Pirates Heating Up

The Pittsburgh Pirates have not been able to string together more than 2 consecutive wins so far in 2011, but something is telling me that they are about to do just that tonight.

If you look at the last 10 games, there are a ton of really good signs. They are 6-4 in those 10 games, and had alternated wins and losses until last night, when they won their 2nd game in the row. Let's take a look at this 10-game stretch:

The Pirates have scored 3.6 runs per game and allowed 2.9 runs per game in the last 10 games. The 2.9 runs per game is better than any team in the National League has been allowing during this 2011 season. The Pirates pitchers have 2 shutouts in this stretch (in games started by Kevin Correia and James McDonald) and are allowing less than 8 hits per game, which isn't great but they have been scattered for the most part and they have done a good job limiting damage. They have gotten Quality Starts (at least 6 innings pitched with 3 or less earned runs allowed) from their starter 7 times in those 10 games.

The offense has slowly been coming around, but still hasn't hit well enough to get any momentum going. Here's the numbers for the Pirates main bats in the last 10 days:

Neil Walker: 14/40, 1 2B, 1 BB, 9 K, .350 AVG, .366 OBP
Garrett Jones: 9/28, 2 2B, 3 HR, 8 RBI, 4 BB, 6 K, .321 AVG, .406 OBP
Andrew McCutchen: 9/40, 1 2B, 2 HR, 5 BB, 11 K, .225 AVG, .311 OBP
Ronny Cedeno: 7/25, 2 2B, 1 3B, 4 RBI, 3 BB, 4 K, .280 AVG, .357 OBP
Chris Snyder: 6/21, 1 HR, 5 RBI, 2 BB, 4 K, .286 AVG, .333 OBP
Pedro Alvarez: 6/31, 1 2B, 2 BB, 10 K, .194 AVG, .265 OBP
Lyle Overbay: 6/31, 4 BB, 5 K, .194, .286 OBP
Jose Tabata: 4/28, 1 2B, 2 BB, 2 K, .160 AVG, .214 OBP
Ryan Doumit: 2/13, 3 BB, 0 K, .154 AVG, .313 OBP

You can see that the Pirates are getting some pretty good performances on offense from guys like Jones and Walker, and it seems that McCutchen is turning the corner, he's hit the ball very hard lately and looks on the verge of getting hot. We're still waiting on Alvarez to turn it around, he has shown good and bad signs recently, and Tabata is out for a short while (we hope) with a hamstring issue. If the Pirates can get 3 or 4 guys hot together, this offense can certainly put up enough runs to string some wins together.

The Pirates are the Pirates, and you can never really get your hopes too high, but the things I've seen the last 10 games lead me to believe that they are about to go on a pretty good streak. I'm not predicting a 5-game win streak or anything, but I fully expect them get over .500 and stay there for a little while.

Let's Go Bucs.