As if the extreme lateness of the recap didn’t tip you off, I’m kind of at a loss for how to summarize this weekend series against the Indians. The Pirates got almost no offense on Friday or Saturday, then put a bunch of guys on against Masterson but couldn’t cash in. The offense is already stretched thin by injuries, Clint Hurdle willingly flaunted logic with his deployment of the designated hitter, and Andrew McCutchen was ice cold all weekend. It’s not hard to see why runs were so hard to come by for the Bucs, and it’s not like this sort of situation was completely unpredictable. Without Snyder and Alvarez and Doumit they’ve teetered on the brink of stretches like this (especially against teams that aren’t the Astros) and seeing the Pirates’ offense go away for a weekend isn’t shocking.
The pitching wasn’t exactly great this weekend, either, though of course a couple bad starts and an injury-thinned bullpen make that something else that isn’t all that surprising. Everything about this three-game set with the Tribe was frustrating, though with McCutchen slumping and the rotation missing both Morton and McDonald, maybe none of it was terribly shocking.
The timing was bad, though, because all of the part-time Pirate fans brought in by the club’s surprising record through 68 games are now shaking their heads and wondering what everyone was so excited about without ever considering that it’s OK to be excited about those same things even though this was a bad weekend for the club. This Pirate club has hit some rough spots before and made me wonder if an ugly slump was coming, but they’ve righted the ship each time. They’d better hope that they can do the same against the Orioles this week, or things really might get bad this time around.
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