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Ask BD: Mark Melancon's struggles and the plan for Jung-Ho Kang

Thanks for your questions. Keep them coming, and here's the first round of answers.

Pedropower: How should we interpret the steep drop in Mark Melancon's velocity?

Joshua Choudhury is going to cover this in more detail later today, but Melancon's velocity drop is a problem. FanGraphs says his cutter is off by about three miles an hour, and it isn't even categorizing any of his pitches as fastballs anymore. Either he needs to get back on track or the Pirates need to develop some kind of contingency plan. I wondered yesterday why the Pirates brought him into a four-run game, and then a reader pointed out that a four-run game might not be a bad spot for him if he has things to work on.