Trip, Trip, Triple Morning Pirates Links

We always enjoy checking out links on Monday morning.  Today we share three of them with you.

The Pittsburgh Pirates as a soccer team?  Yeh, this is pretty awesome.   Soccer out of context is an absolutely great post.  I could actually buy that jersey.  The new batting practice jersey…well, not so much.

The amount of detail, down to five championship stars, is just so well done.  Be sure to check it out here and follow him on twitter if uni design is your thing at @m_willis

"Stars for the Pirates five championships.  Four black stars note older trophies, and the red star stands for the most recent (and possibly most sentimental) title: the aforementioned Stargell / Family 1979 club.  Willie and the ‘79 team get a special star because they actually awarded stars to each other – well, Stargell to his teammates, anyway – which is both very cool and a perfect soccer tie-in.The Pirates have adopted red of late to set off their traditional palette, and this seemed like the right place to incorporate it. I imagine that when the happy day marking a sixth Bucs championship comes, the red star would shift to the left (standing for five championships), and a new black or yellow star could mark the new title."

Bernie from St. Louis Today is looking at just how dominant the Cardinals will be in 2014.  Sigh.

Fangraphs loved how the Pirates pitch framing will look this year.  Jeff Sullivan broke it down in quick and lazy format last week saying the Bucs will gain an extra 1.22 strikes per game which would be a .43 increase over Mike McKenry and Russell Martin last year.  It’s still not as good as the Brewers, but it’s an offseason improvement very few people are talking about.

Today Jeff Sullivan took a quick look at pitch framing and command extremes.  It’s an interesting post. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-quick-glance-at-pitch-framing-and-command-extremes/

You’re welcome.