If you would’ve told me a week ago that the Pirates were about to reel off eight straight wins against the Dodgers, Rockies, and Cubs, I would’ve hoped that doing so would’ve prevented tonight’s Sunday Night Baseball game against Jake Arrieta from being a must-win for the Pirates. That’s not really the case, though: either the Cardinals will lose to the Brewers this afternoon, and the Pirates will have a chance to cut the Cards’ lead to two games, or the Cardinals will win and the Pirates will absolutely have to beat Arrieta to stay within striking distance of the NL Central for tomorrow’s showdown with the Cardinals at PNC Park. It’s a little crazy to sit here and look at the Pirates on their eight-game winning streaking, and feel like they realistically might have to win their last seven to win the division, but that’s where we are today. It is what it is, I suppose.
Anyway, after Francisco Liriano turned in maybe his best start of 2015 yesterday, the Pirates have their lead on the Cubs at 5 1/2 games with seven to go on the season (eight for the Cubs), so they’ve nearly got home field for the Wild Card Game sewed up (their magic number to clinch that is three, if my math is correct). The Cardinals pounced on some Brewer pitcher that I’d never heard of, so we head into today’s games at the absolute-bare-minimum acceptable distance between the Pirates and Cardinals for the series that begins tomorrow. Today’s challenge is to keep that deficit at three games or shrink it to two with the Cardinals starting John Lackey against Tyler Cravy, while the Pirates send AJ Burnett out to face Arrieta. This is not idea, I guess, but hope remains alive.
Lackey and Cravy go at 2:15. Burnett and Arrieta at 8:08. Let’s see what happens.
Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images
