PITTSBURGH — After being a season-high seven games over .500 (51-44) following their victory over the Cincinnati Reds on July 19th, the Pirates have seen themselves drop out of first place in the National League Central and sit in fourth place behind the Milwaukee Brewers, St Louis Cardinals and Reds.
The Bucs have gone just 11-31 since the win over the Reds. The first half season was referred to as a “Cinderella season” having lost 105 losses in 2010.
The glass slipper may have fell, but the future of the Pittsburgh organization has never looked better.
Manager Clint Hurdle has checked off a lot of tasks from his 2011 to do list, one that remains, however, is to finish the final month strong.
“Every guy out there wants to finish strong,“ Hurdle said. “I want to finish strong but we’ve got to go play. The last month, it has been a struggle to complete games, to finish games, to complete games on all cylinders. They are aware of that.“
“You look at a couple of our ‘core players’. One of them is in his second full season of 162-game schedule. One of them is in his first full season. We’ve got a bunch of guys out there that are finally starting to understand of the value and the challenge that comes with 162. We’ve got starting pitchers, a couple of them, that are going to go post to post for the first time in their lives. We’ve got relief pitchers that have appearances more than they have ever have before. We have some position players that have at-bats and games played more so then [ever]. But that’s part of what you’ve got to build. They have to understand the volume and what it takes to be able to finish a season strong. I let them know the other day, the beauty of this thing is when you do really well in the sixth month grind you get a bonus month of baseball.”
The Pirates have 25 games remaining in the season, 12 of them at PNC Park. Five of the eight series left are against their own division. The Bucs (62-75) are currently 18.5 games back in the Central.
Photo credit: Yahoo! Sports
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