npoc

To be the Worst...
...You Gotta be Beat by the Worst
The Pirates obliged

MLB Cellar, PA- With the title of worst team in the majors hanging in the balance during a three game set between NL bottom feeders, the Pirates seized the oppurtunity with key losses on Saturday and Sunday. They made the Marlins lineup look like a bunch of seasoned veterans as they averaged 8 runs a game throughout the series and made Brian Moehler, the worst pitcher in the majors for the past 10 months look like a cy young candidate.
They have bottomed out and it is going to be tough to go any lower than this, PBC may be empty the rest of the season, it is getting ugly, very ugly.
Anybody that questions that the Pirates are the worst team in major league baseball needs a mental examination. We can now set our aims at the all-time loss record in a season rather than simply 100 and open up the discussion if this was the worst performance by a $42 million product in the history of civilization.

Gene Collier
The man at his absolute best

Whether permitting four doubles or five earned runs or six hits in the first inning, Pirates starter Victor Santos was somehow still around two hours later, fondling a three-run lead against a Florida team that is best and most accurately understood as not yet having achieved all of the polished professionalism of, uh, the Pirates.

The Marlins got to town late Thursday night without even 10 wins. The Pirates had had 10 since, like, Tuesday. Let's just say it's been years -- probably since the South Florida World Series parade of 2003 -- since anyone was this glad to see the Marlins. It was all the Pirates could do to keep from meeting them at the airport with confetti and balloons.
But as the competitive hilarity began last night, the Pirates stunk first.

So after half an inning in Game 1 of this not-to-be-critical series, the Pirates knew it would take six runs to win. A trifle vexing when you've scored as many as six runs exactly once in the previous 19 games.
Fortunately for Jim Tracy's .238 hitting club, Florida's pitching staff is thick with earned run averages that look more like birth weights.

The Marlins' total payroll wouldn't cover the back bench of the Yankees' bullpen. They've played 13 rookies coming into this series with the desperate Pirates and called up a 14th in the hours before last night's game.
They didn't need him.
When the Pirates' Craig Wilson took over the club lead in triples (2) with a 400-foot liner that thumped off the center-field wall in the bottom of the sixth last night, the Pirates had the tying run pacing in a nervous saunter about 82 feet from the plate for the next 10 minutes.
Might as well have been 82 miles.

With Sean Casey's broken back a near perfect metaphor for Jim Tracy's offense, with Joe Randa on the disabled list as well, and with Burnitz's Pirates destiny taking dead aim at a spot somewhere between those of Derek Bell and George Hendrick, runs look as though they'll be awfully hard to come by here for some time.

Power Rankings
Post-Gazette- No. 28
ESPN- No. 29
Sportsline- No. 29

On Sundays Mothers Day Massacre

Moehler won for the first time in 23 games since July, taking a shutout into the eighth inning as Florida opened an early eight-run lead in beating the Pirates 8-2 Sunday.
"Thanks for remembering that," Moehler said, smiling, when reminded that he hadn't won since July 20 -- a stretch that included 14 starts and eight relief appearances.
By taking two of three, the Marlins won a series of three or more games for the first time this season. The Marlins (11-24) no longer have the NL's worst record, a distinction that now belongs to the Pirates (11-27).

For the Pirates, it was a matter of going from bad to worse, as they extended what has become the franchise's second-worst start since the 19th century.
Only the 1952 Pirates had a worse record (7-31) to this point than these Pirates -- and they went on to win only 42 of 154 games. The 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenies, the forerunners to the Pirates, were 9-28-1 after 38 games.

Elimination Number
112

Chase for .100

Chris Duffy .194

Jeremy Burnitz .185

Jose Hernandez .171

Pittsburghs KKK

Craig Wilson 35 K's

Burnitz 32 K's

Jason Bay 31 K's

By The Numbers Pirates

11-27 .289 13 GB

27 losses leads the majors

.289 win pct. NL worst

13 games back, worst in the majors