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Pirates Take On Red Sox as Martis Gets First Start
By Tom Smith
The Pittsburgh Pirates
have dropped two straight Grapefruit League games. Perhaps it’s a good thing they get to take on the troubled Boston Red Sox tonight on MLB Network.
Shairon Martis will be on the bump for the Bucs. He was signed this off-season and we like what we saw from the right hander at Pirate City. Martis, who struck out 146 in 133 innings with Class AA Harrisburg, apparently fell out of favor with the Nats because of conditioning issues.
He looked fine to us… He walked to the mound. Threw the ball to the catcher. Walked back to the fence. Ran when needed. Heh, whatever.
We think Martis will be a nice pickup by the Bucs. He is a classic rebound candidate, and even has ML experience as he pitched in the majors at the age of 21 for the Washington Nationals. Keep an eye on this guy.
Some sick highlights against the Altoona Curve show just how dominant Martis can be, how bad luck screwed Filthy Phil Irwin, and a bonus includes some funny broadcasting: listen closely to the announcer and the nasally lady early in the video.
Here is our preview of Martis as well:
After Martis pitches his two scheduled innings tonight, Tony Watson will throw two, then Slaten, Danimal, Resop, Iragashi and Wood will finish it off.
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As you know, we always take a few seconds of your time to get up to date with the team the Bucs are playing. Wow. It takes a bit with the Red Sox. New skipper is a helluva teacher; Bobby Valentine will be the most discussed name on the MLB Network broadcast tonight. Valentine has some work to do, because – as you may have heard – the Red Sox had some uh… difficulties last season and in the off-season with a snitch and other overblown news stories.
But none of those stories even holds a candle to this one. We never even heard about this? We were absolutely shocked today when we read that the Red Sox former clubhouse manager was molesting teen-aged boys all the way back into the 1960’s and through the 90’s. Unreal
We immediately went looking for some good news, an here it is: the team has a new pitching coach, the 59-year old Bob McLure, whose wife just had twins.