After calamitous start to August, Pirates trying to keep the faith

To begin August, the Pittsburgh Pirates had just been bolstered (albeit modestly) at the trade deadline and were coming off a 15-10 month of July.

That .600 winning percentage was the club’s best over the course of the season to date.

On Aug. 1, the 55-53 Pirates were looking in from the outside of the National League wild card race but were only 2½ games out of the third spot.

A tough few weeks against solid clubs lay ahead, but things nonetheless appeared promising for the Pirates, who hoped to continue their push toward the postseason.

Fast forward two weeks and on Aug. 15, the Pirates (56-64) have undergone a calamitous change in fortune.

The club has dropped 10 consecutive games, with a win last coming Aug. 3 against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

From just about every imaginable vantage point, it’s a collapse of epic proportions.

“Definitely frustrating,” said starter Mitch Keller, who’s been rocked for 15 hits and 15 earned runs over his last two starts, losses to Los Angeles and San Diego, on Wednesday’s SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show.

“I think we have a really good team and we know what we can do. It’s just not clicking for us right now.”

With roughly six weeks left to go in the regular season, it would take a drastic reversal combined with the tanking of several other teams for the Pirates to stand a chance at nabbing a wild-card spot.

Last year, the Diamondbacks and Miami Marlins won 84 games and were two of the NL’s wild card teams.

To even get to that total — the lowest in the wild card era (1994-present), not counting the 1994 and 1995 strike-shortened seasons, as well as the covid-condensed 2020 season — the Pirates would have to go 28-14.

In other words, they’d need to win 67% of their remaining games.

“The most important thing is that this group’s got to stay together,” said manager Derek Shelton. “They played good baseball for three-and-a-half months. We’re in a tough stretch right now. They’ve got to stay together.

“Not one individual person can try to do too much. One person doesn’t get you out of a stretch like this. It’s going to have to be a collective group and doing a little thing here or there and not trying to win a game by yourself.”

Among the most brutal elements of the Pirates’ ongoing slump is that it occurred largely against teams they needed to make up ground against in the wild card race, Arizona and San Diego.

Nine of the Pirates’ last 12 games have come against the Diamondbacks and Padres, who on Aug. 3 were 60-52 and 59-52, respectively.

But after the Padres won all their games against the Pirates – three in Pittsburgh and three in San Diego – they now boast a commanding 12-game lead in the wild card standings.

Arizona, which won four of six games vs. the Pirates in late July and early August, is in a similar situation, with an identical 69-53 record as San Diego.

Unfortunately for the Pirates, their woes extend far further than ceding ground to the Diamondbacks and Padres, both of whom are 9-1 over their last 10 games.

Slipping into last place in the NL Central means that the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals all sit above them in the wild card standings, as do the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets.

It would probably be fair to say that the Pirates are deceiving themselves if they still believe the postseason is attainable after a disastrous start to August.

But for now, those inside the clubhouse are doing their best to keep the faith.

“Playoffs are always the goal,” Keller said. “Until you’re out of it, you’re (not) out of it and we’re not out of it right now. It’s going to be an uphill battle, for sure, but we’re going to do the best that we can. I feel like we’ve got a lot of good baseball left to play.

“We played really good baseball for a long time and I think we’re just in a rut right now. We’ve got to get out of it as fast as possible. Whatever that looks like, I don’t know. Just got to keep showing up and playing. Use (Thursday), an off-day and get right back after it.”