There's a new pitching coach.

That individual might be, I very much meanness when I say it,

the most important acquisition the team makes. And I am not, again, joking here.

Morning to you. Good. Tuesday morning. I'm Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early. Every weekday.

I also offer daily shots on the Steelers and Penguins that I hope you'll check out as well.

Dodgers 6, Blue Jays 5 in 18 innings last night in Los Angeles.

That was game 3. The Dodgers now have a two games to one lead on what one can only hope will be their latest championship, thanks almost entirely to a $350 million payroll, of which an enormous chunk of that goes to Freddie Freeman.

He has a $162 million contract that was able to buy him away from the Braves.

57 million of that's deferred.

Sorry to be a buzzkill. That's what I see when I see baseball.

That's what I hear when I hear baseball. It's broken. And I'm sure it's broken to the point that, wow, I can't even imagine that a fraction of our city would have watched any of this game, never mind

staying up till 3 in the morning for its conclusion. But that's okay because local fans get to

ruminate on the new pitching coach. The name is Bill Murphy. The reputation is a very good one. He comes from the Astros, and strikingly,

he comes in a wholly lateral move, meaning he was the pitching coach there, he'll be the pitching

coach here, and that organization in general has tended to be ahead of the curve in baseball

in more ways than just banging on trash cans.

Oscar Marine, who was just fired to create this opening, also came from Houston.

And the other thing that the two have in common is that they're known to have backgrounds

in advanced analytics, in biomechanics,

in all the stuff that the people inside the sport prioritize really everywhere.

And now, more than ever, unapologetically.

...