The topic came up while I was on the desk Sunday night at WTAE: “Who are the real Pirates?”
Are they the team that swept the Cincinnati Reds over the weekend? Or are they the team that got swept by the St. Louis Cardinals the previous four days?
My response: “They are the team that is 5-5 in its last 10 games.”
They are the team that is 10-10 in its last 20 games. They are the team that is three games above .500 overall (19-16), two games above .500 at home (11-9) and one game above .500 on the road (8-7).
This is just who they are. It’s who I always thought they’d be. The Pirates are roughly a .500 team. Maybe a little bit better. They keep telling us that. Perhaps it’s time we listen.
This franchise has spent so many years dangling somewhere between irrelevant, inconsequential or just flat out bad, that maybe we’ve lost sight of what a 162-game season feels like.
It’s a long haul. It’s not a football season. We can’t keep ascribing season-altering importance to every game.
It wasn’t just one segment of one show one night on Channel 4. I hear it regularly on sports talk radio and see it online. The postgame shows seem to be littered with callers assigning “I told you so” moments to every outcome, good or bad.
There’s the caller/social media account who wants to declare victory on a 90-win prediction and call out “the haters” who dared to doubt that this was the Pirates’ year anytime they scratch out a win.
Then there’s that dude playing the “same old Bucs” card any time they lose.
Neither guy is close to right. Not after 35 games. Not with brand new — or relatively new — players such as Konnor Griffin, Bubba Chandler, Ryan O’Hearn, Brandon Lowe, Marcell Ozuna, Gregory Soto, Jake Mangum and Mason Montgomery as major components of the team.
We don’t know enough about them as individuals yet to guarantee how this will go for the team.
But if we are willing to drop our preconceived notions, they’re giving us some pretty solid clues.
The starting pitching is good enough that a bad stretch of baseball probably won’t last too long, because odds are that the club is going to get at least one good start every five days. The starting staff is in the top five of the National League in WHIP (1.18), batting average against (.222), strikeouts (179) and ERA (3.74).
We also know the defense is bad enough that at any point over those five days, that good start could be ruined by mistakes in the field. The Pirates are 25th in fielding percentage at .984. They have committed the sixth-most errors in MLB (20).
The lineup is also significantly improved from last year. It’s top-five in the N.L. in batting average (.253), on base percentage (.339), OPS (.732) and hits (307).
It also strikes out way too much. With 327 whiffs, the Pirates have the second-highest total in the National League.
The bullpen has had some problems; a save percentage of just 38% (5-of-13) is the third-worst in MLB. The inherited runners’ scoring percentage of 37% is seventh-worst. The bullpen’s 67 walks are the fourth-most in the National League.
None of that should come as a surprise. All of those trends are exactly on brand and in line with who we thought the Pirates would be at the start of the year.
That’s how you get to roughly .500 after 35 games. That’s where the team will probably stay if those stats hold up. If anything, it’s impressive that the Bucs are a few games above break-even.
If it stays that way, the Pirates will remain in wild-card contention until the regular season ends in late September. My advice is that we should hold one big referendum at that point, rather than 127 more between now and then.
But who am I to complain? This was one less column spent trying to figure out when Aaron Rodgers is arriving.
So beat ‘em Bucs! Or lose another five in a row.
Either way, at least the results are worth a reaction … for now.
Listen: Tim Benz and Mark Madden discuss the Pirates during “Madden Monday”