the Winning carryover

Bones had a long comment on Dejan Kovacevic's recent Tracy interview. He has his issues with Tracy, and I have mine.

I don't blame Tracy for emphasizing the positive. I do blame him for the horrible start to the 2006 season. At the end of April, they were 12 games under .500. At the All-Star Break, they were 30 games under .500.

Tracy talks about carrying over "the winning." What winning? There was no winning.

I do not have cold, hard statistics to support this next opinion: I think it is easier to play .500 ball if you spot the competition 30 games. After the team established itself as a laughingstock of historic distinction, the competition more brazenly scheduled around the Pirates in a way that improved the Pirates' chance of splitting a series. Ace starters took an extra day of rest to skip the series and save up for the Mets. Ailing position players sat out the series to rest their balky knees for the Cardinals. A team that is 30 games under .500 does not bring out the best in their opponents. So the second-half record does not impress me.

Now hey, any win is a good time. I enjoyed a lot of those 67 wins. What's not a good time, though, is looking for the improvement in the standings and finding the Pirates 16 to 30 games under .500.

And the extra kick in the groin was the eight-game losing streak in September. The Pirates faced a string of playoff-bound or playoff-bubble teams, who were all ready to rip their faces off. The Pirates responded not as the mythical .500 team of the second half but as Tracy's first-half team of astounding losing streaks.

So Tracy can say we need to keep chopping wood, we need to keep pounding the rock, we need to execute the fundamentals, etc., etc., but I want him to say we need to win games, we need to win games, we need to win games. When you take care of the little things, you take care of the little things. You do not win games, magically, by taking care of the little things. You win games by scoring more runs; you win games by winning games. This much is obvious.

And further, wins only have much meaning in the context of a winning record. So the Pirates need to establish and maintain a winning record. That, above all, must be the goal for 2007. Continuous improvement, executing fundamentals, having a family atmosphere in the clubhouse, all that is nonsense next to the need to win games and keep winning games.

As you can tell, I am impatient already for April.