Notes From Pirate City: Somebody That I Used to Know

There’s about four different “Hit Music” stations down here in the Bradenton area, and there’s a few things I noticed in the five weeks I’ve been down here.

1. They play Adele every five minutes.

2. They all try to copy each other. If one station is playing Rihanna, it’s pretty much a guarantee that another station is putting Rihanna on next. At first I thought this was due to the law of averages, since there are only 10 different songs that these stations play. But then I heard one station play a Rihanna station promo (Hi, this is Rihanna and you’re listening to *Insert Station Here*), followed by “We Found Love”. A moment later another station had the exact same promo, followed by the exact same song. They both followed a Rihanna song with the same Chris Brown song that talks about international love, but doesn’t mention any places outside of the United States in the chorus.

3. Today I heard a song by a new singer called Gotye called “Somebody That I Used to Know”. I swore it was Sting from The Police. Listen to the song. They sound exactly alike.

Today’s pitching matchups at Pirate City will feature somebody that I used to know. I first saw Joely Rodriguez pitch at the end of the 2010 season. I was impressed by the fastball the young left hander had, showing good movement and touching the low-90s. I put him in the 31-50 range of the top 50 heading in to the 2011 season. Then, after two starts during the 2011 season, one of which I saw, Rodriguez went down for the season with an elbow injury.

Rodriguez pitches today in an intrasquad game. It will be the first time I’ve seen him this year, and the first time I’ve seen him pitch since his final start in 2011. So I can definitely say that his start will be my primary focus this afternoon.

AAA (Road Game): Jeff Locke (Starter), Brian Tallet, Michael Dubee, Tim Wood

AA (Road Game): Brandon Cumpton (Starter), Ryan Beckman, Tim Alderson, Victor Black

A: Aaron Pribanic (Starter), Eliecer Navarro, Casey Sadler, Jason Townsend

A: Tyler Waldron (Starter), Rinku Singh, Robbie Kilcrease, Justin Ennis, Emmanuel DeLeon, Josh Poytress

Intrasquad Game

Team 1: Zack Von Rosenberg (Starter), Cesar Lopez

Team 2: Joely Rodriguez (Starter), Orlando Castro, Isaac Sanchez, Vincent Payne

I’ll be on TribLive Radio today at 12:40 PM. You can listen here.