Bucko

The National Media parade continues for Cutch and the Pirates. This story describes the NL and AL MVP races as Cutch's and Trout's to lose.

It doesn't happen very often, so when it does we should be there to witness. Here, Jeff breaks down the idiocy that is MLB's blackout policy.

I was getting ready to log on to Lameday today when one of the articles on the front page of pirates.com caught my eye. I was wondering if the Pirates had recently changed mlb.com reporters or something. Who's Meggie Zahneis? As I discovered, Meggie Zahneis won something called the Breaking Barriers essay contest last fall, which allowed her to become a credentialed mlb.com reporter, where she mostly covers the Reds. Meggie has an extremely rare disorder called HSAN II. But don't think that she won the contest out of pity, turns out Meggie's got the makings of a good little writer. I know it's not exactly Pirate-related, but I thought this was a pretty cool story.

Football is officially back on, but what will it mean for the Pirates? As if the next week wasn't already crucial for Pittsburgh baseball, the end of the labor dispute could add a new wrinkle for the Bucs' newly revitalized fanbase. If the Pirates have a poor showing over the next 7 games will the fans lose interest and start talking Stillers once more? I expect the hue and cry about the need to make a move is about to get even louder over the next few days.

As it says in the link, he's only made 18 starts in the past two seasons and only managed to pitch 198 innings over the last three seasons. Could he be someone the the FO targets this offseason? How much do you think he'd cost, and would he be worth the (rather significant) risk?

He's a two-way star, as he also has a commitment to play quarterback at Nebraska. Also sounds like he hasn't been pegged as either a hitter or a pitcher yet. Here's a video of Bubba at the plate.

This is from a Yankees Blog, and it relies heavily on info from Forbes, so perhaps it should be taken with a grain of salt, or two. Thoughts?

I don't know what's scarier: that this kind of aggressive move doesn't have a strong track record of success or that Dusty Baker does have a strong track record for ruining young arms? If nothing else, this demonstrates for me just how disparate the strategies of the Reds and Bucs really are.