The drive for .500

In order for the Pittsburgh Pirates to break the longest streak of consecutive loosing season in professional sports history, they need to win at least 81 games. They have started the season 7-5 after sweeping the Cincinnati Reds in a 3 game home series. They currently have the best home record in the NL (5-1). They are last in several statistics because they are inconsistent. (have been outscored by 22 runs; bottom half in many offensive and defensive categories.) When they loose, they get blown out. When they win, they win close.

The last few years, the Pirates managed to start the season pretty decent. Usually flirting with a winning record. However, eventually they would hit a wall and loose 25 of 30 or so. If they can manage to avoid having a terrible month like that, they can make it to 81 wins. Let me explain:

As of this post, they have 7 wins. They need 74 more wins out of 150 game to finish at .500. The were great at home last year until they self destructed. As I stated before, they were 28-17 at home as of August 1 last year. They finished 12-24 at home to close out the year though. The 28-17 record was a .622 winning percentage. If they can manage to win 45 of their remaining 75 home games (.600), they will finish with a 50-31 record at home.

All they will need to do is find a way to win 31 roads games then and we get to 81. At this point they are 2-4 on the road. They need to win 29 of the remaining 75 road games or just a .387 winning percentage. They have 44 of those 75 games against the worst 7 teams in the NL (Mets, Nationals, Brewers, Cubs, Reds, Astros and Padres). Pittsburgh cannot seem to beat the Brewers, but lets just do the math for now. Milwaukee already is having pitching issues this year, and is currently 5-7 after dropping 2 of 3 to Washington. If Pittsburgh can go .454 in that span of 44 they will win 20 games. This means they will need to win 9 of the remaining 31 games (.290) on the road against the rest of the NL, and their interleague games against the Tigers, Ranger's and A's.

This is not unreasonable. The biggest downfall every year has been that they trade away their best players and self destruct shortly after. This year they don't have any stars to trade away other than McCutchen. If they can manage to keep him, call up Perdo Alvarez and get thier pitching on track, they have a real shot at this.