Series Preview: Pirates at Brewers

I'm not one to read too much into historical team-vs-team results, but if there's any alarming feature of the last few years of Brewers baseball, it's our absolutely putrid record against the Pirates.  For the last couple of years, the Brewers have been a much better team than the Bucs, yet we keep losing.

I think it's time to end that.  The Crew is better, the Rats are not, and it would sure be nice to establish that by sweeping the two-game set at Miller Park this week.  Here's who you'll be seeing on the mound:

• Wednesday, 7:05 CT: Paul Maholm vs. Claudio Vargas
  
  
• Thursday, 12:05 CT: Zach Duke vs. Jeff Suppan

Once again, we get to skip the hot pitchers: Tom Gorzellany and Ian Snell have acquitted themselves well so far this year, but we're getting a couple of pitchers who have been underwhelming.  Duke, of course, is plenty good, and has certainly racked up nice numbers against Milwaukee (3-1, 3.63 ERA), but was crushed by the Giants his last time out.  Maholm has been even better against the Crew (2.45 ERA in 22 innings), but has been strikingly mediocre overall in his career so far.  

On the bright side, both are lefties, so it would be reasonable (though far from a lock) to assume that Corey Hart and Tony Graffanino will get a pair of starts.

Much like the Reds (who didn't seem to have any offensive problems against the Brewers) the Pirates haven't gotten much offense thus far.  Jason Bay is hitting 213/315/362, while Adam LaRoche is even worse: 116/208/279.  Meanwhile, relief pitcher Matt Capps is one for one.  That conveniently leads us to the highlights of the Bucosphere:

• Bucs Dugout wonders what planet hitting coach Jeff Manto is on.
  
  
• The Pirates Roundtable has some thoughts on how Jim Tracy is doing thus far.
  
  
• The Pirate Guy talks some sense about Braden Looper.  I hope he's right, because if Looper is a solid starter all year long, I'll have to rethink a lot of fundamental assumptions about pitchers.
  
  
• My team preview, written way back in January.  Don't worry, they were bad then too.

If you haven't stopped by in the last 24 hours, be sure to check out the Harvey's Wallbangers DVD giveaway.