The "Mc" Effect is back. After a 10-day hiatus, I am back and more motivated than ever to bring you some quality Pittsburgh Pirates information and analysis.
In my time away from the blog, the Pirates went 3-5, so I guess it's good that I'm back.
I'm not on my usual computer right now, so I can't bring any real information here, but the one thing I have to say is that this team seems to be developing into the team we're going to see for the remainder of this year; a very inconsistent one.
The Pirates won 3 games in a row from Saturday to Monday, and have now dropped 5 in a row. The starting pitching was pretty solid throughout that entire streak, but the offense really wasn't there. The bullpen struggled mightily and lost the Pirates a couple of games, and got absolutely shredded Saturday night in the middle of the game.
There isn't anything about this team that you can expect consistency from. The pitching has been very good for the most part so far this year, but nobody really expects that to continue throughout the rest of the year. The offense has been much worse than anybody expected, and it should improve by the end of the year. So there are two things that have been opposite of how we expected so far, and things that we expect to gravitate more towards their original expectations.
That said, I don't see either of those elements being consistent (for the better or worse) this year. This team is extremely young at its core, and we've seen both the positive and negatives sides of that. The pitching staff includes a pair of arms that are approaching the downside of their career (if they aren't there already), and they were never that great in the beginning (Kevin Correia and Paul Maholm). They could have some good stretches, but over a 162-game season it's not going to be anything better than league average.
The future is certainly bright in Pittsburgh, and this team should provide some exciting stretches this year, but they will also suffer through some ugly ones, like the one they are in right now.
I think the Pirates getting over .500 got a lot of people excited about this year's team, and then instantly dropped them with this 5 game losing streak. There will be a lot of negative talk in the next few days unless they put together some wins. If you're a real Pirate fan, you've been being patient for 18 years now, and I don't think a span of 5 days is going to hurt you much. Hang in there Bucco fans.
I'll be back tomorrow with some analysis and the updated numbers that I've been posting throughout the season.
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