Pittsburgh Pirates Being Upended by Relatively "Weak" Teams

The Pittsburgh Pirates are doing well against genuinely weak teams like the Houston Astros, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies and Philadelphia Phillies. They're a healthy 9-2 against the Astros, 6-3 against the Cubs, 4-2 against the Rockies and 4-3 against the Phillies.

With the exception of the Los Angeles Dodgers (1-6), the Bucs are also doing fine against strong teams. They have basically neck-and-neck results with the Washington Nationals (3-2), Atlanta Braves (2-2), St. Louis Cardinals (3-3), Cincinnati Reds (4-5) and San Francisco Giants (3-3).

Where the Pirates have a victory deficit is against fourth-place teams—the New York Mets, the San Diego Padres and the Milwaukee Brewers. Pittsburgh is 1-2 so far against the Mets (in PNC Park), 1-5 against the Padres and 4-5 against the Brewers.

These are teams that others can beat, but which feast on the Pirates.

It's too bad that the Pirates allowed seven runs in the third game of the Milwaukee series, but the fact of the matter was that the Bucs were shut out that game, and outscored in the series as a whole, 13-9.

Milwaukee has won the season series against Pittsburgh every year since 2006. With a 4-5 record so far, the Pirates are actually doing better than usual against the Brewers.

The Padres have won every series against the Pirates in PNC Park for the past three years. They don't do quite as well in PetCo Field, which is why the Bucs sometimes manage to tie the season series. But not this year. 

The Mets do well against the Pirates at home, which is to say that with a 2-1 lead in PNC Park, they are likely to win the season series.

To understand how important these results are, let's see what would happen if we change a few of these series in favor of the Pirates to bring them in line with what they did against other teams. One can easily see three more victories against the Padres, three more against the Brewers, one more against the Mets and for good measure, one more against the Dodgers.

That's a difference of eight games, which would mean that the Pirates would be in a tie for the National League Central instead of two games out of the second Wild Card.