The Pittsburgh Pirates scored more than four runs in a baseball game for the first time in a month, but because they are the Pittsburgh Pirates, the price of that victory was not only that it was actually another defeat, but that anyone who went to PNC Park to watch it had to sit through a one-hour, 50-minute rain delay to find out that they can still make five runs look like two. The fan giveaway for the night was a dose of the flu, which all things considered is a metaphorical kiss on the top of the head.
Yes, it's Pirates Baseball in 2025, where the "don't mind me, I'm just cowboy-sneezing in your beer" coupon is included in the price of the ticket.
There are worse teams, to be sure. Three, in fact, with more still to come. The Colorado Rockies are half as good record-wise, as our latest groining offered by Comrade Ley will testify. The Chicago White Sox, last year's worst in show, are performing at exactly at the same pace (15-35) as last year's 41-121 disaster, but are not actually dead last in everything as they were a year ago. The Baltimore Orioles are their own self-induced skin-melt, but at least had the dignity to declare their game Thursday a rainout before it started. The punishment for O's fans comes with a mid-September doubleheader, but they can still look at the bright side: The meteor could hit on Labor Day.
The Pirates, though, might be the most persistent drag of all because they lose the same way every day, which is to declare during the daily lineup card exchange that they're scoring as little as possible and leaving the rest to chance. They are currently scoring fewer than three runs per game, and are on a pace to have the fifth worst offense since the turn of the century—the 20th century, to avoid confusion.
Their best hitter, which should be Oneil Cruz, has a bad back. Their best actual hitter, Spencer Horwitz, has 18 at-bats. Their steadiest veteran, Bryan Reynolds, is hitting .210. Their pitching staff is league-average in most important ways, but their hitting is torn from the pages of yesterday's newspaper—the one whose main headline reads "America Enters World War I."
Thus, the only reason for anyone to attend Thursday's game against the merely moribund Milwaukee Brewers was to see if the Pirates could extend their preposterous streak of games with four runs or fewer to 27 games, which would have set a new MLB record. Paul Skenes wasn't pitching, in other words, so the crowd could not have been there for anything else.
The game began on time, which is to say Milwaukee scored three times in the first inning off newest toy Mike Burrows. The Brewers stayed ahead until the sky opened in the sixth inning—a western Pennsylvania tradition for eons—and stayed open. How umpiring crew chief Mark Wegner didn't take this as a sign to jack the day in is beyond us, but he waited until the rain passed, the cruel, vicious bastard. Did he think anyone was going to miss three more innings of this nonsense? Yes. Yes he did.
So it continued against the will of the people. The Brewers did their part by scoring three times in the eighth to make it 8-3, at which point another rainstorm would have been an act of clemency. But no, Pirate fans don't live that well, either. Brewer reliever Carlos Rodriguez, working his fourth inning, walked Cruz and Andrew McCutchen to start the ninth, then gave up a double to Bryan Reynolds to give the Pirates their elusive fourth run, but the streak was still alive. Only with no outs and runners at second and third, the 64 people who hadn't bothered to get rides home were stuck with the horrid possibility that this could become a full-blown Indiana Pacers rally and the game could possibly be tied, thus causing more Pirates baseball, a fate worse than eye-pecking falcons.
But the Pirates didn't get where they are by doing silly shit like that. Trevor Megill came in for Rodriguez and struck out Joey Bart, and though he induced a ground ball from Horwitz, it wasn't hard enough for a double play, and McCutchen scored the mythical fifth run. The nerd-streak had been broken, and the Pirates were within a three-run homer they had no chance of achieving, as Ke'Bryan Hayes needed only two pitches to make the last out. The Pirates had lost again, going through two needless hours of nothing at all which they could have avoided just by telling the umpires that the weather report called for hot lava monsoons and flaming boulders from the Alleghenys so they might as well call the game and be done with it.
It is all part of the Pirates' general mode of operation this season. In a six-team battle for Eyesore Of The Year, with Miami ever in the mix and West Sacramento heading there after a disturbingly promising start, the Pirates fail differently than everyone else. They lull you to sleep by doing nothing, and then when you least expect it, they do less. Thursday was a totally unnecessary aberration to no measurable effect, but very much within the Pittsburgh wheelhouse. The only thing it lacked was Bob Nutting standing at the exit when the fans filed out and handing them vouchers to get their cars repossessed right from the parking lot. In the battle to be the worst entertainment vehicle in the nation, the Pirates bow to nobody by bowing to everybody. Thursday was just a gratuitous perversion of the art—two more hours the town and its citizens can never get back.
