Due to a family emergency, BTW will be unattended for the next few days. IF I can find some time to force a post out I will. In the meantime please visit Raise The Jolly Roger for game day threads. Also, visit some of the other fine Pirates Blogs listed on the right.
Thanks for your understanding. Go Bucs.
Once again I am walking in the MDA Stride and Ride event. I am looking for sponsors. If you can find it in you heart to donate a little, it does not have to be much every dollar helps, please sponsor me in this worthwhile cause.
You can donate online at my MDA page that can be found here:
https://www.joinmda.org/MyStrideRide/MyHomepage/tabid/121966/Participant/dharr18/Default.aspx
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support.
BTW Slide Note:
I should get back to normal posting tonight after I finish updating my link lists.
ALSO...
On a personal note, Sean's Ramblings is running the annual Pittsburgh Sports Blogger Tournament. Please vote BTW. Once again I am an low seed. Once again, I am going against one of the top blogs in the area. I need all the help I can get. Vote here, and vote BTW.
http://seanramblings.blogspot.com/2010/02/best-pittsburgh-sports-blog-tournament.html
Show the Burgh small market blogs can win....lol
I FINALLY have the Pirates Blogs and Boards up in the right hand column.
There are a couple additions to the list. Kristy, John and Sean now have links to their respective sites.
More After the Jump
Let me know what you think.
Ok, I just uploaded the new template. It only took me a few weeks to get the template right, then 5 seconds to upload the template. Most of the site updates are done although I need to get my blog roll back together. I should have it up later tonight.
Feedback on the new layout would be appreciated.
Sorry for the lack of posts the last few days, this is not going to be the disappearing act again. Three sick kids, an overnight outage for work and the wife having some medical tests later today have kept me derailed from BTW. Hopefully things will be back to normal by Thursday.
In the meantime, enjoy a dual woot-off.
www.woot.com and kids.woot.com
I’ll be making some minor changes to the site over the next week, so don’t freak out if the page looks horrible every once in a while. I am also working on getting the Mall back online as well.
To add to the pain of some difficult work days, I fried the operating system on my laptop. I am just finishing getting everything loaded again. I should be back to normal posting again later today (Friday).
Thanks to Kip on this. Kipper has set up a great Pirates forum, I am rerouting all my forum traffic to the Buccos Forum. For those who might want to try my old forum, I am keeping it up and will still post and answer any questions that might be left.
I will have a stunning banner up sometime in the next couple days, as soon as Kip gets 'er done.
The best part of this coalition...gameday threads. The guys who do the posting do some great play by play forum style. If Ran would just get his butt in there, the place would be closer to complete.
What I hope to do is link to the gameday threads for anyone who wants to read along. I am testing out some code now to see if I can post the game contents here for quick reading for those who do not want to join the board but would like to read along. Hopefully this will entice some people to join and add to the community.
Here is an example of the gameday thread:
Vitals:
| Pittsburgh Pirates (44-54) | RHP John Van Benschoten (1-2, 9.77) |
| Houston Astros (46-52) | RHP Runelvys Herndandez (0-3, 10.29) |
| Game Time | 8:05 EDT |
| XM | XM 188 |
| TV | FSN |
Bautista:
So many people have ragged on the Pirates third base situation and the play of Jose Bautista, not totally undeserved, however it may be better than many think.
I ran a few numbers together to see where Bautista ranks amongst other third basemen in the league with a minimum of 150 AB's this season. I wasn't looking at normal stats along the lines of OBP or OPS, no I wanted to see what kind of run support he gave. Roughly, I wanted to see how many at bats it took for an RBI or a Run scored. Surprisingly, Bautista faired pretty well.
Of the 34 players who qualified, Jose ranked 15th in number of at bats per RBI with a 6.83. This number was better than Bill Hall, Pedro Feliz, Ryan Zimmerman, Adrian Beltre, Mike Lamb, Alex Gordon Edwin Encarnacion, Ty Wiggington and Scott Rolen.
Looking at at bats to runs scored, Bautista did not fair as well, possibly batting in front of the pitcher could explain his standing here. Jose ranked 22 of the 34 third basemen eligible with a 8.00 AB/R ratio. Better than Bill Hall, Ryan Zimmerman, Ty Wiggington and Scott Rolen among others. Bautista was not far off of the numbers of Joe Crede, Brandon Inge Adrian Beltre Alex Gordon nor Troy Glaus.
