70 - 75 wins
In 2013 I ran a series of posts counting up to the team's 82nd win; they are reproduced in chunks here
70 wins
Posted by Pat on Aug 9, 2013 14:20
Good morning. It is August 9th, 2013.
With last night's win, the Pirates are 70-44. Since 1992, the Pirates failed to win 70 games in the following seasons*: 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
The two new additions to the list today are 1998 and 2000, which I think represents the most destructive period in this ignominoious streak. The 1997 Freak Show Pirates were much like the 2011 Pirates; unexpected contenders with a roster composed of exciting young players and castoffs. Except for the weird 1995 season, the Pirates hadn't really plummetted too deep into the depths by 1997. Things didn't go according to plan in 1998, though. Cam Bonifay and Kevin McClatchy were hellbent on getting a winning team on the field in PNC Park in 2001, though, and they abandoned their rebuilding plan by trading young players for veterans (the Jose Guillen trade is the prime example of this, but far from the only one). The results were disastrous, and Bonifay was fired in favor of Dave Littlefield in 2001. You'll note that the seasons on today's list make up the seasons in which the Pirates didn't even make it to 70 wins. You will also note that more than half of them are from 2005-2010, all of which are either directly or indirectly attributable to the Dave Littlefield era. 1998 and 2000 were really terrible.
This is just 11 total seasons out of 20. There is more work to be done.
*The strike shortened 1994 and 1995. The '94 Pirates were on pace for 75 wins, but the '95 Pirates were terrible and only on pace for 65 wins.
71 wins
Posted by Pat on Aug 15, 2013 13:55
Good morning. It is August 15th, 2013.
With last night's win, the Pirates are 71-48. Since 1992, the Pirates failed to win 71 games in the following seasons*: 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
There are no new additions to the list today, and so there are no new memories of past seasons gone by to share. Maybe after the four-game losing streak that the Pirates just snapped, that's for the best.
*The strike shortened 1994 and 1995. The '94 Pirates were on pace for 75 wins, but the '95 Pirates were terrible and only on pace for 65 wins.
72 wins
Posted by Pat on Aug 17, 2013 15:03
Good morning. It is August 17th, 2013.
With last night's win, the Pirates are 72-49. Since 1992, the Pirates failed to win 72 games in the following seasons*: 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
There are no new additions to the list today, and so there are no new memories of past seasons gone by to share. That's only 11 seasons crossed off the list. There's more work to be done.
*The strike shortened 1994 and 1995. The '94 Pirates were on pace for 75 wins, but the '95 Pirates were terrible and only on pace for 65 wins.
73 wins
Posted by Pat on Aug 20, 2013 12:16
Good morning. It is August 20th, 2013.
With last night's win, the Pirates are 73-51. Since 1992, the Pirates failed to win 72 games in the following seasons*: 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
There are three new additions to the list today, which means that 72 wins is one of two the most regular outcome of the last 20 years, tied with 69 wins. The 2002 Pirates were one of the worst offensive teams relative to their league in the whole bunch. They only had two regulars with an above average OPS; Brian Giles, who was incredible in 2002 (.298/.450/.622 with 37 doubles, 38 homers, and 105 RBIs), and Craig Wilson, who somehow couldn't really crack the every day lineup despite being one of the team's two best hitters. This was the year in which Aramis Ramirez spiked his helmet off of his ankle while charging the mound, badly injuring it and causing him to struggle all year. This was also Jason Kendall's first truly subpar year at the plate, as he was dealing with the aftermath the devastating thumb injury that would rob him of his power for the rest of his career. It's also illustrative of the difference in offensive eras. The 2002 Pirates hit .244/.319/.381 as a team. That gave them the worst batting average, the worst on-base percentage, and the second-worst slugging percentage in the NL that year. This year's Pirates are hitting .245/.313/.391. That's good for eleventh, eighth, and eighth in 2013.
The other two years, 2004 and 2011, are nice parallels. 2004 was the year that the Pirates really transitioned out of the Bonifay era and into the Littlefield era. It's hard to remember now, but there were some legitimately exciting things about that season; Jason Bay and Oliver Perez had come over from the Padres in the Brian Giles trade at the end of 2003, and they both had huge seasons in 2004. Bay won Rookie of the Year with his 26 homers and .907 OPS in 120 games, and Perez struck out 239 hitters to go with his 2.98 ERA. The Pirates hit .500 on Memorial Day Weekend after the Mackowiak double-header, they were 48-50 in late July, and even after a late-season swoon, it seemed like thing were moving in the right direction.
