Appropriate Baseball Axiom #1 - Momentum is only as good as the next day's starter.

Appropriate Baseball Axiom #2 - A 20-0 loss counts no more than a 1-0 loss.

Look, there's no use lingering on what happened yesterday. It sucked, it's over, and now it's time to move on. How does this team respond to a 20-0 thrashing? How does any team respond to that? We find out this weekend against the equally awful Astros. Paul Maholm starts tonight; if you're a believer in Axiom #1, there's no one better for the Pirates to put on the mound tonight.

First pitch is 8:05, Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump

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Looks like Kevin Hart will be starting Saturday and Chris Jakubauskas is being called up to work out of the bullpen while Brad Lincoln does ... whatever it is that they want him to do in Triple-A. I haven't given up hope that Hart can be an effective starter quite yet, but please allow me a moment of overwhelming cynical sarcasm anyways.

I think we all need something to keep us going after today.

Give up? Never.

What I want to say is that It's Only One Game, that You Can't Evaluate a Team on One Game (or three games, or twenty games, or fifty games), that You're Never as Good as You Think You Are on Your Best Day and You're Never as Bad as You Think You Are on Your Worst Day, that They're a Young Team and There Will Always Be Road Bumps, that We're Trying to Evaluate These Guys and Even When We're Losing We're Learning. I want to say these things because they're all true.

What I will say, instead, is this: When people find out I'm a Pirate fan, they usually act in disbelief and almost expect me to be apologetic for following such a long-running joke of a franchise. I never am. They expect me to be embarrassed for sticking with a team that they would've left for dead long ago, for having the proverbial football pulled out from underneath me every year. I never am. Today, I'm sorry other people had to watch that. Today, I'm embarrassed. There will come a day when days like this don't happen anymore for this franchise. I still firmly believe that. But when something like this happens, I can't help but wonder if it's all really worth it.

Perhaps the best and worst part of early-season baseball is the exact same thing; the way a small number of games can wildly shift how you, as a fan, views a team. After the ugly 2-4 road trip, I felt pretty terrible about the Pirates. After the sweep of the Reds, things perked up a bit. After being outscored 16-1 over two games by the Brewers, I'm kind of curious if the Pirates will ever win again.

Today's Earth Day matinee feature doesn't seem to bode well for turning things around. Daniel McCutchen gets the start against Randy Wolf, who's been pretty good so far for the Brewers this year. And JR will surely go with an "afternoon game  lineup," (note: I'm writing this up late Wednesday night because I have lab meeting Thursday morning and I'm not sure when I'll get to the computer) and even though the Pirates literally just won with one of these against Cincinnati on Sunday, I never feel good about the team's chances with the afternoon lineup in place.

First pitch is 12:35, Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump.

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This is not the first time the Pirates have been shut out this year. It is, however, the first time it feels appropriate to use this clip.

Is there anything worse to watch than two impotent losses to the Brewers? Tonight there was no pitching, no offense, no plate patience, nothing. The record says 7-7, but my gut says something much, much worse.

Quick pregame news: Brian Burres has been optioned to Triple-A and Argenis Diaz has been called up. No word yet on why, exactly, Diaz gets the call, but I'm guessing it probably has something to do with Bobby Crosby sitting out yesterday and Andy LaRoche's continuing back issues. We'll know more shortly.

Tonight Zach Duke gets to do what he's had to do in all of his non-Opening Day starts so far, which is try to stem the bleeding after an ugly game. Yovani Gallardo is a tough draw, though, and Duke hasn't traditionally pitched all that well against the Brewers. Anything has to be better than last night's debacle, though.

First pitch is 7:05, Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump.

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After last night's ugly loss there's plenty of frustration to go round in Pirate-land. There's a lot of talk about demoting guys like Jeff Clement and Charlie Morton to Triple-A so they can work their kinks out somewhere that the fans don't have to watch them struggle. I'm about as frustrated as anyone after last night (see: sarcastic stream of angry tweets), but honestly, the worst thing the Pirates can do at this point is to start demoting players and making decisions based on 13 games in April.

