It’s not particularly fun to try and deal with an 0-3 start when five days ago you were attempting to catalogue all of the respected media pundits that picked the Pirates to win the World Series, but these are the sorts of things that the baseball season foists upon you occasionally, and so here we are.
This sort of situation is a pain to try and deal with from a fan’s perspective, because while you can sit back and listen to the rational part of your brain that tells you that the Pirates will win their share of games this year and that they were going to lose somewhere between, say, 65 and 85 games this year no matter what, the objective reality is that the Pirates are 0-3 and no one’s seen them win a baseball game that matters since September 26th, 2014. That’s a long time. It sucks that it’s hard to properly contextualize an 0-3 start for a team that you had high expectations for, but it also kind of sucks that they’re 0-3, especially since these three games felt so winnable.
If I may make an attempt at context, though, what I would say is this: rain delay games are always weird games, and the Pirates have played three in a row. The bullpen was not great, but the expectation that it would be great right off the bat was a little odd: the Pirates compiled a bunch of interesting and talented arms and the bullpen may ultimately be a team strength, but there’s going to be a trial period while they figure out what combination of Liz/Caminero/Scahill/Holdzkom/etc. suits them best. Today’s game had a few really encouraging pieces buried in the disappointment of a third straight late loss and a second straight blown lead.
The first is that AJ Burnett looked great. He ended up giving a home run up to Joey Votto that blew the Pirates’ 2-0 lead, but that came after a rain delay that lasted over an hour a day after a bullpen-stretching extra-inning-plus-rain-delay game. Burnett recorded sixteen outs for the Pirates today, seven of them came via the strikeout and seven game via groundouts. He threw a ton of strikes (58 of 87), and if the rain delay hadn’t interrupted him, it’s easy to think he could’ve shut the Reds down for much longer than he did. You can’t answer any definitive questions about Burnett’s health or durability after one start, but certainly this was encouraging given the questions raised by his year in Philadelphia.
The second important thing that happened in this game was Pedro Alvarez’s opposite field home run. In the < 500 series I talked about how I thought there might have been some evidence that Alvarez was turning an important corner at the plate last year before his defensive meltdown, and I wrote that before he went crazy on Grapefruit League pitching. Like with Burnett, it’s obviously much too early to draw conclusions, but seeing Alvarez take two outside pitches and drive them with power to left-center on two consecutive days is really encouraging.
I suppose I can close with this: Just like it’s way too early to say anything about Burnett or Alvarez, it’s also too early to say anything about the Pirates. Three games is 1/54th of the season, and so while no one likes 0-3, no one has to jump to any conclusions, either.
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
