"Zach Duke knew that feeling. He remembered that stiffness around his left, pitching elbow all too well.

"My shoulder got a little tired earlier [this season], but it was no big deal. This is," Duke said Saturday, an ice pack encasing the area around his elbow. "I had [this] in '07, tried to pitch through it, ended up on the shelf for two months. Lesson learned."

As a result of a mild muscle strain he sustained Wednesday, about the time he yielded five earned runs in a 7-2 loss against the Chicago White Sox, Duke will skip his start Tuesday at Texas. Ross Ohlendorf will start Tuesday, then Paul Maholm, Jeff Karstens and Brad Lincoln before Duke would be available Saturday in Oakland.

"It started to stiffen up on me," Duke recalled. "I realized my pitches weren't the way they usually are. The velocity was down. The location was down."

Manager John Russell said the Pirates chose to take the conservative path and remove Duke from this spin through the rotation. Should Duke get through a scheduled side session Wednesday in Texas without difficulty, he will start Saturday.

"If everything keeps progressing the way it is, it should be four, five days," Duke said.

To start Saturday in Oakland, "that's the goal right now. Obviously, it depends on how I feel."

But he didn't anticipate problems."