The Next Six Games

It stinks that I'm writing another post like this. The Pirates lost another game tonight, this time to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the series opener. If hurts extra bad because the Dodgers are one of the main competitors for the wild card, and this was probably out most favorable starting pitching matchup of the series.

Your Bucs are now 64-51, five games out of the division and clinging to just a 1.5 game lead for the second wild card spot. If they lose two of the next three to the Dodgers, that will be just a 0.5 game lead with the Cardinals currently just two games back. The Pirates certainly aren't playing their best baseball in recent weeks, and a lot of that has to do with them just simply not being as good as they made it seem through July. August hasn't been kind to the team. Their record isn't horrible at 5-7 but they haven't been making anything look very easy. Every loss is magnified in a playoff race, which isn't something we're used to around here.

Baseball has an extremely long season, and there aren't too many times in a year when you have these "must win games". In fact it basically can't happen until the last week or so of the season, but the Pirates have just about as close as you can get to that type of situation coming up these next six days. They have three more games with the Dodgers before going to St. Louis to face the Cardinals. As I said before, those two are the teams chasing them in the Wild Card. Atlanta is a bit ahead of the Pirates and playing very good baseball. It's going to come down to four teams going for two spots, and the Pirates are playing the worst baseball of all four teams right now without a doubt.

Things can change in a hurry, and the Pirates do have a pretty easy September schedule to look forward to, but losing to the teams you are competing with can really set you back. You never want to have to count on other teams to lose, you just want to beat them yourself and kill both birds at the same time (that would be a really nice sentence if the Dodgers had a bird mascot). While the Pirates can't knock themselves out of the playoff race with a bad showing the next six days, they can certainly hurt their chances greatly.

It'll take some good pitching, some good hitting, and some good luck. Whatever happens, it's pretty much must-see TV.