Bucs on Pace for 69-93

I'm not going to be able to provide a game by game breakdown of the Bucs. Even if time permitted, it's an agonizing habit to get into the daily coulda, shoulda, wouldas of any team for 162 games, let alone one that is as frustrating as the Pirates. Yesterday's home opener is a prime example: whoever is to blame for the failure to score in the 9th inning, the fact is that these debates happen very frequently with the Bucs - we've already seen at least two in the first 7 games - the infamous popup that fell in the first game was just the first in a long season. The fact is, they will continue to occur until the Bucs get better players who make the plays instead of offering some postgame explanation about what they were thinking and why the play didn't work.

Let's start out by giving a weekly, or some approximation therof, Good, Bad and Ugly of what we've seen of the Bucs and an adjusted forecast for where they will wind up in September.

THE GOOD

• Scorekeepers have been overly generous to the Bucs so far: Luis Rivas only has three errors.
• Evan Meek will be a (Devil) Ray before the end of April.
• Nate McLouth might be able to play this game.
• Jason Bay is hitting .182 and Adam Laoche .087. This is an improvement from 2007 and means Bay will hit .260 and LaRoche .280 the rest of the way to get their averages up to the .255 and .268 we expect of them.
• Doug Mientkiewicz and his attitude are on the team!
• X-Man is Player of the Week!
• Jose Bautista can play defense.
  

THE BAD

• Both middle infielders are already hurt. One is on the DL; the other has an injury that could impact his performance all season.
  
• Nate McLouth has 742 major league at bats. Adrian Brown had 308. Tike Redman had 230. Chris Duffy had 126. That's 664 AB's combined and not significantly less than McLouth. And those three somehow combined to hit over .310 in those ABs and then fell off the face of the diamond.
  
• Ronny Paulino is going to play more often than he has so far.
  
• Jose Bautista can't hit at all and takes it upon himself to bunt in critical situations in order to drive in a run.
• You won't be able to complain about fundamentals unless you attend Wednesday's and Friday's games in person, cuz they're no longer on TV.
  

THE UGLY

• Scorekeepers have been overly generous to the Bucs so far: Luis Rivas only has three errors so far. He could have twice that plus he almost blew a tailor made DP yesterday. Why is he on the team again? Why did he play SS yesterday instead of Brian 'Freeze' Bixler, who Russell promised to play and not sit on the bench?
  
• Craig Wilson is back!!
• Somewhere Dave Littlefield and Jim Tracy are sharing a toddy and laughing about the lack of fundamentals. And oh that bunting could be better!
• Helmets on the base coaches.
• Neal "Bullpen?! We don't need no stinkin' bullpen!" Huntington still looks 100 times better than Littlefield at this point.
  

So after a week and 7 games, the Bucs are 3-4. That is 3-4 with all the comedies of errors they've committed; either they'll continue to make these mistakes or get better.

I say it will improve somewhat but not enough to make a significant improvement. As of 4/8, I say the Bucs finish right where I pegged them:

72-90