Not terrible

From this Shelly Anderson story about this stretch of schedule:

"My God, you look at the schedule -- and I don't mean to keep harping on it; everybody has a tough schedule -- but we started with Florida, Atlanta, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, New York, Washington, St. Louis, a day off, and then Washington," McClendon said. The Pirates began that stretch strong, winning the Florida, Atlanta, Baltimore and Tampa Bay series before being swept by the Yankees, losing two of three in Boston and two of three against the Nationals last week at home. With the split against St. Louis, their record over those games is 13-13, which could be considered encouraging for a team trying to climb out of a 12-year slump, but that doesn't mean McClendon wouldn't like what he thinks would be a fairer schedule.

If you want to improve, you have to face tougher competition. When I played chess every day, I tried to lose two-thirds of my games, i.e., I tried to play only much better players. I never lost on purpose.

The Bucs are in a slightly different situation. They have to sell tickets to their games to generate the money needed to acquire and retain the players they need to be tougher competition.

Anyway, 13-13 in this stretch is not horrible - in fact it's evidence the Pirates are something like a .500 ballclub. Will they finish at .500? Hard to say. A .500 ballclub will not make up the games they lost in April.