Another Offseason Begins

Well the 2012 season is coming to an end today as the Pirates are getting ready to try and finish their campaign off with a three game sweep of the Atlanta Braves, who will be playing in the one-game Wild Card playoff on Friday after a season in which they won 93 or 94 games. The fact that a 93/94 team might be eliminated by the 87/88 win Cardinals in a one-game playoff is absolutely ridiculous, but that's not the point here.

We all know the story of how this season went, and honestly to me I don't see how this isn't going to end up being one of the most disappointing seasons in Pirates history. Sure, it's an incredibly long history that I know very little about, but I just can't see how anything could be much worse than going from 16 games over in July to not even winning half of your games, especially after the past 19 years and even more especially how a similar thing happened last year. If someone else has a season they would elect to run against this one for most disappointing in franchise history, I'm all ears, but for now I'm going to stick with 2012.

All of that negativity out of the way, you can still take some positives from this season. I've been saying this for awhile now, and I know not a lot of people want to hear it. This team won 79 or 80 games, and they didn't look like a team that could do that well at season's beginning. Just ignore how they got here and take that as another stepping stone. Sure, the five year plan is taking longer than five years, but the organization is much better right now than it was when the plan started, so why not stay on board for awhile longer?

That's an interesting question to ask I think. How will fans react after a season like this? What will 2013 ticket sales look like? How will the TV ratings look? I know that this season took quite a toll on me. It took a toll to the point where I have honestly been completely apathetic about baseball pretty much since September started. I haven't watched more than a few innings of any game in at least four weeks, which is uncommon for me to say the least. I'm sure it has been this way for a lot of people, but the question now becomes how will this translate into feelings about the 2013 season? Will we forget about this and be just as excited and ready for next year to start? Or will baseball bring back the bad taste in our mouths that we have now. Only time will tell, but I'm guessing that we'll be pretty excited to be 0-0 once again.

This franchise has a lot of decisions to make in the offseason, and I promise that I'll start writing more regularly on here to talk about such decisions. Despite my lack of writing this last month, other Pirates bloggers and writers have kept strong through the collapse, and I respect them a lot for that. I also have the excuse that I'm a college senior and I do have some other things that take up my free time, but if this team were winning I'm sure I would have been on here more often. I don't really have to apologize, because I'm sure your day to day lives didn't change at all while The "Mc" Effect was idle.

Anyways, the offseason is starting and I for one am a bit relieved of that fact. While the offseason seems far too long every year, it will be nice to have a few months to think about things other than baseball and the travesty that is the Pittsburgh Pirates 2012 season. I've been honestly thinking about making another blog that has nothing to do with baseball, just because I have a lot of stupid stuff to talk about that most people that read this stuff would think is ... well ... stupid. I'll keep you updated on that.

Go Orioles... right?