Everyone gets the opportunity to make certain predictions before the season starts, just because you make a terrible prediction doesn’t mean you get to adjust it. Maybe they should wait until game 140 so they can further ajust their predictions.

I don’t buy anything these media outlets say anyway.

the Bucs were 7-11 and went 60-84 the rest of the way to finish at 67-95. If we finish this season with 70 wins we’ll go 59-85 from here on out so in effect Pecota is saying that the Pirates are a tiny bit worse now than they were a year ago at this time.

I agree that it may be agianst the odds that we’ll have a winning season this year, but it seems to me that enough good things have happened that is now likely that we will win more games than we did last year from this point of the season on.

The Bucs are 5th in Runs Scored and 1st in the NL in Runs Allowed. I don’t think this is the NL’s #1 pitching staff, but can at least be average right?

I’m mostly excited that our Buccos are scoring a decent number of runs this year. I hope they can continue to put up near league average runs/per game. That’ll give us a chance to stay above/near .500 with Doumit out. Hey, they finished 9th out of 16 last year in runs scored. I feared they would be horrible at the beginning of the year, but now I believe our line up, with improvements from Nyjer, Andy and a healthy Freddy, can at least repeat that 9th place finish in runs scored if not better.

This would make us the new Tampa Bay Rays!

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=204024

Just kidding on that one folks. Still, how predictive is defensive efficiency through just 18 games? I hope this improvement is real.

Though it has been great so far, I think that it is too early to tell how this team will do over the entire year. Before the season started, most, if not all (myself included) certainly didn’t give this team a snowball in hell to do anything. So it is good to see that it is only PECOTA that has changed it’s tune :>) Nevertheless, if Freddy can keep on hitting this way, he will be gone at the All Star break. If management doesn’t want to or can’t afford to sign LaRoche to a new contract, he will be gone by the All Star break. That is the right side of the infield, of which, the Pirates can not replace with it’s current players, at least with the same cohesiveness and experience. Throw in Jack and now what. I have to go back to our original estimates of finishing last, with some great pickups from the aforementioned trades for the winning seasons down the road (5 year plan sitll intact). Good day, from CA.

It’s the starting pitching, stupid.

It’s nothing more than the performance of the starting pitching, and if they can keep it up anywhere near close to the first 18 games, the Pirates will contend for the Central Division or, at least, a wild card berth.

Regardless of the April performance of Adam LaRoche, the unexpected play of Nyjer Morgan and the surprising performance of the bench and backups as position players have been injured, the Pirates W-L performance to date can be solely attributed to starting pitching.

There are two old baseball expressions:

1) Pitching is at least 90% of the game.

2) Good pitching will stop good hitting.

We are witnessing this so far with the 2009 Pirates, and I would have to say that a good bit of credit must be directed toward Kerrigan. If the Pirate starters stay healthy and continue to gain confidence, strange things could happen.

In the end, it all comes down to pitching.

You usually like to throw around statistics to jnustify your positions.

Would “all the time” be 50%, 73% or maybe around 3 or 4%?