The Importance of April for the Pittsburgh Pirates

The Major League Baseball season is a long one - six months and 162 games. That fact lessens the impact of each individual game. You don't see teams getting too upset over losing a game, or even losing two or three in a row. Teams can have bad months and not be out of the race, they just have to bounce back and make up for the bad month with a good month. Most teams don't worry too much about how they perform in April, but I think April carries a bit more weight for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The first reason for that is because of the schedule they play. This months opponents are the Philadelphia Phillies, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Francisco Giants, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Colorado Rockies, and the Atlanta Braves. Those teams won 102, 82, 86, 94, 90, 73, and 89 games respectively last year. That's not an easy schedule to play, especially early in the year when you are without A.J. Burnett. A tough April means there are easy months ahead, so it wouldn't be the end of the world if the Pirates come out of the month with a poor record. However, it would make it that much bigger if they can come out of April around .500 or even above it. The confidence that would inject into this team would be huge and could be what they need to propel them to a competitive season.

The second reason is because of the youth and history of this team. There aren't a ton of reasons for these players to believe that they can actually win. While none of them have been around for more than three seasons, they know the recent history of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and it's not a good one. They had a good four months last year, which should help their confidence, but the historically bad last two months could cancel some of that out. If this team struggles through April, it could be tough for them to have the confidence and belief that they need to succeed at this level. Normally I don't really buy into this kind of stuff too much, they are professional athletes and should be able to play their best baseball regardless of the situation around them, but winning is contagious and it has to be tougher for a team with a bad record to be confident than a team with a good record.

Here are the Pirates April records for the last four seasons:

2011: 12-15
2010: 10-13
2009: 11-10
2008: 11-16

You can see that the Pirates haven't been horrendous in any April month in the last four years, but they haven't had a winning mark there either. If they can stay 3-5 games under at worst I'll be happy, and if they can be at .500 or above it, watch out.