him, and since he's "too coachable" he let him. And then he decided not to report to the AAA team for a while because, well, he's just too darn stressed out.

And one of their AAA pitchers was suspended for 50 games for using performance enhancing drugs.

I was going to take a trip through the Pirates blogs, but I figure I'll do everybody a favor and skip that this week. I'm on vacation (sort of...I'm here for work starting later today), and that means I should take a vacation from the Pirates too, right?