There were a number of interesting stories in this one:

-P- Jack Wilson was pulled from the game with a calf problem after he came up lame while running out a single. I don't know how long he'll be out, but he did look like he was legitimately hurt. Freddy Sanchez had already been pulled from the game for more innocent reasons, so the Pirates had a middle infield of Chris Gomez and Luis Rivas. If Wilson has to go on the DL, hopefully Brian Bixler will be called up and allowed to start; I don't want to see Gomez or Rivas starting for any substantial period of time.

-P- I'm told that Sanchez was removed from the game at John Russell's "discretion." Well, that apparently took Russell's entire supply of discretion, because he let Zach Duke pitch forever in the sixth even though Duke seemed to be running up 2-0 or 3-0 counts against every batter he faced. Duke then let a string of batters reach base, leading the Bucs to allow all three of the Braves' runs in the sixth. Duke clearly should've been removed after Chipper Jones and Jeff Francoeur got on in that inning; I have no idea what Russell was thinking. Duke ended up throwing 117 pitches, including about 35 after he clearly had lost it. That ranks right up there with any dumb thing Jim Tracy ever did to Tom Gorzelanny, and it's worth watching going forward.

-P- Before that, though, Duke pitched decently. He didn't exactly rack up strikeouts, and that's definitely a source of concern, but his fastball had some life, and he didn't walk anyone.

-P- Mike Hampton was pulled before the game with a strained chest muscle, meaning his return from 263 arm surgeries has been postponed.

-P- In the tenth inning, Bobby Cox brought in Royce Ring to face Adam LaRoche, but instead of taking pitcher Chris Resop out of the game, he moved him to the outfield, then brought him back to the mound after Ring struck LaRoche out. I know these kinds of things happen every so often, but I've never seen it. It was pretty cool, like something out of the climax of a bad baseball movie.

-P- Several guys played well: Ronny Paulino made a good stop on a ball in the dirt and actually hustled down the line to reach on an error, although he also missed a chance to blow the game open by striking out with the bases loaded early on. Nate McLouth made a couple of fantastic catches; he looks great in center. And Tyler Yates looked good again, throwing 96-97 MPH fastballs by Chipper Jones like Jones had just been called up from the minors or something.

The Bucs managed to score a run in the 10th on an RBI single by Xavier Nady. Nyjer Morgan nearly undid that by missing a ball at the wall in center and allowing Mark Kotsay to come around for a triple, but Matt Capps managed to shut the door.

Like the first game, this one was as exhausting as it was exhilarating. This series leaves me with pretty serious questions about the Pirates' pitching, in particular, and I hope Wilson's okay, but I certainly feel satisfied from an entertainment-dollar perspective.

Zach Duke vs. Mike Hampton, 7:00 on FSNP and WPGB.

Hampton is making his first start since 2005; good for him.

Amazingly, Hampton's still on that massive $121 million contract the Rockies signed him to after the 2000 season. He got a $20 million signing bonus after that deal, he's making $15 million this year and he's got a no-brainer $6 million buyout coming on his $20 million 2009 club option before he even throws a pitch next year. (And let's be honest, he probably won't. Throw a pitch next year, that is.) Three teams (the Rockies, the Braves, and the Marlins, who took on a bunch of money before sending Hampton to Atlanta without his throwing a pitch for them) have paid at least $20 million of that contract. Since signing the contract, Hampton has just 53 wins and two full seasons with an ERA below league average.

Most teams are understandably unwilling to hand out eight-year contracts for pitchers now, but the big problem with a lot of these big contracts for pitchers is that teams just aren't picking the right pitchers. Three of the worst and most expensive contracts ever given to pitchers - Hampton's, Barry Zito's, and Chan Ho Park's - were given to guys who allowed more than 90 walks in the season before the contract. If you're going to give a huge contract to a pitcher, give it to Johan Santana, not the guy with the Kip Wells-like walk totals. Some of these contracts probably could have been avoided if teams had understood DIPS better at the time.

Anyway, I should be in the comments for a good portion of this one. Here's the box.

About stuff like this. Apparently, one good game makes you worthy of a long-term deal, even if you're 29, are blocking a prospect, and haven't had a solidly above-average season in your whole life.

One more thought before I head off to class: In 2002, John Smoltz was the Braves' closer. He allowed eight earned runs on April 6, then allowed just 22 more the whole year over the course of 80 innings. It still took him until the middle of June to permanently get his ERA below 5. How must Damaso Marte be feeling right now? Not only did he cost the Bucs a chance to win last night and narrowly avoid completely blowing the game before that, but he hasn't pitched more than 59 innings since 2004. His final line for the year is going to look pretty raunchy, almost regardless of how he pitches the rest of the year.

Well, there wasn't much to like about this one. Jair Jurrjens had no problems with the Pirates. He looked decent - his fastball regularly hits 93 and he has a very good changeup - but he wasn't throwing many breaking pitches, and hitters should've been able to settle it and rap out a few hits just on guesswork. But they didn't. Adam LaRoche was awful, going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, and the bottom third of the lineup did nothing.

