This series is not important

Don't let everyone fool you; the Pirates will not play another important series this year. You can read stuff like this in the PG, but I'll keep saying what I've been saying all year, the Pirates are a bad team. Even if we sweep the Brewers this week, we're eight games back with three to go before the All-Star break. That's not a thing to be excited about. The Pirates won 67 games last year. They are on pace to win 70 this year. You can tell yourself that's a key improvement if you like, but it's not getting us into October. Maybe the Pirates will go five games above .500 after the break, but there's absolutely no evidence that this is a second half team. The Pirates were outscored 323 to 280 after the break. The winning record was nice and it was what counts in the end, but the team's ability to reproduce it is suspect at best.

I'm not trying to be negative, just trying to refocus everything here in the light of the propaganda from the team that things aren't as bad as they really are. The problem this off-season was that they took a lucky second half out of proportion and pretended that they were almost a contender. They're setting up to do that to us again.

Anyways, Bucs and Brewers tonight at 7. JVB and Jeff Suppan go at it in this series that is imminently more important for the Brewers to win and maintain a big league in the Central coming into the break.