Morton has been compared to Ian Snell a lot over the last three starts. It's true that he can struggle with his command from time to time and get smoked all over the park, but it's not even a remotely fair comparison at this point. Last year, Snell was losing velocity for the second straight year, pitching poorly for the second straight year, and throwing his teammates and coaches under the bus with every bad start. Morton isn't far removed from a pretty decent year with the Pirates, he's not losing velocity, his command isn't even really all that bad (he's still walking fewer hitters than he did last year, even with three walks in 1+ inning last night), and he's blaming himself.

Morton is exactly the kind of pitcher that dominates Triple-A; he's got a live fastball and he backs it up with a good curve. There's nothing for him to learn there. In 150 2/3 Triple-A innings, he's 12-4 with a 1.00 WHIP, a 2.15 ERA, and a 3.05 K/BB ratio. Whatever he's doing wrong in Pittsburgh, he probably won't have to fix it to pitch well in Indianapolis and if he does pitch well there, it won't prove anything to anyone. The Pirates don't need to know if Charlie Morton can pitch in Triple-A, they need to know if he can pitch in the Majors. The best way to figure that out is to give him time with Joe Kerrigan against big league pitchers.

As for Clement, his batting average on balls in play this year is .125. As Matt Bandi pointed out to me last night, it should be much closer to .350 based on his balls in play data. He's got almost 1600 plate appearances in Triple-A and even though he's just learning first base, he looks better there than Garrett Jones or Delwyn Young do anywhere in the field. The Pirates don't need to know if he can hit Triple-A pitching, they need to know if he can hit in the Majors.

This year was always meant to be an evaluation year for the team. Sending Clement or Morton or anyone down for even a few weeks here makes them much tougher to evaluate. And what good would sending either down now really do? Give more starts to Brian Bass or Brian Burres or Chris Jakubauskas? Get more at-bats for Ryan Church or Delwyn Young or Steve Pearce against right-handed pitching? Force the team to rush Pedro Alvarez or Brad Lincoln or Jose Tabata along? Good teams don't make decisions based on 13 games, no matter how frustrating some of those games are. Teams that do? They end up like the Mets, with Jenrry Mejia (44 innings above A+ ball) and Ike Davis (65 games above A+ ball, just 10 in Triple-A) both in the Majors, despite both needing more minor league seasoning.

Of course there are going to be bumps in the road along the way, but playing these guys is the only real option the Pirates have this year.

You know what I hate? When I take a whole bunch of time and effort to write a blog post defending a player, only to have them take the field and blow up. That's what happened with Charlie Morton tonight, who shelved his home run problem for an evening but still got shelled for six hits and five earned runs (six total) in his 1+ inning tonight. I kept the game open on my laptop during the early part of the hockey game, and even paying half attention to it it was obvious that Morton just wasn't fooling anyone tonight. Before his next start I guess I'll try to get some PitchFX stuff ready to try and figure out just why he's so hittable this year.

Morton was bad tonight, but the offense's terrible performance shouldn't be ignored. Dave Bush walked four and struck out just two in his seven innings, but the Bucs only managed three hits. Bush stranded more runners tonight than Morton has all season, I think.

If there is a bright side to a game like this tonight, Andrew McCutchen had three hits (two doubles) and Lastings Milledge finally showed a bit of gap power in driving him in with an eighth inning double. Also, Brian Burres mananged to eat up four innings in long relief, so the bullpen wasn't as horribly depleted tonight as it could've been.

Let's close things out tonight with a bit of a non sequiter: The Penguins scored seven goals in their playoff game tonight. The Pirates have topped that output just once this year, on Opening Day.

You have probably noticed over the past couple days that I'm not exactly over the moon about the Pirates' play to this point in the season, 7-5 record or not. What would make me extremely happy, however, is a couple wins against the Brewers this week. I know Brewers' fans think it's funny that we Pirate fans get all worked up over these two teams, but I really, really don't like Ryan Braun or Prince Fielder or their stupid untucked shirts and frankly, everyone needs a little bit of a rivalry to get through the season.

Game 1 of this three-game set features Charlie Morton trying to get himself back on track against Dave Bush. Bush missed a bunch of time last year with some injuries, but he's come back pretty strongly in his first two starts this year. Andy LaRoche is still out with his back spasms, so Bobby Crosby will start at third Crosby's out with some shoulder trouble, Delwyn Young is in at third base tonight.

First pitch is 7:05; Clemente/Cangelosi is after the jump. Recap may come late tonight since the Penguins and LOST are both on, because I want to see Morton pitch no matter what.

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