Sustainability

The Pirates beat the Dodgers today thanks to a decent start from Jeff Karstens, and nice bullpen work from Crotta, Biemel, Veras, and Hanrahan. Also, Neil Walker and Lyle Overbay showed off a little back to back double action to plate two runs and give the Pirates a nice victory to get over the .500 mark. The best thing about being over .500 is that the Pirates look like they can sustain this for the long haul. Take a look.

The Pirates started this season with a pretty rough group of games. They played the Rockies 7 times! The Rockies are either in first in the west or close to it all season so far. The Giants, who are also near the top or on it out west have also played the Pirates. The Pirates played the Reds and the Cards the top two teams in the Central early. They played the Marlins who are not the Phillies, but competing for second in the East. It was not until recently that the Pirates started to play the games against teams that are not top of the division competition. The Pirates just came out and played weak teams for the first time basically starting with the Padres. They won that series. Then they got the Astros for the first time and they won that series. Now they take game 1 from the Dodgers, who are not very good this year. The Pirates have shown that they are capable of beating the other teams that are middling or bottom feeders with the lone exception of the Brewers who took two from us early this year.

I guess what I am saying is that these wins are not flukes. They are just better than teams like the Astros and the Padres. They have shown an ability to beat teams in the NL Central, but so far have not been so dominate that they sweep series. It is time to say that this is what the Pirates are: contenders in the Central, but still a step below elite teams overall in the NL. Yes, some people are playing above what you think they can do all year like Snyder, Doumit, and even Karstens and Morton. But, some are playing below what they ought like Alvarez, McCutchen, Tabata, and Meek.

What will be real entertaining is if the Pirates are in contention for the NL Central title near the trading deadline. What do you do then? Biemel was signed to be trade bait. Do you trade him despite being in contention? It is a question that I think the Pirates will be dealing with as the Reds and Cards are not going to hide and the Pirates are able to keep this up.