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Pirates Joel Hanrahan And Evan Meek: The Filthy Boys
By Tom Smith
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The Pittsburgh Pirates have a formidable bullpen tandem in right handers Joel Hanrahan and Evan Meek. We don’t know about you, but when the Bucs get to the eighth inning with a lead, Pirates baseball becomes a lot more enjoyable. Watching Meek and Hanrahan blow batters away has certainly brought some joy into this 2010 season.
Hanrahan has pitched so effectively, his 92 strikeouts puts him in the top three among all relievers in MLB. He has piled up 17 holds, but just imagine next season if Hanrahan can start the season with the team rather than on the DL. His slow start in April, just 6.1 innings, hindered his abilities or we could be watching the strikeout leader among relievers. A full season of Hanrahan on the back end of the bullpen is an exciting thought for Pirates fans.
He also seems like a pretty cool guy even if he has no idea what RumBunter is. He sent out a tweet yesterday asking if it was appropriate to tip the Stanley Steemer carpet cleaner.
When a few of us spoke to him at PirateFest he saw RumBunter on our sweats and asked:
"“What’s RumBunter? Your softball team or something?”—Joel Hanrahan."
We just nodded, yeh that’s it big fella.
Back it up to Bradenton and check out Hanrahan as he talks about a Joe Kerrigan tweek, the closer role, and the 2010 season, Meek is also interviewed by Dejan in this video.
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So how good has Hanrahan been lately? We saw this on Twitter yesterday:
Joel Hanrahan has a 2.67 ERA over his last 28 games and a tremendous 4.44K/BB tally and 13.33K/9
[Kristpie RT of Baseball Guys ]
Some stats on Hanrahan’s situational performance plus how he has performed against the oppositions 1,2,3, and 4 hitters:
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We found this quote from Evan Meek rather funny the other day in the PG. Apparently he doesn’t realize that Pittsburgh is a great, well…. was a great baseball town for a long period of time. Just call us freaking lunatics SuperMeek, but you haven’t seen anything yet. When this team wins consistently, that park will be the biggest party in town.
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Hell, for that matter, just get a little starting pitching and I promise you the place will be insane.
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"“When you look at our season and how it’s gone … it’s amazing the passion people have for our team, how much they want us to do well. They’re just dying for it. When you’re out there, you feel it. And it’s not just me. It helps all of us. It lifts us up.”—Evan Meek in PG Plus"
On Sunday, the Pirates 2010 All-Star, picked up his third save of the year. Meek has piled up 62 strikeouts in 75 innings this season. His 2.04 ERA has been microscopic all year mainly due to the fact he has allowed just 53 hits.
Meek has also improved his batting average against each season in black and gold. In 13 innings in 2008, hitters batted .239, then last season Meek dropped that to .209 and this year while he has thrown the most innings of his career, his BA against is its lowest. A paltry .190.
Since Nasty Boys is taken, we’re calling them the filthy boys. Just don’t call Hanrahan’s carpet filthy, his well tipped Stanley Steemer guy took care of that.