They wouldn't win 72 games again until 2011. You remember 2011 well, of course, and it's part of the reason that every loss this late in the year gives you acid reflux. Really, though, 2011 laid a base that 2012 and then 2013 could build off of. A lot of the same things that we're seeing emphasized in 2013 started that year; that was the season that Charlie Morton changed his approach to focus on ground balls, the first season that an emphasis on defense started, the season that Andrew McCutchen's underlying rates started pointing towards a breakout, and there were even some some defensive shifts (though I think those may have actually started back in 2010). The result was that an under-talented Pirate team found themselves in contention well into July, before they fell apart while the Brewers caught fire. Unlike 2004, though, it really was a sign that there were better seasons ahead.
That's 14 seasons we've crossed off the list. There's more work left to be done.
*The strike shortened 1994 and 1995. The '94 Pirates were on pace for 75 wins, but the '95 Pirates were terrible and only on pace for 65 wins.
74 wins
Posted by Pat on Aug 21, 2013 15:28
Good morning. It is August 21st, 2013.
With last night's win, the Pirates are 74-51. Since 1992, the Pirates failed to win 74 games in the following seasons*: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
The only addition to the list is 1996. This is what you remember from actual baseball from 1996: almost nothing. You remember the First Fire Sale, which started at the end of the season and carried through the winter. In August, the Pirates traded Denny Neagle to the Braves. In November, they traded Carlos Garcia and Orlando Merced (and Dan Plesac, but nobody every remembers that Dan Plesac was briefly a Pirate) to the Blue Jays. In December, they traded Jay Bell and Jeff King to the Royals. That was pretty much the entire post-Bonds/Drabek/Van Slyke core.
You may also remember that this was done because Kevin McClatchy had just bought the team and had set his sights on the future. PNC Park was still just a dream in 1996, but McClatchy had set 2001 as the goal and he and Cam Bonifay recognized that the team that they had in 1996 was not the team to get them there. In and of itself, the fire sale was not a bad thing. The post-Bonds core was medicore at best and getting old fast. Pirates were awful in 1995 and the only standard by which they were any good in 1996 was The Pittsburgh Pirate Standard. The trades didn't go badly, either. For Neagle, they got Jason Schmidt. For Merced, Garcia, and Plesac they got Craig Wilson, Abraham Nunez, and Jose Silva. For Bell and King, they got Joe Randa. The real problems that would really doom the franchise didn't come until a couple of years down the road.
What I remember most about 1996 was the dawning realization that a good baseball team was not automatic, that it had to be built and earned. We'll talk more about this when 1993 crops up on this countdown, but as a young kid, I just sort of thought the Pirates would plug a few new players in and keep on trucking after everyone left in 1992. By 1996, it was very clear to me that baseball simply did not work that way.
There are still five seasons left on the countdown. There is more work left to be done.
*The strike shortened 1994 and 1995. The '94 Pirates were on pace for 75 wins, but the '95 Pirates were terrible and only on pace for 65 wins.
75 wins
Posted by Pat on Aug 23, 2013 14:45
Good morning. It is August 23rd, 2013.
With last night's win, the Pirates are 75-52. Since 1992, the Pirates failed to win 75 games in the following seasons*: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
There are no new additions to the list today, but that's perfect because it means we can talk about The Drive for 75. If you are a veteran of the Pittsburgh Pirate Internet — which is to say that you remember WHYGAVS when it was on Blogspot and Bucs Dugout when it looked like this and Irate Fans and you still have six bookmarks for Wilbur Miller's Pirate Player Profiles — then you remember The Drive for 75.
The Drive for 75 started in 2003. Over the winter of 2002-2003, a bunch of players had trouble finding work and later accused the owners of colluding against them to keep free agent prices down. Dave Littlefield cashed in on the depressed market, signing Reggie Sanders and Kenny Lofton after the start of spring training. Sanders and Lofton were excellent, as was Matt Stairs, who was also signed that winter. You remember other aspects of 2003, I'm sure, and we'll get to that when 2003 shows up on the list after the Pirates' next win, but the final result was that the Pirates won 75 games in 2003, then all of the free agent signings went their merry way and Littlefield spent the rest of his Pirate career trying to recapture the same lightning that he'd bottled in 2003.
This went poorly, of course. You remember the Walking Dead that followed those guys in the Littlefield era; Jeromy Burnitz, Joe Randa, Chris Stynes, Benito Santiago, and who even remembers who else. The Pirates weren't spending money on the draft. The Pirates barely had any international scouting operation at all. The one and only focus during Littlefield's reign of terror as general manager was to assemble a team of Major League veterans that could somehow win 82 games. There was no backup plan. There was no plan to build beyond that.
As a result, the Pirates didn't even get back to that 75-win plateau until 2012. Think about this: in the first 11 years of PNC Park, the Pirates failed to win at least 75 games ten times. This year, they have 75 wins with 35 games left on the schedule. This is how it should be. Seventy-five wins shouldn't be a speed bump, much less a destination. Littlefield's Drive for 75 was easily the most destructive thing that happened to the Pirates in the last 20 years.