Futilitywatch 09: A Brief Reprieve

Futilitywatch '09 is a our semi-regular update on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their march toward their record 17th consecutive losing season.

At some point in the next two or three weeks, the Pittsburgh Pirates will lose their 82nd game. There's no real debate at this point with their 53-72 record. Still, over the past nine games, the Pirates have reeled off seven wins and last night, they wrapped up a series win over the defending world champion Phillies with an eighth inning home run by Garrett Jones, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 win. On the heels of Andrew McCutchen's walk-off homer on Tuesday, it was certainly a good week for the Pirates and their two rookie of the year candidates.

Since Last Week

As noted above the jump, the Pirates are kinda-sorta on fire right now. They've won seven of nine with some really good pitching and timely hitting. Ross Ohlendorf has rediscovered his fastball in the past two months, and he's only allowed more than two runs in one of his last seven starts. Andrew McCutchen continues to surpass the high expectations that Pirate fans have placed upon him with his nine homers, .847 OPS, and 15 stolen bases in 18 attempts. If he'd started the season in Pittsburgh, he might be a front-runner for Rookie of the Year in the National League.

With the Brewers and Reds (who the Pirates took five of six from last week) back on the schedule in the next seven days, the Pirates could even pull themselves comfortably out of last place in the NL Central, which seemed impossible a scant ten or so days ago when the team had lost 12 of 13.

A Little Bit of History

OK, let's just say that the Pirates hypothetically keep playing this well. With their current record, 53-75, they'd have to go 28-9 over the final 37 games to finish .500. That's an awfully tall task, though both the Rockies and Angels have done it this year. If you add in the seven wins in nine games that they've already logged, though, then they'd have to go 35-11 over the last 46. Only the Yankees have done that this year. You'll also note that no team has played either span even one game better than the Pirates would need to finish .500, so while hoping that they go 81-81 at this point is wildly implausible, hoping they go 82-80 is downright crazy.

For their part, the Pirate franchise has indeed had several spans in which they played at that sort of rate, but most of them came prior to 1910. More to the point, the last time the Pirates have gone 35-11 over 46 games was 1978, a season in which the Pirates won 88 games and finished just 1 /2 games behind the Phillies in the old National League East. Which is to say that this portion of the article might be called "a little bit of history," but there's a whole lot of it suggesting that the Pirates are going to set this record at one point or another.

The Number

10