By virtue of playing good baseball earlier in the 2012 season, the Pirates have been lucky enough to play a bunch of Important Baseball Games over the course of the last month. The Pirates have lost most of these Important Baseball Games. If they can't stop doing that, they won't get very many more Important Baseball Games. In fact, tonight is pretty much the dividing line. It's been fun and it's been nice, but if the Pirates can't scrape a win against the Cardinals tonight their playoff hopes are going to be on some pretty serious life-support. 

I suppose it's fitting then that James McDonald takes the mound for this game. His first-half breakthrough was a big reason why the Pirates got as far as they did in the playoff race and his second half breakdown is a big reason why they're falling out of it. There's been a lot of focus on the bullpen and on the trades made in August lately, but the reality is that the Pirates' key performers have not been good of late and it's really hard for a baseball team to win games when that happens. McDonald pitched a nice game in St. Louis a week and a half ago and his Jekyll-and-Hyde second half has had an every-other-start flavor to it; let's hope the good J-Mac shows up at PNC Park tonight, let's hope that those Andrew McCutchen line drives from last night find some more gaps, and let's hope that this crazy thing continues for one more day. 

McDonald goes up against Jake Westbrook. First pitch tonight is at 7:05. 

Just as I was going to bed last night, word broke that the Pirates were releasing Erik Bedard. This morning, the team's confirmed Dejan Kovacevic's report; the lefty's short Pirate tenure is over. Pretty much any way you slice it, this is a move that had to happen. Bedard hasn't been very good in 2012. His 5.01 ERA is higher than his 4.07/4.05 FIP/xFIP, but I think that's a little misleading. His line drive rate was up quite a bit this year and his HR/FB rate was creeping up, too, despite making half of his starts at PNC Park, which is generally friendly to left handed pitchers and their home run rates. He was getting hit hard most of the time, especially recently. Since his back problems, his ERA was 5.96. Since the All-Star break it's 5.49. He failed to get out of the fifth in his last two starts. I could keep going on, but that'd be piling on. Bedard was a risk for the Pirates pre-season, but he was a good risk. He started off the season strongly, he faltered, and there didn't seem to be much the Pirates could do. It's hard to argue this decision; I think everyone involved probably wishes it would've worked out better, but here we are. 

The more interesting question now is what the Pirates do to replace Bedard in the rotation. It's tempting to say something like, "The Pirates can't waste time with someone like Kevin Correia now; they need to do something bold." This isn't an untrue statement, but the reality is that the time do something bold was a month ago. The Pirates got halfway there at the trade deadline; they revamped two-thirds of the outfield and they turned over a key utility spot and they added a starting pitcher. They didn't go far enough, though; they left Bedard in the rotation thinking that he could rebound, they stuck with Kevin Correia as their sixth starter when they needed an extra guy in the rotation, and they completely failed to address the hole that trading Brad Lincoln left in the bullpen even though they (in theory at least) have the arms to do it at Triple-A. I don't know if doing any of those things would have prevented the fall that this Pirate team is experiencing right now, but the holes that went unaddressed (and that could've been tackled without additional trades) seem pretty glaring in hindsight.

What's particularly frustrating to me is the timing here; Bedard started on Sunday and the Pirates have an off-day on Thursday. That means that he wouldn't be asked to start again until September 1st. That means that whoever they call up, they could call up without having to release Bedard and lose his playoff eligibility. That means, basically, that the Pirates have recognized that there's a problem and that things need to be shaken up ASAP; it's just that the problem has been apparent for two weeks and they waited until they were three games out of a playoff spot with 34 games left. 

All of that being said, we're well past the point that plugging Kevin Correia into the rotation has any useful functionality. The Pirates are fading in the playoff race and Correia's a treading-water kind of guy; innings given to him are wasted right now because there's no real chance of him coming in and winning a game by himself and starting him tells us absolutely nothing about 2013 because Correia's a free agent that won't be back next year. The Pirates need to put Jeff Locke or Chris Leroux or Kyle McPherson into the rotation not just because their ceiling is higher than Correia's, but because they need to know if Leroux can acquit himself as a starter at the big league level and if Locke's minor league strides will translate to more Major League success and just how far along McPherson is. 