Tom Gorzelanny still managed to keep the Bucs in the game despite not really pitching that impressively, and the Bucs were down by one until the eighth. However, Damaso Marte went out again and pitched like he was trying to lose. He got one out, allowed four runs (including a long homer by Mark Teixeira) and now has a remarkable 81.00 ERA. Evan Meek made his major league debut after that, but it was hard to get a good look at him because he only threw nine pitches. It looked like his fastball is pretty good - 92 MPH or so with good movement. However, he still managed to give up two runs after allowing a three-run jack to Yunel Escobar.

On the bright side, Ryan Doumit had a good game, with two hits and a couple of good stops behind the plate, and Freddy Sanchez was good on both sides of the ball until an error late in the game. Also, Tyler Yates does throw hard.

A few bits of miscellany:

-P- If you happen to be looking for a place to convene online while watching the game, the new commenting system here at Bucs Dugout is the bees knees. Your comments upload instantly, and the comments autorefresh, so you don't have to reload the page every few minutes. I hope that won't be viewed as competitive or too salesman-like; I'm just pointing out that the new comment system is really cool.

-P- Hey Bucdaddy, I just can't get email through to your address. Could you send me an email from a different address?Thanks.

-P- Seriously, how does a photo like this get by Major League Baseball? Shouldn't someone be looking at these things?

7:10 PM

Tom Gorzelanny vs. Jair Jurrjens. Jurrjens is the guy we could've gotten for last year from the Tigers for Jack Wilson, so it'll be interesting to get a good look at him. The Braves ended up getting him and Gorkys Hernandez for Edgar Renteria.

As you probably know, Gorzelanny had an awful Spring, striking out just four batters in 17.1 innings. Tonight we get to see if that meant anything.

I'll be in the comments. Here's the box. Ryan Doumit is catching again.

It's one game and gets all the appropriate caveats.  McLouth, Nady, Doumit and Yates all looked good.  Capps and Marte can reasonably be expected to perform better.  But, what can we expect out of Jason Bay?

Early in spring training Dejan Kovacevic wrote about Jason Bay's miscues in the outfield.  Both Bay and Kovacevic were willing to write this off as early in spring training and blamed it on the conditions in Bradenton, the wind, high skies, etc.  I found this a little more than curious because catching flyballs is something 8 year olds can do rather easily and isn't a "skill" that should have to be polished each year.  Can there be mitigating circumstances to making a play?  Of course there can and sun or wind will certainly at times make routine plays difficult.

However, Bay last night was a horror show.  He made a good running catch in the first inning and then made two other rather routine plays into adventureous ones by getting bad jumps, misreading the trajectory and taking bad routes.  But, it's the play in the ninth that blows my mind.

Brian McCann, the good hitting, rather slow-footed catcher comes to bat with two out and runners on first and third in a 9-7 game.  McCann is more of a pull hitter, yet Bay was playing him straight away two steps in front of the warning track.  Now, I won't put this all on Bay, it is also on the coaching staff but he shouldn't have been playing that deep.  But, that's the least of my concerns.  McCann's hits a high pop into shallow left or slightly left center if you want to be picky.  Bay charges hard and appears to camp under the ball.  The ball lands 20 feet to his left and behind him.  Bay wasn't available to reporters after the game but McLouth said each thought the other was going to catch it.  Having watched the replay 20 times I don't know how that can be the case.  Bay comes in apparently under the ball and stops.  He never raises his hands to indicate he may have lost it.  He never looks at McLouth in anticipation that McLouth is going to catch the ball.  He never asks for help.  It's completely inexplicable.  I don't understand what happened.

I, like virtually every other Pirate fan, hope Bay reverts to the form seen in 2005 and 2006.  But, I am becoming very concerned that we have already seen his best and even more concerned that the effort and intensity that one might expect are completely gone.  Again I hope I'm wrong, but last night wasn't a good omen.  It was a good win and there lots of positives to be taken away, but I fear we've seen the end of the good Jason Bay and the hopes of garnering something of value at the trade deadline are misguided.

1. NEW YORK METS: The trade of Lastings Milledge was unforgivably dumb, and they've got big problems at catcher and in the corner outfield spots (Angel Pagan started in left in the Mets' opener yesterday). There are also questions in the rotation - fifth starter Mike Pelfrey has done little in the minors to prove he's ready, and who knows what they'll get from Pedro Martinez. The core of this team, though, is so strong - David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and the newly-acquired Johan Santana can hang with any other team's best four players - that New York should be able to hold off the Phillies and Braves. If one of those four goes down for any extended period, though, all bets are off.

2. PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES: Another team with a very strong core and a questionable supporting cast. Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Cole Hamels are obviously great, but Hamels isn't a great bet to stay healthy. Which could be a big problem, since rotation depth is an issue - their third starter is Jamie Moyer, which tells you most of what you need to know. They've got some dubious players (like Pedro Feliz) in key roles and don't have a lot of minor-league talent that's likely to help anytime soon.

