Not 26-28

All hail the sweep of the Brewers, who are falling apart as management debates the old shit-or-get-off-the-pot question with Carlos Lee.

The Bucs scored some runs in a hurry the last week or so, raising their "RPI" index to .483. You'd think they'd be a 26-28 team, in other words, with this many runs scored and that many runs allowed.

It doesn't work that way, however. We can't expect any kind of one-run luck to "even out." They have fallen, and they have to get up.

The record is more like a bank account, and the Pirates are heavily in debt. They are 14 games below .500 today. 20 wins, 34 losses. No amount of playing great lately changes that.

Can they get back to .500? It's going to be like watching a young man pay off his student loans while making $500 a week. I have no doubt this group of players is capable of playing .500 ball for a long stretch of time, especially if they start that stretch as a doormat. But can they win 14 straight? And I've said before, in my most angry and bitter April moods, that we could expect them to win 9 of 12 at some point. Even the worst teams do that from time to time. What happens afterwards? How soon, for example, do they go out on the road and get swept in a series?

The individual games are great fun, but the sober second look at the morning standings suggests the illusion of playing better baseball is just that, an illusion. The RPI is horseshit. Freddy Sanchez's batting average is horseshit. Jose Castillo's and Jason Bay's home runs are horseshit. All that matters is the real standings.

On June 2, and they are 14 games under .500. That's heavy in debt.