I also noticed he ranked 17th in AB/HR ratio with a 25.45.
Bottom line is Jose has produced in limited playtime, maybe not at an elite level, but he has been an average offensive third baseman this year. That puts him in the same league as Melvin Mora, Brandon Inge, Mike Lowell and Bill Hall who are the 4 players immediately ahead of Bautista.
While Bautista has not played at an elite level, he has been a league average third baseman offensively when it comes to the all important run.
The Mets Wish List:
AM New York has a list of players the Mets are allegedly looking at due to injuries in the outfield and bullpen. Both Marte and Nady are listed. The Mets are not good trade partners for the Pirates, their farm is pretty much devoid of talent thanks to the Santana deal with Minnesota. Don't get your hopes up Met fans.
New Forum:
I am playing with a new forum software, let me know what you think of the potential new forum, the link is here and a direct link to the Pirates portion is here.
http://bucstradewinds.lefora.com/forum/category/news/page1/
http://bucstradewinds.lefora.com/forum/
Links:
Dejan runs down a list of trade rumors in the Pirates Notebook on the PG today. Headlining is interest in Jack Wilson.
Visit the BTW Forum to discuss this post.
Register for the forum here:Some of you may have noticed, some may not, the site has been slightly modified.
Some minor additions have been added, including AP articles and AP video feeds found below the post section...For those days where I don't get to post, I am still looking for that billionaire to gift me a couple million dollars.
I have also added a Smapp applet that shows the seasons schedule, game stats, links to the ESPN box score (click on the game) as well as an Google maps view of the stadium.
The standings and full MLB schedule are still available below the AP feeds. Rotoworld feed and BallHype feed are also available in the right menu bar near the bottom.
The forum is still there, hoping it will take off some day.
There is a tech section, if you have any technical computer type questions, I'll be glad to help. My profession is in the IT industry.
The BTW Mall is still available, if you are looking to buy something online, send me what you are looking for and I'll see what kind of deal I can get for you.
Also, there is a games section. Might I recommend the Pinch-Hitter game.
Take a look around...
Let me know what you think of the additions and changes.
Visit the BTW Forum to discuss this post.
Due to unfortunate circumstances, i.e. technical difficulties, I haven't been able to post the last few days. I have been busy trying to recover anything from my home server. I have lost a ton of data including at least parts 5-9 of the 2007 and Beyond posts and all the stats I had stored for rainy days.
My home server has gone belly up, luckily I have saved most of the photos of my children. That was the only stuff I worried about backing up.
For those observant enough, the menu bar under the BTW banner has expanded. I added a few additional links that I hope you all enjoy and use.
For those new to the site, in my spare time I have fiddled with a few things and created some BTW sister sites that have nothing to do with baseball. Ok, there is some baseball on everything but the BTW Mall, which is a deal site that also has some baseball equipment deals as well as memorabilia links. So there is baseball everywhere.
The BTW Store has Pittsburgh Sports items via Amazon, another thing I have played around with.
There is a chat, that I may use during games or log into when a big deal comes down or major breaking news. I'll have a link up when I plan on being their live. Everyone can feel free to use the chat room for almost anything.
I also did some tweaking to the Forum. Hopefully some of you will leave some messages, I check it daily for anything new...which has yet to happen.
The last new addition is the Games site, I will be adding games as I find them. It is a nice diversion for the upcoming off season. May I recommend Pinch Hitter.
One other note, if you haven't signed the petition to sell the Bucs yet, take a minute to add your name.
If you can't tell, I like messing around with the computer, it is my real life profession. There are many things I have learned from messing with the styles on the blogs that I have carried over to work. As a bonus, I get to write about the Pirates and sports in general. Now if the Pirates would just break out of this 15 year slump.
I will be resuming the multi-part series on the 2007 Pirates and Beyond over the weekend.
Well, I promised a post on position by position going forward, then I proceeded to screw up my knee (again). Tylenol 3 is a great thing, no pain and no focus. I will get the series started in the next day or so. Please keep checking back.
