BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
Roundup of a lot of randomness from a lot of time around our teams …
• Russell Martin revived the Pirates, then killed them.
There's more to the tale, of course, not least of which is that three-quarters of Major League Baseball's 2015 season remains. But that was the consensus this week of two intensely knowledgeable men inside the game I've known for many years, one of them a big-time National League executive and the other a long-time American League scout.
It's not about Martin's defense, at least not nearly as much as had been feared.
It's not even about Martin's ability to get the most from a pitching staff, including his much-trumpeted-by-the-advanced-stats-pack gift for influencing strike calls with how he caught the ball. If anything, the Pirates' top starters all look better than a year ago.
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