Astros' Never-Ending Sixth Inning Sinks Bucs

there’s just no excuse for losing a series to Houston, and being outscored 15-5 through two games. no disrespect to them, but their line-up is a bunch of rookies and Carlos Lee. we got serious problems.

In my opinion, being swept by the Indians in June was the beginning of the end for any hopes of the Pirates having a winning season. Not salvaging a single game from that series started

Since (including those 3 games in Cleveland) that series, the Pirates played .500 ball (19-19 record) up until the end of July. In that span, they did win series against Baltimore, Boston, Toronto (a very nice surprise, considering what their record has been in inter-league play), Houston (twice), Chicago, and Cincinnati.

Since August 1, the team has gone 8-21, and has only manage to win two series (San Francisco and St Louis).

I know the argument can be made that the team did not really start to slide until after the All Star break/towards the end of July, but honestly, when I watched how badly those three games in Cleveland went, I just knew that the recent run of success was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, and that the winning as way too good to be true.

More than likely the reason for this massive drop-off is the high level of fatigue that’s set in with the pitching staff(evidenced by every starter apart from J-Mac having at least 1 start skipped or going on the DL this year, not to mention many of our best starters nearing or passing their highest previous IP in a season before the end of August) after their torrid start on the mound for 3 1/2 months. We all knew that the pitching would drop off, if only because of a regression to the mean, and that in order for us to remain within striking distance of .500 the hitting would have to step up.
Unfortunately, not only did the pitching regress to the mean, it went even further down than that because of the fatigue, and as the hitting did not get the boost we were expecting from Pedro’s return, the team as a whole has just gone straight downhill for over a month now.

he is on the 40-man after all

That’s 27 outs by strikeout in two games. Too bad we couldn’t have put all the strikeouts in one full game instead of spreading them over two. A 27-strikeout game would have been something to watch and might have set a record or two.

Now that was the truth.

And I give the 2011 Pirates some credit, apathy is setting in about a month later than usual.

This, this and more this.

when you go 8-21 in August and the 1st place team goes 21-6.

a month is all that’s left.

sniffle

I’d rather watch six more months of bad baseball in domed stadia than anything having to do with football. Not that there’s anything wrong with football, football’s a fine game, but I pretty much can’t stand everyone associated with football — the players, the coaches, the broadcasters, especially the fans. They all seem to be yelling and shouting and screaming all the time.

“That’s one thing he hated, the noise, noise, noise, NOISE!”