Sunday: Pirates Lose Nightcap 3-1; Meet O's Tonight; O'Flaherty Sold; Notes

Tonight: The Pirates will play a third straight night game, this one at McKechnie Field against the Orioles. The match will be aired by Root Sports, MLB.TV, The Fan 93.7 and streamed by MLB.com.

The pitching: Trevor Williams climbs the hill, with his reserves TBA. Ubaldo Jimenez will toss for Baltimore. Juan Nicasio, who was due for the start, was slated instead to throw six innings and 100 pitches at Pirate City (Juan went six IP, giving up a run on seven hits w/one walk and five K against Toronto's AAA guys).

Trevor Williams (photo Dave Arrigo/Pirates)

The lineup: John Jaso 1B, Cutch CF, Matt Joyce DH, Jason Rogers 3B, Josh Harrison 2b, Jake Goebbert RF, Jordy Mercer SS, Cole Figueroa LF, Ed Easley C (Williams P).Shook this one up; giving Gregory and Starling time to recover, we suppose.

Last night: Another subpar outing for Frankie, who went 4-2/3 IP and gave up three runs on seven hits. And another subpar outing for the attack, too. David Freese went yard, but the team collected five hits and racked up another dozen K. So the split squad managed a run on 11 hits with 25 whiffs in 18 frames. Sheesh. Click here for the box score.

Another guy was pulled for precautionary reasons; seems like a pretty steady diet of small ouchies lately. This time it was Starling Marte, whose foot got caught and twisted a bit; he has right quad tightness. He played the field afterward before getting yanked, and it's a day-to-day thing. Starling is tentatively in tonight's lineup, & we'll see after warmups if he stays penciled in.

There was a little late inning excitement - a fan ran on the field, yelled into the Rays' dugout about playing in Cuba and tossed a couple of bottles at them. A coach grabbed him until the police could haul him away.

• Eric O'Flaherty was sold to the Braves after a viable spring. His ERA was 2.89 although his WHIP was 1.82, and as a LOOGY, lefties went 2-for-11 against him. But 9-1/3 IP isn't much of a sample size pro or con. That leaves Cory Luebke and Kyle Lobstein in the running for the second lefty job. Luebke has an opt out while Lobstein has an option, but Luebke is an NRI while Lobstein is already on the 40-man, making it interesting. Another consideration is that it looks a lot more like Jared Hughes may start the season on the 15 day DL with his lat sprain.
• C Elias Diaz has missed 10+ days with a sore elbow and still isn't throwing. It's thought to be a chronic overuse ache, but nothing requiring surgery, just rest and treatment. Still, he also may start the year on the 15 day DL.
• The Bucs hired Puerto Rican native Mike Gonzalez as their MLB-mandated Spanish translator.