FanHouse TomGorzelanny

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Vladimir Guerrero's had a rough 2009, with injury issues and his dwindling power (his .466 slugging percentage would easily be his career low if the season ended today) causing concern the 34-year-old was full-on in the middle of a career decline.

With two cracks of the bat Monday night, "Vlad the Impaler" reminded us that he's been swinging a hot stick of late. In fact, he's been the old Vlad for quite some time. He just needed to shake the Earth a little bit to ensure everyone took notice.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

In 2005, Tom Gorzelanny pitched in the majors for the first time. He was just 22. Two years later, he went 14-10 with a 3.88 ERA -- logging more than 200 innings in 32 starts for the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates. He did allow too many hits, but he was only 25 years old, so it appeared he would settle in as an anchor for the ever-rebuilding Pirates.

Instead, he had a disastrous past two seasons and had been relegated to the minors. Last week, Gorzelanny was traded to the Cubs, and Tuesday night he passed his Cubs debut with flying colors.

The Chicago Cubs are the latest team to trade with the wheeling and dealing Pittsburgh Pirates, acquiring left-handed pitchers John Grabow and Tom Gorzelanny Thursday afternoon.

A major-league source with knowledge of the deal confirmed to FanHouse's Ed Price that Pittsburgh received right-handers Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio and infielder Josh Harrison in return.

Grabow, who is a pending free agent, had been on the radar of several teams interested in left-handed relief help. He is 3-0 with a 3.42 ERA this year, following up a solid 2008 campaign in which he went 6-3 with a 2.84 ERA and 1.28 WHIP. He fills a need in the Cubs bullpen, as Sean Marshall is currently their only left-handed reliever.

Futilitywatch '09 is a our semi-regular update on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their march toward their record 17th consecutive losing season.

In our last installment two weeks ago, we left the Pittsburgh Pirates for dead as they sat at 12-16, in the midst of what turned out to be an eight-game losing streak that dropped their record to 12-19. Since then, the Bucs have reeled off seven wins in 10 games and sit at 19-22. In fact, if their bullpen hadn't blown an eighth-inning lead last night, they'd only be one game under .500 and Bucco Fever would be sweeping Pittsburgh. Or something.

FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Pittsburgh Pirates.

For the better part of the last decade, the Pittsburgh Pirates aimlessly wandered through the wilderness of baseball with Kevin McClatchy and Dave Littlefield at the helm. Finally, they lost their jobs and Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington took over. For more than a year, the new front office has been working on digging out of the hole dug by Littlefield during his reign of terror. There's only one real problem: The hole dug by Littlefield was so deep that it's going to take more than a year to dig out of it.

A year ago, Tom Gorzelanny seemed like one of the few positive things the Pittsburgh Pirates had going for them. Wednesday, after a full year of struggles and seemingly little improvement in Spring Training, the Pirates demoted him to Triple-A. With this move, it seems likely that Jeff Karstens or Virgil Vazquez will fill the fifth starter slot, so it's a pretty strong statement by Pirate management that they don't think Gorzelanny is capable of pitching at the big-league level right now.

This move is all kinds of interesting for a number of reasons. It's pretty early in camp to see such a prominent player get cut, which makes me wonder if Pirates' GM Neal Huntington is trying to send a message to Gorzelanny. He came to camp 15 pounds lighter this spring, but Huntington hasn't shied away from demoting players to make statements in the past, and the timing here is pretty curious.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Pittsburgh Pirates. I mean, what else needs to be said? They haven't been able to rebuild themselves properly in the past decade and a half. The relatively new front office seems to be headed down the right path, but it's early in the process. Fantasy-wise, you won't find much here to like.

It's the middle of the night on a Friday. The week in sports has included an Olympian cast into exile because of drugs, Kobe Bryant scoring 650 points in a single game, and the Super Bowl. Nobody's reading The Dugout. Nobody's reading mlb.fanhouse.com. The only baseball news is "team wants players, might talk about it."

To persevere during these dark times, I have replaced Tonight's Dugout with a new feature we call "MLB.Com Headline Theatre," where we skim the slash-news section, find an awkwardly-worded article title (which is easy, because they are all awkward), and act it out dramatically.

Tonight's feature: High hopes for Bucs' new-look bench.

It's the circle of baseball life: the Pittsburgh Pirates get a good pitching prospect, he has a great year, and then he disappears from the face of the planet, sometimes never to be seen again and sometimes reemerging with someone else. It's happened with Jason Schmidt, Kris Benson, Kip Wells, and Oliver Perez. This year the two new candidates are Ian Snell and Tom Gorzelanny. Snell just spent some time on the disabled list and maybe that will help him get back on track. Gorzo hasn't been so lucky.

All year, Pirate fans have speculated that there's something wrong with Gorzelanny's arm. Unfortunately, he just keeps taking the mound and getting shelled time after time. With the impending returns of Snell and Phil Dumatrait from the DL, the Pirates are finally taking action with Gorzelanny: he's being sent to AAA Indianapolis to iron out all of the issues he's had this year.

The final straw was apparently the Independence Day beating he absorbed at the hands of the Brewers yesterday, giving up 11 hits and seven earned runs (8 total) in four and two-thirds innings. It's definitely time for the Pirates to do something with Gorzelanny, even if I get the feeling that they have about the idea of what's wrong as you or I do.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Houston Astros (35-41) vs. Texas Rangers (39-38) - 8:05PM Est.

Generally when baseball has their "rivalry" matchups during interleague play, they schedule them for the weekend. That's not the case in Texas, as the Astros and Rangers prepare to begin a three-game set tonight at Minute Maid Park. I'm not sure the reasoning behind this, but I'm just going to guess that there's probably a big high school football scrimmage on Friday night, and the Astros are worried that it will hurt attendance numbers.

Of course, it could also just be that neither the Astros or Rangers have done much the last few seasons. The Astros haven't come anywhere near the success they achieved in 2005 when they won the National League, and the Rangers have only had one winning season (89-73 in 2004, which was good enough for third place!) since we entered the new millenium.

Yet tonight the Rangers are poised to go a whopping two games over .500 for the first time since September 22, 2006. Will history be made tonight in Houston?