OK, enough of this past stuff

OK, enough living in the past. Whichever side of the debate you're on one thing is for sure; we're all Pirates fans here, so I sincerely hope that I haven't alienated anyone (though it's more likely I did that with the length of my post more than anything). But since we ARE all Pirates fans here, we do have some pretty exciting things to talk about that are much more current than Jason Kendall, namely, the Pirates.

This weekend's series is huge, maybe bigger than the O's series and here's why:

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are a bad team.

We're coming off three huge series' in a row against very good teams. We have two huge series next week against very good teams on the road. The team feels slighted by the league, as they should, on the interleague schedule and wants to prove it in New York and in Boston next week. But we have to beat the D-Rays first. The fans are throwing the "s" word around. They'll be out in droves this weekend expecting to see the Pirates get back to .500. In truth, the Pirates should, but don't tell them that. As bad as the Devil Rays are, the truth is they are one of the 30 best baseball teams in the world. We won't catch them off guard like we did Florida, Atlanta, and Baltimore. Their fans are probably screaming "Interleague play is so stupid! Why do we have to play the PIRATES? They suck more than we do!!" This series will go a long way in telling us about our Bucs. Good teams beat bad teams, that's all there is to it. If this team is truly going to keep the transformation going, they can't just beat the Marlins, Braves, and Orioles. They have to beat the Reds, D-Rays, and Rockies. In that respect, we just might find out more about the Pirates than the last 10 games have told us.