Pirates Progress Report No. 3: Well, that all unraveled quickly

Those first 28 games sure were fun!

Checking in with the local nine….

Not even the most optimistic of Pirates fans could have expected the team to maintain its pace from the first 28 games when the team stormed out to a 20-8 mark and had the best record in the National League.

A team that had played at a 100-loss pace in three consecutive seasons was not going to suddenly turn into a powerhouse World Series contender after marginal offseason upgrades and a devastating injury to its most talented player and potential superstar. That is just not realistic.

But I am not sure even the most negative of Pirates fans expected the type of collapse that happened over the past month that has seen them go 5-16.

Maybe we should have.

A lot of things have gone wrong, but none more so than a lineup that has simply stopped hitting.

Since scoring 16 runs in the second game of a double header in Washington (a game that improved the team to that high watermark of 20-8) the Pirates have managed just 57 runs in 21 games. That is an average of just 2.71 per game, and even that includes a 21-run outburst over two games this past Wednesday and Friday.

They have failed to score more than two runs in 13 of those 21 games, and scored more than three runs just four times.

At one point they had the worst 12-game stretch of run-scoring that the team has had in over 115 years.

It’s been bad.

Some random thoughts on all of those developments.