3. ATLANTA BRAVES: ESPN.com's pick of the Braves to win the World Series was a bad joke, but Atlanta is an interesting team, and they could sneak into the playoffs if the houses of cards the Mets and Phillies have built fall down. Like those teams, they have problems at the back of their rotation (Mike Hampton and Tom Glavine won't scare anyone, and it's too early to expect much from Jair Jurrjens). Unlike New York and Philadelphia, though, the Braves have decent contingency plans (including Jo Jo Reyes and Chuck James, both of whom will start the year at Class AAA Richmond). What they lack is serious star power - there's Mark Teixeira, Chipper Jones, John Smoltz and Tim Hudson, but Jones and Smoltz are big injury risks.

4. WASHINGTON NATIONALS: Not a great team by any stretch, but I'm going to make a point to watch 10 or 15 Nationals games this year. I watched maybe only five last year, and didn't really appreciate Manny Acta's awesome managing until I read the Nationals chapter in Baseball Prospectus 2008. Look at the Nationals' pitchers last year - it's stunning that they only allowed 783 runs, even in RFK. Only one pitcher threw more than 118 innings, and the Nats relied on so many no-name pitchers that looking at their staff can make you feel if you accidentally clicked on a Columbus Clippers page or something. Acta was a big part of the Nationals' overachieving, in that he used his relievers often and well and relied on unusual infield shifts, taking advantage of Ryan Zimmerman's outstanding range at third. Acta will have to pull off another zany high-wire act this year, but he'll have a couple more talented outfielders to work with (Milledge and Elijah Dukes), and Nick Johnson is back as well.

5. FLORIDA MARLINS: Almost as bad as the Giants, but in a different way. Sure, Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller are interesting, and they've got some other talented youngsters in Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla and Jeremy Hermida, but what else is there? Their starting pitching, which looked so promising after 2006, completely came apart in 2007, and now they're starting the year with a four-man rotation that includes Miller (who isn't ready yet), Mark Hendrickson (terrible), Rick VandenHurk (6.83 ERA last year) and Scott Olsen (5.81 ERA last year). Their defense is a disaster. They'll score some runs, but will give back far more with their arms and gloves. This is probably a 100-loss team.

Last night's game seems like it was interesting for all kinds of reasons. Unfortunately, I missed it - I was flying home while it was going on. I thought I might be able to catch some of it, but my flight got delayed, so I had to settle for a cool aerial view of the home opener at PETCO Park, which was going on while my plane was landing at the airport downtown. I'll hopefully be in the comment thread for the next game.

Anyway, one of the reasons the game was interesting was that Ryan Doumit started at catcher, even though the opposing starter was left-handed and Ronny Paulino pastes lefties. This actually doesn't surprise me a whole lot, and I suspect we're going to see a lot of Doumit and not so much of Paulino. Just a hunch.

Here we go! First game of the year, and also the first game thread of the new system, which I hope auto-posts this when it's supposed to.

Anyway, Tom Glavine starts for the 2008 World Series champion Braves. If the whole playing-the-Braves thing confuses you, that's because it's confusing - Atlanta played just one game against Washington yesterday, but they're hosting the Bucs in their home opener tonight.

-P- The Orioles have dumped Jay Gibbons. That may not seem too interesting - team cuts perpetually injured mediocrity, stop the presses! - but it's a move that may have symbolic significance for a franchise that's finally making some progress. The O's drafted Matt Wieters in June, then traded veterans Miguel Tejada and Erik Bedard for younger players this offseason.

When I was in college, my roommate Ryan (an Orioles fan who now posts at Bucs Dugout as "scoreboard"), used to complain about the way the Baltimore media treated Gibbons, who was then emerging as a young player with the O's. To the city of Baltimore, Gibbons was some sort of developing star, Ryan said, but in a better organization, he wouldn't have seemed like a big deal at all.

Gibbons, as it turned out, was a perfect Oriole - not exactly bad, definitely not good and, eventually, too expensive (the O's are risking eating his contract by dropping him). Getting rid of him after seven years probably isn't the sort of thing the Orioles of, say, 2004 would have done.

-P- I hate to even link this, but I can't resist.

Okay: you're nuts. This idea is as stupid as "productive outs," or the absurd Shannon Stewart-for-MVP campaign. The Braves are the third-best team in their own division. If ESPN.com would like me to try to stir up controversy by writing some articles that actually make sense, I would be happy to do it.

Here's the most disappointing part of the article:

Yeah, I'm sure there are 29 big league teams shaking in their shoes over the possibility of facing Mike Hampton. This quote is actually cited as evidence in support of the argument that the Braves will win the World Series, as if Acta's motivations - good sportsmanship and all - aren't completely transparent. The thing is, Acta seems to be a highly intelligent and iconoclastic manager; a journalist seeking to write a controversial article could probably just ask Acta for ideas, and he'd probably rattle off ten good ones.

Either way, we Bucs fans will really - finally! - have something to brag about if we take two or three from the Braves this week. Thanks, ESPN.com!

-P- The Dodgers will bench Juan Pierre and start Andre Ethier in the outfield. Good for the Dodgers; it took a .169 Spring batting average by Pierre to convince them, but they finally made the right decision.