The Q&A

Today's Q&A was incredibly angry. I mean, the questions were just flat out bitter. I seriously could barely even make my way to the end of it after reading things like "No team in the history of baseball needed to get off to a good start more than the Pirates. I know it is early, but this start almost ensures another losing season," and "Yeah, Lloyd McClendon and his coaching staff sure were the problem," and other such sentiments. Yeah, 1-7 is ugly. Yeah, even 3-7 is far from great. Still, I think it's pretty early to be jumping overboard. Too many people had expectations for this team that were beyond realistic. Somehow, adding two guys the fans like and one guy the fans know suddenly had every casual Pirate fan thinking that we were winning the division this year. Our ugly start was compounded by 100,000 people suddenly learning who Chris Shelton was, all at once. So maybe I'm not as angry as these people because my expectations were lower and because I already knew about Chris Shelton, I don't know. The fact remains that the one thing about McClendon's teams that galled me to no end were the fact that except for the 2003 season, they never seemed to get better as the season wore on. We were always supposed to be young and rebuilding, and yet we could never semm to figure out how to get past July and August without massive swoons. My point is simple. In 2002 we started 12-5, and we finished 72-89. Did it suck less to lose 89 games because we started 12-5? No, of course it didn't. Did starting 12-5 keep us from sucking that year? Of course it didn't. So, knowing that our this year our team is lead by an incredibly young pitching staff that is very talented, but was very shaky in the spring, should anyone be surprised by this start? Nope, we probably shouldn't. What ever way this season ends, it won't end that way because we started 1-7. We just need a little perspective, that's all.