If there’s one trope that’s been driving me nuts for the last month, it’s the comparison between where this year’s Pirates are and were last year’s Pirates were on the same date or after the same number of games. I have two problems with this. One is that one bad start does not excuse another. The other is that the Pirates’ bad start last year legitimately cost them the National League Central, which put them in the Wild Card Game against Madison Bumgarner. The Pirates were the best team in the NL Central and one of the National League’s two or three best teams in the season’s last 120 games, and we never got to find out what they could do in the playoffs because of the first 40. From one perspective, it was great to see them make the Wild Card Game after their bad start to affirm the result of 2013. From another, having that team lose the Wild Card Game was a big disappointment.
I’m mentioning this today, though, because we’re more or less at the same point in the season at which last year’s Pirates turned things around. On May 20th last year, Francisco Liriano made an awful start against the Orioles and the Pirates dropped to 18-26, eight games out of first place. On May 21st, Wandy Rodriguez got lit up in his last start as a Pirate, but the Pirates managed to come back and get a two-game split against the O’s. They won their next three against the Nationals, and after one more brief stumble (they lost the last game of the four-game set against the Nats, then two of three from the Mets) they were on their way back to .500 and beyond. If you think that this Pirate team can finish the season as strong as last year’s Pirates did, this is the point in the season at which they need to put things in motion.
I know that some fans don’t like the negative focus that’s been put on this team of late, which is why the “at this point last year …” gets trotted out so often. I think that the negativity is more or less just a feature of the pre-season expectations, though; most of us expected this team to at least contend in the NL Central, and with nearly a quarter of the season gone to this point they have very decidedly not done so. The 7-15 record against the Reds, Cardinals, and Cubs attests to that. It’s pretty easy to see what’s wrong, too: no one is hitting, the rotation that we were all afraid would be paper-thin when the season began is paper-thin and already fraying at the edges, and the bullpen upgrades weren’t enough to create a viable bullpen. The problems have run deep enough that it’s easy to worry about them stacking deep into the season: this club was built on an offense that was supposed to be dangerous from 1-8. Given the way the season’s begun, even if Neil Walker returns to last year’s form, that leaves an offense that’s dangerous from 2-6 (Marte, McCutchen, Walker, Alvarez, Kang), or maybe 1-6 if you’re feeling charitable to Josh Harrison with his recent rebound (this scenario is already being charitable to the streaky Alvarez and the virtually unknown Kang). Is that enough to compensate for a rotation that’s already turning to Charlie Morton as a solution and has precious few good options behind him? Is that enough for a bullpen that has Tony Watson, a few interesting arms, and a broken-down Mark Melancon?
The roadmap for these Pirates back into NL Central contention is straightforward: get Neil Walker back to hitting at a 2014 level, fix Gregory Polanco’s bat, or find a right fielder that will hit in his place, get Francisco Liriano pitching at a high level, find another starter so that Locke/Worley/Sadler/Morton don’t take up two rotation spots, and create bullpen depth, either by getting Liz and Bastardo on track or by putting pitchers in their spots that will. There aren’t enough games passed to say that any of these things are impossible, but there are enough games passed to say that quite a few of them are less likely than we’d hoped in March, and that if they don’t turn around soon they risk turning around too late.
That’s all there is to it, really: if you want to use last year as a guideline, then the time for the Pittsburgh Pirates to start turning their season around is now. If they wait much longer, those 7 1/2 games between them and the Cardinals are going to start to look insurmountable.
Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
