Thursday, April 21, 2011

Before the First Pitch

-- James McDonald will take the hill against Chris Volstad tonight at 7:10 PM. The game will be aired on Root Sports.

-- Tonight's lineup: Andrew McCutchen CF, Jose Tabata LF, Lyle Overbay 1B, Neil Walker 2B, Garrett Jones RF, Pedro Alvarez 3B, Chris Snyder C, Josh Rodriguez SS, James McDonald P.

McCutch is back, say no more.

-- Tim Williams of Pirate Prospects reports that Jameson Taillon will make his last extended training start today and then report to Class A West Virginia, where presumably five days from now he'll be ready to pitch. He'll be brought along slowly; Bucco pitching prospects at that level usually split games in two ("piggybacking") with each hurler getting four or five innings as a way to protect young arms from overwork.

-- Garrett Olson, DFA'ed to clear space for Joe Beimel, cleared waivers and the Pirates sent him to Indy.

-- Nathan Adcock, who KC claimed from the Bucs in the Rule 5 draft, has not too surprisingly been the least used Royal pitcher. He's appeared twice, worked 4-1/3 innings and given up six hits with no runs, walks or strikeouts recorded.

2 comments:

WilliamJPellas said...

I'm glad to see Olson make it through waivers, at least until we see if Joe Beimel is healthy enough to last the season. I still say the Bucs are short in the 'pen this year, especially from the port side. I think Brian Burres could possibly help, though he is doing so well as a starter in Triple A that I dunno if he would make the transition to the 'pen particularly well. I'd like to get a look at him as a reliever in any event.


As for McDonald, you'd think he has to be hurt. There's been such an enormous dropoff for him from last year's performance that I'm at a loss for any other explanation. I suppose he might just be rusty because he was dinged in spring training, but....

Ron Ieraci said...

I think he's just rusty, Will, with all the time he should have spent working on technique in camp went by the wayside. My guess is he's going through spring ball now while everyone else is playing for real.

And yah, it's good to have a couple of lefties on ice at AAA; Thomas, Moskos and Watson are still very much question marks.