Blogs

No one has won baseball’s Triple Crown — leading the league in batting average, home runs and RBI — since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. The last NL winner was Joe Medwick in 1937. Of the 14 players who’ve done it, 12 are in the Hall of Fame. Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols leads the NL with [...]

The Pirates have rounded out the group they’ll send to the Arizona Fall League by adding left-hander Justin Wilson and right-handers Aaron Pribanic and Brian Leach. Management waited until after the minor league playoffs were over and final season pitch/innings counts were tallied before naming their three pitchers for the elite prospect league. Wilson, a lefty [...]

The Pirates have tried — unsuccessfully — four times already this season to string together four victories. They’ll ride another three-game winning streak into tonight’s game against the Cardinals.

This would be a great time for John Bowker to start cranking out hits. The starters at first base and right field — the two positions Bowker plays — are nursing potentially season-ending injuries, so he figures to get a lot of playing time over the final 14 games of the season.

Pirates outfielder Lastings Milledge has a strained left oblique and likely is done for the season.

Joel Hanrahan tossed a quick eighth inning — getting three outs on just seven pitches — last night against Arizona, then went back out to start the ninth. It was only the third time in 66 outings this season that Hanrahan pitched more than one inning. “I guess if I want to keep it to [...]

It was an interesting night at Citi Field, mostly in the hours before the game started. With bad weather on the way, the tarp came out and the Citi Field folks delayed opening the gates to fans. There was talk that the game might not be played at all based on what the radar was [...]

Garrett Jones knew his numbers weren’t good at the plate in July and certainly in August, but he didn’t have to consult them for proof that his swing was off. He could feel it. “I was fighting myself, and then you start thinking at the plate and once you start thinking you have no chance [...]

John Russell’s looking for a good game from Zach Duke tonight, and one would have to imagine Duke’s hoping for the same thing. Pirates starting pitchers have put up an ERA of 2.55 over the last seven games (12 earned runs in 42.1 innings pitched), with quality starts in six of them. The lone exception, [...]

CINCINNATI — Charlie Morton pitched well last night. No, really. Things could’ve blown up on him in the second inning, when the Reds loaded the bases with none out. But after Drew Stubbs’ sacrifice fly, Morton got Miguel Cairo to ground into an inning-ending double play. Earlier this season, that kind of inning would’ve mushroomed [...]