Editor’s note: sorry for all these late recaps lately, I’ve got a super-busy fall in front of me as I’m trying to finally finish up grad school.
Look: I can’t explain why the Pirates are so bad against the bottom of NL Central this year. This team spent August tearing through the Mets, Dodgers, and Giants with an alarming alacrity. They are considered by pretty much everyone to be one of baseball’s two or three best teams in 2015 to this point. They have 79 wins before Labor Day Weekend even begins. They haven’t won a series against the 57-win Brewers or 55-win Reds since April.
This drives me nuts. If the Pirates do finish up with 97 or 99 or 101 wins and they end up behind the Cardinals, it will simultaneously be impossible to say that they should have done more (any of those numbers that is a ton of wins that would win most divisions in most years) and impossible to feel like they couldn’t have, given their record against the dregs of their division. They’ve sliced through every non-NL Central competitor this year with ease, they’ve held serve against the Cardinals and Cubs, and they absolutely cannot beat the Reds or Brewers under pretty much any circumstance, even with those two clubs emptying their rosters at the trade deadline. It makes such little sense that it’s barely even worth considering why it’s happening. It sucks, and it’s probably the main reason why the Pirates will be in the Wild Card Game this year.
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