The Pirates are 2-2 on this road trip. That is OK. Six and eight is not good but not horrible. Six games under .500 would be horrible. They gave away a game or two early and have not really won any games they deserved to lose. It's not a lucky 6-8.
The back half of the rotation looks awful. The front half looks hall of fame. Snell and Gorzo will not finish with numbers just like they have now. Duke and Maholm and Armas are not so awful.
Twenty-one days or eighteen or nineteen games are the smallest significant sample sizes, in my long-held opinion. With the freaky weather and unusual amount of time off early, I might extend that for assessing the start of the season for individual hitters. Right now I say don't even look at batting averages, strikeout-to-walk ratios, etc. for the hitters--wait until after game twenty or twenty-one. And then it's a bad spell if the numbers stink, and it's not necessarily evidence that someone has to go to AAA or that someone is a bust. Two consecutive twenty-day periods of full-time play and Noonie numbers, and then I am with the people calling for some kind of change.
Overall, I am not disappointed by the start of the season. They are only two games under, two and a half out of first, and they have yet to win a game at home. Things don't look great, and some of these losses have been demoralizing to watch, but on the whole there is still a lot of opportunity for this team. It is April 19 and there is play left in this season.
And that makes this season, already, twice as good as last year's.
No comments:
Post a Comment