Jeff Locke had another of those Jeff Locke starts in Chicago on Saturday afternoon.
Inherited runners scored, but the bottom line was not pretty:
Five and a third innings, six hits, six earned runs, two walks, three strikeouts and two home runs.
It's the kind of performance that burdens the bullpen and sends people to their phones to call the nearest talk show to sputter about Locke, complete with an offer to drive him to the Greyhound station and pick up the tab on a one-way ticket to Nowhere.
This is not new. Locke has been a lightning rod for outrage almost as long as he's been with the Pirates. It's been more pronounced this year because most people are lusting for the arrival of prime pitching prospects Jameson Taillon and Tyler Glasnow. Both are currently pitching well at the Class AAA level.
No longer are the alternatives ho-hum entities like Vance Worley and Brandon Cumpton. There are genuine talents waiting in the wings.
It is likely that either Taillon or Glasnow will be in Pittsburgh this season. It is highly unlikely either of them will be here before mid-June, when it's a virtual certainty they will sacrifice enough service time to delay their eligibility for arbitration and free agency.
People rail about this, but it's a non-issue. The stakes are so high and so clear that it's not even worth considering.
The positively awful 1986 Pirates waited to bring up Barry Bonds. He was a center fielder then, and the Pirates' opening day center fielder that season was Steve Kemp.
Keeping Bonds in the minor leagues for the start of the season meant he was still under the Pirates' control in 1992. They wouldn't have won the National League East that year without him.
Better to have an MVP-caliber player in the prime of his career than an extra two months of a struggling rookie. (Bonds hit .223 in his first season).
These circumstances are different, of course. The current Pirates are a contender. The '96 Pirates were happy they avoided 100 losses.
But the stakes are enormous. The price for a first-rate starting pitcher has settled at around $25 million a season now. It may even get higher by the time Taillon and Glasnow hit free agency.
The Pirates maintain neither of their young pitchers is ready. That gets ridiculed every time Taillon or Glasnow posts another good start in the minors.
But there's an example from 2014 that might be instructive here. Gregory Polanco was tearing things up at AAA. Travis Snider, Jose Tabata and Josh Harrison were sharing right field for the Pirates, without distinction.
There was a cry to bring up Polanco, which finally happened on June 10. When he started his career with an 11-game hitting streak, the told-you-so's were deafening.
After those first 11 games, Polanco was batting .365 with a .421 on-base percentage and .442 slugging average.
Then opponents adjusted. After that, he batted .204 over the rest of the season with a .282 on-base percentage and slugged .320. There was even a remedial trip to the minor leagues.
The moral of the story: Sometimes when they say they're not quite ready for the major leagues, they really aren't ready -- glitzy minor league stats notwithstanding.
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--ERROR, PIRATES
Speaking of Locke, he should have thrown a fastball directly at the first Cubs uniform he saw Saturday after Jung-Ho Kang was drilled.
The Cubs are not only beating the Pirates, they're obviously enjoying themselves. When Kang was hit, it called for a quick and decisive response.
Failing to provide one made a bad situation worse.
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--HEADS OR TAILS
The NHL determined it didn't even need to hold a hearing after Tampa Bay's Ryan Callahan recklessly rammed Kris Letang into the boards head first.
Here's a question about these NHL decisions: Do they flip a Canadian or United States coin?
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