From Turmoil to Triumph - A Pittsburgh Pirate Franchise - Clonefan84's Blog

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From Turmoil to Triumph - A Pittsburgh Pirate Franchise

Posted on May 11, 2010 at 04:09 PM.

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Hello everyone and welcome to another summer filled with exciting baseball action as the Pittsburgh Pirates look to return to glory after 17 agonizing and painful years. Manager John Russell says that he belives he has the pieces this year to push for the NL Central division title and a possible playoff run. After months of waiting, Russell has released his teams depth chart for the upcoming season opener against the Dodgers:

Pittsburgh Pirates 2010 Depth Chart
	STARTER	2ND	3RD	4TH	5TH
C	Ryan Doumit	Jason Jaramillo
1B	Jeff Clement	Steven Pearce
2B	Akinori Iwamura
3B	Andy LaRoche
SS	Bobby Crosby	Ronny Cedeno
LF	Lastings Milledge	Delwyn Young
CF	Andrew McCutchen
RF	Garret Jones	Ryan Church
DH	(RHP) Ryan Church	(LHP) Jeff Clement
SP	Zach Duke	Paul Maholm	Ross Ohlendorf	Kevin Hart	Chris Jakubauskas
RP	D.J. Carrasco	Evan Meek	Vinnie Chulk	Javier Lopez
CL	Octavio Dotel	(SU) Joel Hanrahan	(SU) Tyler Yates

The one suprising thing about this is what Russell has decided to do with the 5th starter in the pitching rotation. When asked about it, he replied: "I truly believe that Chris Jakubauskas is ready to show the world he has what it takes to be a big league starter. Most players that get to their mid to late 20's and haven't made it in the bigs yet usually give up and settle into the minors or even retire all together, but this guy worked really hard up to his current age now of 31, and last year he got his shot and pitched ok. He's been working extra hard this off season and soon he may even make strides to becoming more than just a 5th starter. This guy has some great stuff!" The Pirates will open the season with a three game homestand with the Los Angeles Dodgers, so they will be put to the test early.

Alright, I finally got my dynasty up and running, so I wanted to take a second to explain my processes:
-Veteran difficulty, manual everything, guess 1/4, PCI on, Hot zones on
-I'm not the greatest at this game, so I wanted to start off with veteran because I seem to get pretty realistic results that way. However, if it does start to get way out of hand and I start whipping the Cardinals and Phillies by 10-15 runs all the time I will probably bump it up to all-star.
-I have aleady started this season, and in fact am almost at May. My plan is to post as much as possible to catch up to where I am now so that I can post as I go. When I catch up to where I am, I hope to have the highlight reel for each game and I should have accumulating totals in the box scores for 2B, RBI, HR, etc. I will also keep an updated standings for the league when I get there too, but for now each game will be a simple update until I get there.