The Pirates are coming to town, which means chatting with some of the most passionate bloggers in the sport. Let's see what they're up to anyway…

Pat at WHYGAS? looks at the drafting habits of the Pirates through recent years. By 2003, I was laughing so loud that I woke up the cat.

Bucco Blog previews the series and talks about the reasoning behind the Vegas odds. Apparently the Pirates are underdogs going into tonight's game because, among other reasons, they're 1-5 in their last six Friday games. Who knew the day of the week was so essential? What's their record for the last six games on the sixth of the month? Or the sixth of April?

At Bucs Dugout, they must be feeling pretty good about sitting atop the division, because they're taking some time out of their busy schedules to create an All-Overpaid Team and compare it to the overpaid team that appears on ESPN's Page 2. The Page 2 bit does have a rep from the Reds, but I probably didn't need to tell you that. Furthermore, they include Jason LaRue in a group of players that they say the Royals are overpaying, but I think they forget that it's actually the Reds who are paying him.

Major League Baseball is investigating Angel's pitcher Francisco Rodriguez after this blog post appeared on The Cheater's Guide to Baseball Blog, complete with still shots of Rodriguez rubbing this pitching thumb on a foreign substance stuck to the bottom of the bill of his cap.

And here I thought that Major League Baseball disavowed any relevance of blogs. Way to go Derek!

CINCINNATI, OH--The Knothole Club of Greater Cincinnati will stop allowing bad athletes to participate in little league games because of the negative effect that sucking has on a child's self-esteem.

The decision was made by a group of concerned parents, coaches, and umpires in response to reports that a 7-year old player was seen crying after tripping on the base path and scraping his knee.

“The humiliation of being such a bad runner is far more painful than the injury,” said the boy's mother, Helen Hamilton, who admitted she hadn't actually talked to her son about why he was crying. “These are children. They'll never learn if we let them fail.”

The decision comes on the heels of an earlier announcement that any kind of negative chatter had been banned after some heated exchanges led to fights and hurt feelings. “If you're saying, 'Swing, batter,' and this poor little kid is swinging at everything, he feels bad and maybe he turns to the catcher and gets mad,” Knothole president Dave Epplen explained. “This move was the natural next step in protecting children from learning to deal with the feelings that they might have.”

The fact that the decision would exclude about 75 percent of the participants didn't bother Epplen. “Keeping these bad players out of games, heck, out of interactions with other human beings, is for their own good.”

Other measures under consideration include wrapping players in bubble wrap and replacing games between teams with single-player virtual reality in which the child plays only against CPU opponents programmed to lose.

“I like the idea,” said Hamilton. “The best thing I can do to ensure that he makes good choices as an adult is to shelter him from everything right up until the day I decide to leave him to his own devices.”

Don't get me wrong i like chris welsh & george grande but thom brennaman & jeff brantley sounded like they had been working together for as long welsh & grande i don't think i've ever heard anybody do a better job of breaking down pitching like brantley did and thom brennaman is worth every cent the reds pay him ( unlike eric milton)

You'd never know it by the final score, but the Reds took home a nail-biter this afternoon when they beat the Cubs 2-5 to take two of the three in the opening series of 2007.

Why in the heck the Reds' offense had so much trouble with Jason Marquis I'll never understand, but the Cubs were similarly unsuccessful with Kyle Lohse on the mound for the Reds. Though he did give up 10 hits and a walk in his six and a third, he allowed only two runs (earned).

The parade of relievers that followed included Victor Santos for two outs, Rheal Cormier, Kirk Saarloos, and Mike Stanton for an out apiece, and David “Inclement” Weathers for the final inning and the save. None of them gave up so much as a hit. Theoretically, a reliever would approach his true ERA as his pitch count approached infinity. Perhaps manager Jerry Narron thinks he'll get luckier keeping these guys as far from infinity as possible.

On the offensive side, only Scott Hatteberg contributed a home run; the 2-run insurance number in the eighth inning after Edwin Encarnación walked. My brother called today and told me that Hatteberg is 37. Does he look that old? I think I would have guessed 32. In any event, it takes some of the steam out of making fun of Jeff Conine's age.

Speaking of, Conine also contributed an RBI today, as did EdE. Everyone's got to contribute.

The win brings the Reds' record to 2-1 and puts them in a tie for second place in the division over the Pirates who swept Houston. They're going to get cold quite tomorrow, though, when they come up against one Mr. Matt Belisle at 7:10 p.m. He's been overlooked as a starter for a couple years, and he's ready to take it out on some swashbucklers.

For the Cubbie perspective, check out The View from the Bleachers.