It seems like it was a million years ago, but last April the Pirates didn't score more than five runs in a game until April 30th when they put nine on the Braves in their 22nd game. They only even scored five runs four times in those first 21 games, as opposed to the nine games in which they scored one or zero runs. There are a number of things you can do with this information. You can note that even with such a terrible start, the Pirates (who are mostly composed of the same hitters now as they were then) managed to bounce back to the point that they had only a slightly-below average offense for the season in 2012 and were, at one point, 16 games over .500 before collapsing due to their pitching staff. You could say, "the Pirates only gave up 66 runs in 22 April games but went 10-12 and maybe if they'd scored some runs in April they could've won 83 or 84 games and at least we wouldn't have to worry about THAT anymore."
Of course, for now none of that matters because the Pirates' offense has taken a week off and so they've started 2013 at 1-5. For a brief moment this afternoon, it seemed like maybe today was going to be different. Starling Marte started the game off against Hyun-Jin Ryu with a single, then Andrew McCutchen mashed a home run into left field to give the Pirates a 2-0 lead. Things did not look up for long. Jeff Locke gave that lead right back by giving up three hits in a row in the bottom of the first, then the Pirates only managed one more hit off of Ryu in his next 5 1/3 innings. Locke, meanwhile, got hit pretty hard and ended up giving up four runs in his six innings, at which point things were pretty much hopeless.
There's no rest for the weary or the hitless; the Pirates will be in Arizona to play the 5-1 Diamondbacks tomorrow.
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