Bad Baseball

Note: This should've published at the timestamp, but something got screwed up and it didn't come through until 3:45.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are a bad baseball team. I've tried to avoid saying it to this point, but we're getting to the point where the sample sizes are getting bigger (we're an eighth of the way through the season) and gets harder and harder to ignore certain trends. Specifically hard to ignore are the facts that it's only April 24th and we're 10 games under .500 and we've scored less runs than every team in our division except the Cubs (who are down to us by only two runs in three less games) despite our initial hot start with the bats (and that we've played one less game than Milwaukee and Cincy, and two games less than the 'Stros and Cards). It's not just the ugly record that's especially hard to take, if it were being done with young players turning a corner there would be something to be encouraged about. Instead, the "Tracyball" Pirates are doing it in the exact same fashion as McClendon's Mauraders did, namely by being full of worthless veterans that are playing a lot and knowing less fundamentals than a T-ball team. Not only are we bad, we're bad while Jeromy Burnitz and Joe Randa prevent us from ever finding out if we can be good, we're bad while either Jose Hernandez or Mike Edwards seems to be in the starting lineup every other day, we're just plain bad. Compounding this problem is the fact that the owners are making money hand over fist off this team and though they may be forced to fire Littlefield in the coming months to appease the masses, the man they hire will likely run things in the exact same manner that Littlefield has (business first, team second).

That brings us (or more specifically me) to an interesting crossroads. It's easier to write a blog about a bad team than it is about a good thing (because the very nature of these things is to question), but it's hard to write about a hopeless team. The same goes for readers, people will read about a bad team, but not about a hopeless one. Still, this blog only exists in the capacity that it does because the Pirates are a bad baseball team. I can say almost for certain that there would be no WHYGAVS if the Pirates were a good team last April. There may be a different baseball blog written by the same person, but it almost certainly would nothing like what we have right now. The question is, of course, how a team with Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Jason Bay, Mike Gonzalez, the Wilsons, and Oliver Perez in the majors with Gorzellany, Burnett, and a few others in AAA can be hopeless. There's no reason we should be. We might be bad, but I still find it hard to believe that we're this bad. And so I'll keep watching and writing because as bad as things are right now, how could they possibly get worse?