Catching up

Due to some vacation time, along with the All-Star break, it's been a little while since I've been on the blog. All apologies to the six of you who read this.

Now, let's catch up with what I've missed over the last two weeks.

* First was the All-Star game, and congrats to Nate McLouth who had an excellent game and made a game-saving play when he threw out a runner at home in the 10th inning to preserve the 3-3 tie. McLouth also showed hustle by legging out an infield hit.

* In regular action, the starting rotation has been horrific, for lack of a better word, save for Paul Maholm, who is turning into the leader of the rotation.

Ian Snell looks clueless on the mound. Zach Duke has stayed healthy but another bat outing pushed his ERA close to 5.00. John Van Benschoten is muddling through but his ERA remains over 8.00 and Yoslan Herrera looked like a Double-A pitcher in his start when he didn't make it out of the second inning.

Only Maholm has pitched with any consistency over the last two months. He is showing why he was a No. 1 pick five years ago and looks like a true professional on the mound.

* If former GM Dave Littlefield has any question as to why he got fired last year, he needs to only look at the Pirates starting rotation and the utter lack of pitching depth in the organization as to why he was dismissed.

Herrera and Van Benschoten are NOT major-league pitchers, yet they currently make up 40 percent of the rotation because there is nothing better in any part of the organization. Even Littlefield's prized first pick – Bryan Bullington, didn't pitch in his two-week stint in Pittsburgh and was subsequently released.

* Though a 16th consecutive losing season appears on the horizon, I give manager John Russell and the players credit for continuing to play hard day in and day out.

It seems like a simple thing to say that a team should play hard every day. But if this team was under former manager Jim Tracy's watch, that four-game losing streak after the break would still be going on as his teams folded like cheap tents.

Case in point was last year when the Pirtes, 40-48 at the break, lost 14 of their first 16 games after the break and skidded to a 68-94 finish. Even if one or a number of key players get traded in the next week, I don't see the same thing happening to this team.