Stop for a minute. Close your eyes. Remember the wall that we built around the 2011 season in March and forget every single thing you know about the 1993-2010 Pittsburgh Pirates. Forget 2010 and forget 2004 and forget 1999 and forget 1997 and consider only the 2011 Pirates.
The 2011 Pirates are a young team that are playing well above expectations in many regards, but in other regards still seem to have room for improvement even within this 2011 season. I don’t know what the next 95 games hold for them, but I do know that the first 67 have been exciting and fun to watch and that after these 67 games, the Pirates are above .500 and right in the thick of the NL Central and NL Wild Card races. I don’t know that any of those three things will be true in a month or two or three, but they are true right now.
It’s because they’re true right now that I want to see the Pirates finish their sweep of the Astros this afternoon. I don’t care when the Pirates were last two games over .500 this late in a season. It’s irrelevant. If the Pirates win today, they could be two games back of a playoff spot more than a third of the way into the season. That’s relevant because whether you believe they can keep playing at this pace or not, you can’t deny that they’ve done it for 67 games. Every single game the Pirates win right now takes them one game further into the season without a meltdown. I want the Pirates to win today, because I want to feel about them tomorrow the way I do right now.
James McDonald takes the mound this afternoon with a somewhat depleted bullpen behind him. Rookie Jordan Lyles goes for the Astros. First pitch is at 2:05 on the East coast. Get out your radios.
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