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Pirates’ winning fluke, er streak, won’t save season

5 min read

The Pirates’ season can’t end soon enough.

It’s been another season of misery for anybody who still roots for them. With three quarters of the season gone, they came into the weekend one game under .500 and 11 games out of first place.

Since their 11-game winning fluke, they are 8-13. That really stinks.

I’m sorry, did I say winning fluke? I meant streak. You remember those heady times when fans and way too many in the media were starting to take the idea of a postseason run seriously?

It’s a 162-game season. Eleven-game winning streaks are nice but bad teams have almost always managed to put together long streaks in a long baseball season.

Prior to the 11-game fluke – sorry – streak, the Pirates had lost six out of seven and they had lost five in a row coming into the weekend. So, their record going into and coming out of the streak is 9-19. That’s what teams that struggle to finish .500 in a 162-game season do.

Remember when the Pirates did it for 20 years in a row?

They’re working on four in a row, now.

Gregory Polanco got hot in June and July and hit slightly above .300 for those two months. We heard he had moved off the plate and that’s what got him out of his slump. It’s the big leagues. When a hitter adjusts, the pitchers can adjust to their adjustments. Polanco is hitting .151 in August. After hitting eight home runs in July, coming into the weekend, he had none in August.

Did I mention that it’s a 162-game season? Polanco is a lifetime .250 hitter. He’s hitting .240 right now, hit around .210 for April and May, then a little above .300 for June and July. That’s how you get to be a .250 hitter. Polanco hit .387 last July followed by .125 in August and .214 in September.

Here’s what you don’t do with guys like that in the middle of your lineup: Win.

So, it’s another summer with the Pirates being mostly a source of misery for anybody interested rooting for a baseball team, but, hey, it’s nothing another 11-game winning fluke wouldn’t fix.

  • Pirates general manager Neal Huntington did what he had to do when he made trades at the deadline to improve his pitching but Chris Archer hasn’t done his part. His ERA is over 5.00 in his three starts as a Pirate. With the Pirates, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
  • Remember how people were trashing the Pirates’ ownership for not doing what the Milwaukee Brewers did and fattening up their payroll? The Brewers, who have won one playoff series in 35 years, came into the weekend with seven losses in their last 10 games and are 4 ½ out of first in the National League Central Division, behind the Cubs. There’s a good chance that they’re going nowhere again. The Nutting family’s team also is going nowhere but the Nutting family will probably be putting more money in the bank. Who’s smarter?
  • Tom Brady is 41 years old. Bill Belichick had him play almost the entire first half of the Patriots’ second exhibition game. Ben Roethlisberger hasn’t taken a snap yet.
  • One thing that has been obvious in this NFL preseason is that the new rules about tackling are going to make tackling even more of a lost art than it’s been the last 15 years or so.
  • NFL historians, when comparing players from 20 years from now to players of the last 20 years, will need to give huge amounts of weight to the disappearance of tackling when comparing stats. But they probably won’t.
  • Tyler Kepler of the New York Times pointed out this week that this could be the first season in Major League Baseball history when there are more strikeouts than hits. Thirty years ago batters had 13,000 more hits than strikeouts. Last year it was a difference of only 2,000 and through Wednesday, according to Kepler, there were 30,678 hits and 30,569 strikeouts. So, current baseball fans are seeing 13,000 fewer hits. Kepler didn’t have the numbers on pitching changes but I’m guessing there are a few thousand more of those than there were 30 or 40 years ago. If I get the time, I’ll look it up and get back to you. I promise.
  • Kareem Abdul-Jab
  • bar is the most recent black former athlete to compare NBA players to slaves. In an op-ed in the Hollywood Reporter, Abdul-Jabbar said making the players stand for the National Anthem is comparable to slave masters making slaves sing while they worked. Abdul-Jabbar seems to be a smart guy. What, in that scenario, other than the men being black, comes close to anything resembling slavery? It’s a stupid comparison that diminishes the horrific existence that so many black people had to endure. Abdul-Jabbar has to know that slaves couldn’t quit, doesn’t he? That’s an option any player in any sport has if he doesn’t like what the boss is telling him to do.

Is there any reason to mention that the slaves weren’t paid and the average salary of an NBA player is over $2 million a year? The scary thing is that, when an idiotic comparison like Abdul-Jabbar’s is made, there are lots of supposedly smart people out there nodding in agreement.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.

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