The 1999 Pittsburgh Pirates

The 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates are 33-33 right now and it's about to be June 15th. That's significant for many reasons, the first being that it's the first time the team has been .500 or better this late in the season since 1999, a painfully long 12 years ago. To get a little more perspective on that team and the drought the Pirates have had, let's take a look back on to the Pirates of '99.

The Pirates have played 66 games in 2011. After 66 games in 1999, the team was 34-32 after losing a game to the San Diego Padres by the score of 5-4. Jason Schmidt took the loss that game and Trevor Hoffman got the save for the Padres. Also in that 66th game, played at Qualcomm Stadium, Jose Guillen had 2 hits and an RBI, Ed Sprague doubled, and Jason Kendall and Kevin Young added RBI's, but it wasn't enough to defeat Tony Gwynn and company.

The '99 Pirates would play right around even baseball that entire season, last touching .500 on September 1st with a record of 67-67. They would finish the season 78-83, and in turn be the 2nd best Pirates team since 1992 (the 1997 Pirates won 79 games).

The 1999 were led by a 25-year old Jason Kendall, who hit .332/.428/.511 with 22 stolen bases and a 28-year old Brian Giles who swatted 39 home runs and drove in 115 runs while hitting .315/.418/.614, one of the best single seasons by a Pirates player that I've seen in my lifetime. They also got a very nice year from Kevin Young, who hit .298/.387/.522 with 26 homers and 106 RBI. Those were the 3 main offensive contributors, they really didn't get much from anyone else. Warren Morris, Mike Benjamin, Ed Sprague, Al Martin, and Brant Brown were the other every day starters.

The pitching staff was certainly the problem with the '99 Pirates. Todd Ritchie led the rotation with 15 wins and a 3.49 ERA, but no one else could find too much success. Kris Benson and Jason Schmidt had decent years, with 4.07 and 4.19 ERAs respectively, and both had double-digit wins (11 and 13). Schmidt through 212.2 innings for the Pirates that year, and was traded 2 years later. Francisco Cordova, Pete Schourek, Chris Peters, and Jose Silva rounded out the Pirates pitchers with more than 10 starts that year.

The bullpen was (sort of) anchored by Mike Williams, who had a 5.09 ERA with 23 saves. Scott Sauerbeck and Brad Clontz had nice years with ERAs of 2.00 and 2.74 respectively, and Marc Wilkins and Jeff Wallace contributed with lots of innings thrown.

Probably the most memorable thing from the 1999 season with the terrible ankle injury of Jason Kendall. He was trying to beat out a bunt in a game on July 4th and did a serious number on the ankle, severely dislocating it and showing any fan who was looking the white of his ankle bone. That's probably an image that still exists in many Pirates fans minds.

Not many teams can point to a losing season and say it was a good year in their teams history, but I think being a Pirates fan all these years it's fair to say that 1999 was as close to a good year as the Pirates have gotten since Sid Bream crushed our dreams in 1992.

Now I'm only 20 years old, so I can hardly remember any of the stuff I just wrote about, but I hope it brought back some memories for you older and more mature Pirate fans. If you want to read more, you can check out this WHYGAVS post that was written over 2 years ago.