The real Pirates

We've seen a lot of good things in the past seven days. In fact, we've seen a lot of good things in the past 14 days, we just didn't manage to win a lot for the first 7 of those days. But we aren't as good as we've played for the past couple weeks, just like we aren't as bad as we seemed in the first 5 weeks. As the saying goes, you're never as good as you think you are on your best day and you're never as bad as you think you are on your worst day. But what have we learned in the past 14 days? I'm going to leave our pythagorean record out of this, crushing the Brewers and Astros in a total of 4 out of six games will skew that just a bit at this point in the season. Still, there's some very encouraging things that we can take out of these last 14 days, even if the Lumber Company doesn't stick around.
  • We can stop using that dirty "P" word with Jose Castillo (potential... get your mind out of the gutter). If Manto and Tracy deserve credit for anything, it's finally getting him to do what Perry and Mac talked about for years, sitting back in the box and hitting to all fields. Remember, he's only 24. True, it's only been a week, but only two other second baseman have homered in five consecutive games in like the past 50 years, and one of them is Ryne Sandberg (and I forget the other one). If he can concentrate and bear down in the field, we might have something special on our hands.
  • Jason Bay was not a fluke last year, nor was he two years ago. He's good enough to carry a team for an extended period of time.
  • Freddy Sanchez can H-I-T hit. Judging by only this season may be a small sample size for some, but throw in his work over the last two months of last season and things are impressive. If there was ever a time for DL to say I was wrong, it's right now about Freddy Sanchez (OK, there's lots of times for him to say that and I haven't really heard it yet, minus the Shelton fiasco this April).
  • We weren't crazy. Oliver Perez was good in 2004, and apparently that Oliver Perez may still exist somewhere.
  • As long as Casey and Craig Wilson are in healthy and in Pirates' uniforms, they will hit the ball.
  • Bautista may turn out to be more than a utility player yet.
  • Duke and Maholm have both showed signs of moving back towards where they were at the end of last year. And the Ian Snell that dominated in the minors is starting to show up in Pittsburgh.
  • Burnitz has hit the ball well enough that I think we can get the injury ravaged Yankees interested (pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease).
These are all great things for the team to build on. It's not enough to say that we'll get back to .500 this year or that we'll contend next year, but it's a pretty solid foundation to start from. The ball is now in DL's court, as he has Craig Wilson, a bullpen full of setup guys, and possibly Burnitz and Casey to deal at the deadline to help further the building project.

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