A Breath Of Fresh Air

With their 2-0 shutout of the detestable Brewers yesterday afternoon, the Bucs managed to split the 4 game series as well as the 10 game homestand. That is a vast improvement over the direction the team was heading coming into that stretch and they weren't exactly playing the dregs of the NL, either. The Bucs went 5-5 against the 3 teams they are currently looking up at in the standings and had just one of the two awful calls in the Reds series gone their way, they would have gone 6-4 and would be 62-67 instead of 61-68, not that it is a huge difference. But at this point, when you're playing to avoid adding to your own record of retched play, every win helps.

The big surprise yesterday was the performance of LHP Aaron Thompson in his MLB debut. Thompson was a first round pick by the Marlins many moons ago and the Bucs picked him up off waivers from the Nationals in December. He went 4 1/3 IP, allowing 4 hits and 2 BB, but no runs. Jason Grilli earned his first MLB win in roughly 2 year by pitching 2.2 PERFECT innings and Veras worked a scoreless 8th. The Hammer came out for the 9th and struggled yet again, putting the arrogant Ryan Braun on via a single to lead things off and walking the Brontosaurus before striking out the side to end the game.

The Bucs offense did not manage a whole lot, collecting only 4 hits and scoring both runs on sac flies by Cutch and Walker respectively. But those 2 runs were enough to win it and give the Bucs a well earned split before moving on to St. Louis tonight. There is something cathartic about splitting with the Brewers at this point and I nearly taunted their fans walking to their cars in the North Side as I was driving home from work yesterday. But then I realized I was a Pirates fan and have no room to make fun of any ML team, even Cleveland.

In other Bucs related news, John Perrotto thinks the FO needs to loosen the purse strings more in order to make any real noise. Ok, that isn't exactly news, but his point is obviously well taken. I agree that Nuthouse does need to spend more on the ML club, but I think he also needs to spend wiser, too. With Overpaid and hopefully Diaz off the books, and the possibility of Doumit and Snyder as well, that takes over $21M off the books based on what they would be owed under their 2012 options. Add in Maholm and that number goes to $30M. That amount of cash available, whether they extend Maholm or not, could greatly help improve the MLB club if of course they find the right guys at the right time when the stars align and the moon is in the second house and the right baseball people agree the right baseball move can be made if the guy agrees that he is willing to take a paycut to play for a team that is coming off it's 19th straight losing season.