Pittsburgh Pirates Beginning to Make Headway, Particularly in Own Division

In the end, the 2011 Pirates ended up about where one might have expected them to be. The quality of last year's  team was better than 57 wins. They had been "unlucky" for five or six games, meaning that their true base might have been 62-63. The 2011 team figured to be better than the 2010 team by about ten games, for about 72 wins.

It seemed, for a time (up to the end of July) that the Bucs would beat this figure. Why might that be? I could think of two reasons. The first was that having been "unlucky" for five or six games last year, they could get lucky for a similar number of games this year. That would take them up to about 77. The second reason might be the new manager, Clint Hurdle, who might "manage out" an extra five games (in close ones) as he seemed to be doing, to take the team just over .500.

The tide may have turned with that 19 inning nail biter in July that went the other way on what was probably a bad umpire call. But the real question was, why did the team get into such a situation? (Because it was too weak to put the game away earlier).

Those nineteen innings represented TWO games, one of them 10 innings. Essentially, the Pirates played a "double header," losing one game outright, with the second game placed in abeyance for all time. Even if the team had WON the game, the bullpen would have been exhausted.

One example: Joel Hanrahan, heretofore almost totally reliable, blew more than one save in August.

The "luck," clearly ran out in August, when the Bucs racked up 10 consecutive losses (a few of them in July). That's what separates them from other "come from behind" teams like Hurdle's own former Colorado Rockies. In one month, they lost back whole season's worth of "lucky" and "managed" wins.

Even so, the Pirates have made progress in key areas in 2011. They went 8-7 against American League teams in Interleague play in June (a typical bugaboo for National League teams generally, and for the Pirates in the past). And while the club's road record was not a winning one, it was no worse than their home record  (both were 36-45). Now the need is for improvement across the board, not just "away."

Pittsburgh is also beginning to make progress against other National League Central division teams. There were two season series victories of 11-7 against the Houston Astros, and 10-5 against the Cincinnati Reds. The Pirates finished 8-8 against the Chicago Cubs, after an early lead, because of the August meltdown that led to a four-game CUB sweep in PNC Park. An early season lead against the St. Louis Cardinals also turned into a  7-9 deficit.

The biggest stumbling block has been, and remains, the Bucs' season record of 3-12 against the Milwaukee Brewers, this year's Central Division champion. That's a bit better, to be sure, than the awful 1-14 result posted in 2008, but actually below the five win tallies racked up in both 2009 and 2010. But this points the way to a possible Pirate emergence.

Suppose the Bucs had been able to reverse the season series against Milwaukee by going 12-3. This one change alone would have given the team 81 wins for a .500 season. Assume also that the stronger team that it represented had been able to win three more games against the St. Louis Cardinals, and had produced a more normal 3-1 result against the Cubs at home in August. That would have put the Pirates in a three way tie with the Brewers and Cardinals at 87 wins each, which would have been in favor of the Pirates because they won both season series.

A low 70s win total and fourth place finish isn't great. But it's a step above where Pirates have been since the middle of the past decade. And it promises better things to come in 2012.