Sunday, April 20th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Dismal series against Cubs brings new meaning to Pirates
The Pirates are back to being the Pirates. Since hitting 7-7, they have dropped four straight, more often embarrassing themselves than not. Matt Morris getting roughed up is expected, even anticipated. Ian Snell being touched up a little bit is not so anticipated, but he did a solid job of preventing hits from turning into runs. Tom Gorzelanny surrendering six runs, as he did on Friday, is completely unexpected. And Zach Duke giving up five runs in four innings seems to represent the lefty reverting to his form of the last two seasons.
There is no doubt that the Pirates have been awful, particularly in their last two games. Losing by a combined score of 26-5 over two games will never be a positive, at least from a team standpoint. The starting pitching is falling apart again, as Gorzelanny, Duke and Maholm are being anything but the solid to very good pitchers that they were expected to be and, as such, the team is being forced into deep holes at the beginning of games that result in a guaranteed loss.
The failure of the pitching and of the team in general means that the important part of the game, at least to Pirates’ fans, should be individual accomplishments, not the team. This team is simply too terrible to deserve very much attention, but when Jason Bay is making a run at Rookie of the Year, Freddy Sanchez is going for the batting title or Nate McLouth is showing himself to be one of the best kept secrets in baseball in the form of a hitting streak, the game is just more interesting.
That is not to say that the overall performance of the team does not matter, but whenever a period of time, even over two games, such as the one that they just endured against the Cubs occurs, it feels like deja vu all over again. To a fan, the season’s slipping away is almost visible.
That makes Ryan Doumit’s hitting two home runs against the Cubs on Sunday or McLouth’s extending his hitting streak to eighteen games even more important. These individual feats give fans a vision, however small, of success and allow them to feel as if they are part of something important, instead of rooting for their shoddy excuse for a baseball team for the sixteenth consecutive season.
It has been said before and I am sure it will be said again, but the Pirates are made up of a bunch of mediocre players who do not make up a very good baseball team when they are put together, but would be very good parts on a contender. When one of these players steps up and does something special, Pirate supporters can again believe that their team may become a contender.
And there is nothing wrong with that. I know that I definitely fall into this trap, watching games primarily to see whether McLouth will get a hit instead of to see how many runs Damaso Marte can give up in another unimportant situation.
In other words, it’s still worth rooting for the Pirates even if they are playing the Cubs, who seem to absolutely own them this season, but the performance of the team isn’t the number one factor worth paying attention to, particularly when the magic number is already down to 71 and looks like it will continue to drop at a rapid pace.
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