How about those Bucs? After playing against some of the very best players in baseball and being swept, they come back home and hammer the worst team in baseball racking up 10 hits, 5 walks, and 7 runs.

Great stuff, even though it was expected.

Duke picked up his first win at PNC this year largely due to the fact his defense showed up and didn’t commit an error behind him for the first time. And it showed in Duke’s renewed confidence on the mound.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not counting just the official errors. I’m counting blunders like Sanchez dropping Nady’s relay April 13th that opened up a 5 run inning, and Wilson’s throwing error April 25th, or Wilson’s other throwing error on April 30th, Diaz’s grounder off Sanchez’s glove May 11th, and so on. None were called errors by the PNC Park Pirate-friendly official scorer.

Kevin Millwood tossed high in the zone straight heaters to the Buccos and, of course, we tee’d off on him as you would expect. Five of the Pirates eight hits off him were for extra bases and three of them left the yard.

Home runs by Bautista (1st), Nady (4th), and LaRoche (5th) were all crushed and it would be the first time the Pirates had three home runs in one game at PNC since May 27, 2006, when Castillo, Burnitz, and Bay hit shots against the Astros.

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Ho-hum.. throw out Marte’s great bullpen work and the rest of the pen guys gave up four hits, two runs, and allowed three inherited runners to score over the last inning and one-third. And that was without Sharpless or Kolb.

Yawn.

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Jack Wilson sat on the pine today for the second consecutive game. Every single media outlet in Pittsburgh from the Times to radio outlets to Bucco Blog had called for him to continue sitting so it’s nice to see Tracy listened to the fans.

Castillo went 1-4 about like Wilson would, turned two flawless double plays with Sanchez, and generally played a good game.

That being said, don’t expect Tracy and Littlefield to keep running Castillo out to short while Wilson and his $5.25MM butt sits on the pine. And even though Bautista’s defense is tanking like a lead ball in water (he had yet another error today), Castillo isn’t as hot with a bat as Bautista is so he won’t be moved to third either.

So we have probably seen the end of the let’s Jack Jack routine. What a shame.

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Hey – maybe we can call up some of the Pirates great pitching depth in AAA, High-A, or Low-A to help our pen?

Good God.

Now that’s brutal.