Pittsburgh Pirates

Power Rankings

Date	Ranking	Previous
01/26/2012	26	22
Good business: The six or seven healthy starts they get out of Erik Bedard should prove a real treat. Bad business: The additions of Clint Barmes, Rod Barajas, Casey McGehee and Nate McLouth send a powerful message to fans: namely, "hope is a lie." Prognosis as of 11:14 a.m. GMT on Jan. 26, 2012: Chronic, irrational optimist Clint Hurdle is "totally psyched."
10/31/2011	22	28
2011 eulogy: They finished where they always finish, even if they took a more circuitous route to get there. No style points were earned or awarded. Offseason to-do list: Continue traversing land and sea for the organizational holy grail, a half-capable shortstop ... Periodically sweep Pedro Alvarez's townhouse for Fruit Loops ... Stop worrying about "veteran leadership." Every leader-of-men sort the team has imported during the last decade has had negligible on-the-field impact. At this point, it's time to focus on guys who can play, whether or not their clubhouse influence prompts Andrew McCutchen to take up skydiving or fuels Jose Tabata's addiction to dinosaur porn. Odds of achieving Cardinals-like glory in 2012: You know the answer to this question. Don't make me say it again.
09/28/2011	28	28
What went right: The first 100 games (53-47). What went wrong: Everything after that (19-42, pending Wednesday's finale). Regular-season epilogue: Don't diminish what they've reverse-accomplished: It takes a special type of incompetence to notch 19 straight losing seasons. Everybody associated with the franchise should be perversely proud.
09/20/2011	28	24
I totally went the contrarian route during yesterday's annual Talk Like A Pirate Day celebration. Rather than yarrrr-ing up a storm and waxing philosophic about scurvy, I walked around saying stuff like "we have invested significant resources in our developmental facilities in the Dominican Republic" and "Pedro Alvarez will be fine once he learns to lay off sliders (the basebally kind) and sliders (the hamburgery kind)." It was intellectually liberating, if a bit confusing to the other kids on the Pirates of the Caribbean line.
09/13/2011	24	22
As of 6:47 p.m. ET on Monday night, the .500 dream was not yet relegated to the scrapheap of sad mementos from seasons past (the stub from Pedro Alvarez's bonus check, a bronzed pair of official Derek Bell Operation Shutdown flip-flops, etc.). I will continue to hope against hope for a happy resolution.
09/06/2011	22	23
Remember when we were talking division title? Remember when we were talking wild card? Remember when we were talking .500? Remember when we were talking 75 wins? So many memories.
08/30/2011	23	25
The Pirates are playing the Astros again Tuesday night; they meet four more times before the season is out. Is there any way to fast-track a futility-of-being promotional giveaway for the final night of the series? Like, every existentialist over the age of 12 would receive a black object of indeterminate origin and material, with NOTHING printed on it in block letters? Because that would capture the spirit of the occasion.
08/23/2011	25	25
On July 23, they were one game behind the Brewers. After yesterday's doubleheader split, they were 15.5 games behind the Brewers. That means they dropped 14.5 games in the standings in a single calendar month. Is that mathematically possible? ... At least they threw cash around in the draft and moved to tie up a few of the kids (Jose Tabata, Neil Walker) before they got within groping distance of arbitration. And, hey, Jerry Meals got the call right on Garrett Jones' game-winning extra-inning dinger last Tuesday. The ball passed over the fence between the two foul poles -- which, after a conference with his crew and a quick rule-book consult, Meals rightly identified as a legal home run. So things aren't entirely glum, no matter how they've looked over the past few weeks. Once again: Chins up, Pirate fans.
08/16/2011	25	24
Well, they're about to top last year's win total. That counts for something ... As charitably inclined as Pirates fans might be feeling about the team right now, the announcement of a hike in ticket prices should've been put off for a while, even if it marks the first such increase in 10 years. At $15.30, the average cost of a seat at beautiful PNC Park ... wait a second -- the average ticket price is $15.30? That's not just the cost of a bottle of water and a hot dog, like it is here in MajorMarketLand? Wow. Pirates fans, consider yourself fortunate, even if exposure to Brandon Wood is included in the price of admission.
08/09/2011	24	17
On one hand, I don't want to say anything critical, because this collapse is already all kinds of cruel. On the other, well, y'all know how this column generally works, right? ... Derrek Lee must be all, "Is it me? What'd I ever do to anybody?" ... Let's be frank: there's precious little evidence suggesting that Pedro Alvarez is anything other than a burger aficionado cloaked in uniform finery. There's only one argument that says otherwise, and that's the obvious one: He's still young ... They even forgot the cardinal rule of players-only meetings: Only have 'em on the day before you're scheduled to face a Twinkie of an opposing pitcher ... I'm sorry. I am. Hey, at least you didn't trade away any A-list prospects for Heath Bell or Carlos Quentin, right? Chins up, everybody.