The Sports Monitor

I want to believe Pirates general manager Neal Huntington when he says Boston College catcher Tony Sanchez was the highest player on their draft board Tuesday. I'll toss aside his other comments about putting money into signing other draft picks, although I would think you would want to put as much money into getting a high-impact player as possible. Let's take Huntington at his word, shall we? Let's believe the Pirates honestly had Sanchez as the No. 3 player in the draft. The Bucs got their guy, and that makes me scared. More talent evaluators, and I think it would be easy to say most evaluators, didn't think that highly of Sanchez. They had Sanchez pegged for the bottom of the first round of the draft. Instead, the Bucs took him at No. 4. If that's not a big, red flag, then I don't know what is. If the Pirates are off on evaluating talent for the draft, then maybe they're off on the players already in the minors and big leagues. Maybe they're off on t...

My cousin got married last week and I finally was able to grab a minute to talk to him at the reception. Of course, the topic quickly moved to sports, and he couldn't help but bring up the Pirates. "You know, I was at a game earlier this year, we were in the box and no one cared what was going on during the game," he said. That's understandable and pretty reasonable, I guess, considering how the team has played for 16 years. His next question really stumped me. "When are they going to win again?" he asked. I didn't have an answer. To him, and what seems like many Pirates fans, the baseball season has become a distraction between the end of the Penguins' season and the start of Steelers training camp. After hearing the news Wednesday night about the Pirates' trade of Nate McLouth to the Atlanta Braves for three minor league players, I'd be able to tell him that it's at least a couple years longer than it was last week. To call the trade a ...