When this season started, all I really wanted was some kind of sign that Neal Huntington’s plan was going to work with this current group of players and minor leaguers. I felt kind of like an Old Testament prophet, standing on top of a mountain and yelling, “GIVE ME A SIGN! ANY SIGN!” The Pirates have wandered aimlessly for so long that just knowing that someone has an idea of how to get to the destination seemed comforting.
Really, that’s still the most important part of this season. 60 games isn’t even half of a season’s worth and plenty of bad things can happen in 102 games. One of my least parts of being a Pirate fan, though, is the parsing. Yeah, Garrett Jones is on fire for half of a season, but can he do it again when the team is good? Sure, Neil Walker is surprising the heck out of everyone, but can he do it again when the club isn’t going to lose 105 games? Andrew McCutchen is good, sure, but can he be the great player this franchise needs?
What gets lost in all of that is that sometimes watching baseball is just fun for the sake of watching baseball. That’s the best part of the 2011 Pirates through 60 games; they’re fun to watch, they don’t mail it in when things go bad, they get big hits, make big pitches, and they’re young. Who cares what happens in ten games or fifty games or 100 games? This team is fun to watch now.
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