SARASOTA, Fla. -- The bat whipped around violently over Pedro Alvarez's shoulder, narrowly missing the home plate ump and digging a divot back by the backstop.
And hey, welcome to 2016, where that's actually a good thing for the Pirates.
Because out there on the mound, generating the 95-mph high heat that got that corkscrew going, was Juan Nicasio, maybe the only present hope for upside in a rotation that, at least at the moment, points powerfully toward a regression for the franchise as a whole.
And oh, man, did Juan have it going on, fanning 10 of the 14 Orioles he faced in a 9-3 loss Wednesday at Ed Smith Stadium. He allowed two baserunners in rifling through four innings, he threw 37 of 59 pitches for strikes, and he had heads shaking on both sides of the diamond.
This was the 10th K, courtesy of a filthy slider and a frozen Mark Trumbo:
"We like what we're seeing," Clint Hurdle offered with a slight, incredulous head shake. Then, addressing the current depth chart that shows Nicasio as No. 6 in a five-man field, he added, "We're not ruling anything out right now. Anything at all."
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