Pirates Caffeine: Ground Chuck or Electric Stuff

Each season, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ fan base comes up with some great nicknames for some of the Pirates players, and it seems the Pirates’ announcers work hard to develop their own, too.   It’s cool with me, but we’ve seen some people have opposition to it.  We personally aren’t big on the “Ground Chuck” nickname, because “Electric Stuff” seems much more dynamic.

It seems that on your television broadcast Charlie Morton has gone from “Electric Stuff” to “Ground Chuck.”  Guess we will have to just live with it.  Something else that pisses us off…how left handers have hit Morton this season.  [FanGraphs] When we read this last week, we shuddered to think how he would fare against Atlanta.

Vs RHBs: .156/.224/.178, 2.56 FIP, 3.14 xFIP
Vs LHBs: .385/.488/.538, 6.75 FIP, 5.82 xFIP

But guess what?  Tonight’s game got a lot less challenging when two of the Braves outfielders got unfortunate injuries.

Morton will be facing a modified Atlanta Braves lineup thanks to injuries to Jason Heyward and Nate McLouth.  The Braves are sucking on the road, and have been outscored 24-11 during their last five games.  The Braves have won only one of those games.

The Braves send Jair Jurrjens to the mound at PNC Park looking to end that ugly skid.  The righty has lost his last three against the Bucs, but that was a long, long time ago.   Well, in Pirates years it was a long time ago – actually, it was 2009.

He is coming off a tough luck outing against Arizona.  Jurrjens gave up two runs on eight hits in 6.2 innings.  Heading into that game he was a perfect 5-0 with an itsy-bitsy ERA of 1.66.  Jurrjens hasn’t given up more than two earned runs in a game in 2011 and his WHIP is 1.04.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All you need to know about how classy and professional an organization the Atlanta Braves are is written in this article. The part about telling Matt Diaz he wasn’t ready to come back to the big leagues from his injury was important because the following year was a breakout year for Diaz.

The Braves are smart.

But why they were interested in McLouth is beyond me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neil Walker wouldn’t have been ….without Roberto Clemente.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brad Lincoln pitched last night in a 2-1 Indianapolis Indians loss. Please check out this live blog of the game. It gives an interesting perspective. Lincoln struck out seven, walked two, and “gave up” two runs in six innings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The timing of the injury to Chase d’Arnaud is awful. He had a shot to show the Bucs he could play SS with Ciriaco up in the bigs. He was hitting well, with a bomb and a 357 average, .372OBP and .500 slugging in the past 10 games. He also drove in six and swiped five bags. On the year, his triple slash is .272/.339/.414 which had been on a big upswing thanks to his recent white-hotness.

While in spring training he looked alright at shortstop – we don’t think he can come close to having the range of an average ML SS, but he wasn’t booting the ball all over the place. To his credit, he has made some fine plays at Indy this season. It sucks he won’t have the opportunity to shine in the moment. Groin injuries suck.

Watch his range on this video from MarkinDallas….

~~~~~~~

Anup checks in on the Pittsburgh Pirates draft and the ‘upside versus more immediate impact’ debate the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Follow RumBunter on Twitter