Bucco Banter

-- Well, add Jose Ascanio to the list of Pirate pitchers that had a tweak that Dr. James Andrews had to fix. Dejan Kovacevic of the Post Gazette and Jen Langosch of MLB.com both report that he had surgery for a torn labrum today in Pensecola. There's no schedule for his return.

-- Rob Biertempfel of the Tribune Review says that Charlie Morton is learning how to pitch with a little help from his friends in Pittsburgh. Addressing the perceived lack of leadership and veteran presence, Morton says "I've talked more baseball here than in any other clubhouse I've been in."

-- The Bucs are going to finish the season on Sunday with the pitch-by-committee approach they've used with so success recently. They're shutting Kevin Hart down and bringing back Jeff Karstens on three days rest, according to the beat reporters.

-- LHP Rudy Owens and C Tony Sanchez made Baseball America's Top Twenty Prospects list for the Sally league.

-- How low can you go? The Las Vegas Sun reports that authorities have an arrest warrant for former Pirate, Astro, and Yankee pitcher Shawn Chacon as a result of his alleged failure to pay Caesars Palace $150,000 in gambling markers. Geez, good thing he left Pittsburgh before the Rivers Casino opened, hey?

-- Mr. Nutting may have to fight to keep one of his revenue streams gushing because of mismanagement in DC - and no, not Congress. Craig Calcaterra of NBC's Circling the Bases says:

"The big teams like the Yankees and Dodgers bite their tongues and pay their revenue sharing money out to the Pirates and Royals of the world because, well, that's the system we have. They may not bite their tongues much longer, though, because they really, really don't like paying a large-market team like the Nationals -- which Forbes Magazine rates as the second most profitable team in baseball -- that kind of scratch...

...Given the financial disparities in the game, some form of revenue sharing is essential. But a system that rewards a team with huge welfare checks for keeping its payroll lower than its market and revenue would rationally dictate (and losing tons of ballgames in the process) is not a sustainable one.

I suspect that it would take the form of requiring any teams receiving checks to spend the money on players as opposed to simply pocketing it and declaring a profit like the Nats and Pirates do every year."

-- Old Pirate and current Astro announcer, Milo Hamilton, 82, is still at it. CitiField became the 57th stadium that he's broadcast a game from when he got behind the mic last night.