Pirates Scheduling News

The Pirates made 2 scheduling announcements today.  The 1^st announcement, that Major League Baseball has selected the Pirates and Cardinals to officially open the season, moving the game from its originally scheduled date of Monday April 4^th, to an ESPN Broadcast Sunday afternoon game.  Typically, ESPN kicks off the season with a Sunday night game, but this game will be a 1:05 1^st pitch to kick off the season.  With the season opener moving up 1 day, the rest of the series adjusts as well.  The series was originally scheduled Monday, Wednesday, Thursday.  This now changes to playing Sunday, OFF DAY Monday, play Tuesday and Wednesday, OFF DAY Thursday.  The Pirates then travel and play in Cincinnati for a weekend series beginning Friday.

Obviously, this is a huge honor and recognition for the Pirates to be selected for this game, but the 1^st thing that I thought of was how this allows Hurdle to set up his rotation.  If the Pirates would elect to, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, they don’t need to throw their #5 starter until GAME 8 of the season. Considering the large question marks regarding the Pirates starting pitching staff for the 2016 season, I think this could be very beneficial.  This also allows the Pirates to throw Cole 3 times in the teams 1^st 9 games.  I know that people may complain about pushing him too much early in the season, but he is the ace of your staff and he would still be going on full rest for all of these starts.  The way the Pirates have started off the last 2 seasons, I would say it would be a good idea to push Cole to make these starts.  The Pirates were 21-26 in April over the last 2 years, which is 5 games UNDER .500.  They were a combined 63 games OVER .500 after April in those 2 seasons.  For whatever reason, the Pirates get off to slow starts, this may be something that helps to avoid that again in 2016.

Another small benefit from this scheduling means that the team could elect to carry an extra bat for the 1^st 7 games of the season.  Being that the Pirates play in Detroit for games 7-8, I’m guessing that they will opt to keep an extra bat, since they will need a DH.

As for the 2^nd announcement made today, the Pirates will be playing in Puerto Rico this season.   The Pirates and Marlins are scheduled to play a 4-game series in Miami from May 30^th to June 2^nd.  Major League Baseball, assuming with the Miami Marlins, moved the 1^st 2 games of that series to Puerto Rico.  The move was to celebrate Roberto Clemente, as all of Major League Baseball will celebrate Roberto Clemente Day on May 31^st.

My only hope is that the celebration of Roberto Clemente Day is kicked off by Major League Baseball announcing the retirement of the number 21 league wide. It would be long overdue.