This season is strange, no doubt about it. The Indians and Tigers have been leading a division normally owned by the Twins and/or White Sox, 3 managers have lost or quit their jobs before the All-Star Break, some of the biggest names in the sport are plunking their millionaire behinds on the bench with injuries for an extended amount of time, A. J. Burnett became the first Yankee to strike out 4 batters in an inning, and Troy Tulowitzki hit a baseball twice with one swing. So, there's definitely something odd about this season.
But the most surprising thing about the 2011 season?
The Pittsburgh Pirates are over .500 approaching the middle of the year.
Read that a couple more times, it probably won't sink in if you read it just once.
Yes, somehow, the Pirates are quickly erasing their 18-year streak of futility (the longest any professional sports team has gone without a single winning record in a season) by playing effective baseball this late in a season for the first time since the last decade. True, they're 4 games behind the division-leading Brewers and 3 games behind the Cardinals, and they're above the Cubs and Astros, two other underperforming teams that are doing just that. But the Reds, who won the division last season, are tied for 3rd with the most surprising team this year. Now, it's still highly unlikely that we'll be seeing the Bucs sail their ship into the stormy postseason seas, but as we like to say here at TBF, stranger things have certainly happened.
It really shouldn't be this surprising that these Pirates are doing everything they can to make the fans forget about the last 2 decades. They've got a young, powerful lineup led by Andrew McCutchen (one of the best all-around center fielders in the game), Jose Tabata, and Lyle Overbay, who at 34 years of age is playing like a kid half that old. Even though they don't rank higher than 22th in any statistical category, when they are hitting, it's at the perfect time. Their pitching isn't terribly impressive either, even though they rank 9th overall in ERA, but the offseason addition of Kevin Correia (9-6, 3.65) had an impressive 7-4 record before the end of May, and has helped rev up a starting rotation that was dead last year. The bullpen might be one of the biggest reasons Pittsburgh is finally paying attention to their baseball team again: closer Joel Hanrahan has 22 saves (1 other closer has 23, a handful have 22, and most have less than that), and over half of the relievers have an ERA below or around 3.5. These stats may not sound terribly impressive...and that's because they aren't. If this were the Yankees, or the Phillies, we would wonder what the heck happened to them. But this is the Pirates. You have to cut them some slack. A lot of slack, actually. You don't go straight from 18 years of utterly poor playing to winning the division in one season. What this shows is that this Pirates team will be around for a while (almost all the position players are 28 or younger), and that they have what it takes to finally bring some pride back to the Steel(ers) City. All of this could be said about the Nationals, another team that normally lurks in the cellar but seems to have found new life this year: these teams won't be competing for playoff spots this season, but next year, who knows? Pirates-Nationals could be the NLCS of 2012 or 2013, if things keep getting better for these subpar teams.
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