The Sunday Morning Catch-Up: The NL Central continues to vex the Pirates

I don’t understand this any better than you do, but here are the Pirates’ records against NL Central teams this year:

• Cardinals: 5-5
• Cubs: 4-6
• Reds: 2-7
• Brewers: 6-5, but 1-4 since a 5-1 start

The Reds and Brewers are just completely awful this year, and the Pirates have lost five of the seven series that they’ve played against them. These last two losses against the Brewers are particularly galling, because they’re coupled with Cardinal wins that more or less wipe out the two dramatic wins at PNC Park that closed out the season’s first half. It’s difficult to imagine a baseball team that can win their division while getting beaten so regularly by the dregs of the same divison; in general those games are the ones you use to fatten your record up (the Pirates have been excellent at this in the past).

Dropping these two to the Brewers is particularly distressing, though, because the Royals and Nationals are looming on the schedule while the Cardinals play out the month against the White Sox, Braves, Reds, and Rockies, almost entirely at home and with just one make-up against the Royals inserted in there. Nine became 2 1/2 pretty quickly, but the potential for it to balloon back up exists and the Pirates did themselves no favors Friday or last night.

Of course, last night’s game was a strange circumstance as, according to the official story, Francisco Liriano woke up with a stiff neck, couldn’t shake it, and as a result Vance Worley was called into action about 25 minutes before the game started. That’s obviously a bad situation for everyone involved, and even though the Pirates scored some runs, it’s difficult to be all that upset with the guy who had been pitching middle relief for two full months to not turn in a solid start on less than a half hour’s notice.

So it’s up to Jeff Locke now to salvage the series. He’ll face Taylor Jungmann, who hasn’t slowed down since his excellent debut against the Pirates on June 9th. Two losses doesn’t have to mean much, but when you’re in second place at this time of year, it’s got to end at two.