The bottom line is that the if the Pirates are going down in this playoff race (and it looks like they are), then they should at least go out with guns blazing. Bring up Leroux. Bring up Locke. Bring up Morris. There's nothing left to lose in 2012. 

If you really want to get down to brass tacks, this whole game turned on one play. After the Pirates took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth inning, Yadier Molina lead off the fifth wiht a single. Skip Schumaker followed that up with a ball hit to left-center that seemed to hang up in the air for forever. It looked like Jose Tabata was going to be able to make a play on it, but he couldn't get to it in time. Andrew McCutchen came in from center to cut the play off and had to kind of re-route himself around Tabata, who kept running out to the fence. McCutchen appeared to twist his ankle in the grass, and Molina scored all the way from first. Watching the replay again now, I'm just not sure how Tabata didn't get to that ball; he had plenty of time and it even seemed like he had a good line on it. He just didn't get there. As a result, the Pirates needed a perfect McCutchen-to-Harrison-to-Barajas relay line to keep the game tied in the fifth and the Cardinals tacked two on in the sixth to take a lead they wouldn't give up. 

For most of the night the Pirates seemed to hit the ball pretty hard off of Kyle Lohse. Andrew McCutchen hit a few balls right on the nose but only had one hit to show for it and in the Pirates' two-run fourth it seemed like every hit the Pirates had that inning was a screaming line drive that was directed right at someone to limit it for a single. Instead of a string of extra base hits to break the game open, the Pirates only came out of it with two runs and that wasn't nearly enough.

This kind of loss illustrates what was so bad about the Pirates playing terribly in most of the month leading up to this series; if you go take the field and put together a relatively solid effort against a good baseball team, maybe you're lucky to win half of those games. Suddenly the Pirates are in a position where that's probably not going to cut it; had they split with the Dodgers and taken a game or two from the Padres and actually showed up for the Brewers series over the weekend, this is the sort of game that a team could lose and you'd be able to say to yourself, "Well, that was frustrating but it wasn't so bad; on a different night those hits fall in and the Bucs win this game 6-4. Even the series up tomorrow." That's not really an option for this team, though. They had a lead and they couldn't hold on to it and now they're three games out of a playoff spot. That's bad news.

For almost a month now, I've been saying things like, "The Pirates aren't quite collapsing yet, but they have to start playing better soon if they want to avoid a full-on collapse." Or, "Well, it's not quite time to panic but the Pirates are at some point going to have to stop playing bad baseball."

We've reached "some point," folks. The Pirates are two games behind the Cardinals with the Red Birds in town for a three-game set today. The distinct possibility now exists that the Pirates will end this series without a playoff spot really even being within shouting distance given the number of games left in the season.  The Pirates absolutely have to avoid being swept, they really need to win two of these three, and really, it'd be best for them if they just won all three games and got themselves back into a playoff position as September ended. 

Which is to say that if this baseball team has anything left in it, now is the time to show it. If Andrew McCutchen's going to surge down the stretch, it has to start today. If AJ Burnett has a second wind in his bounceback season, we've got to see it tonight. Same goes for Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker, James McDonald, and the rest of the group. Tonight is the night that it has to turn around. Friday might be too late.

Burnett and Kyle Lohse take the mound tonight at 7:05.  

It shouldn't surprise you that the Pittsburgh Pirates' Second Annual Playoff Collapse is wearing me out; last year's collapse nearly killed this blog over the course of the winter and this year's team is better, with more wins, more talent, and a stronger playoff position to piss away. That makes the unraveling that much more exasperating to me. 

Here's what I've been dreading all weekend, and thus the reason that I just didn't write and mostly ignored the Pirates: after almost a full season of being a real baseball fan, it's time to go back to being a Pirate fan. That means that games can't be watched just for their individual value and the drama that they create inside of the playoff race; everything that's done now has to be done with an eye towards the future. What made this Pirate team good enough to stay in contention for most of the season? What can be counted on to happen again in 2013? What can't be counted on? What holes does this team have that truly need filled next year? Can they be filled? 

It's not that the Pirates are out of playoff contention right now, just that they probably will be soon and now that that's happening, it's time to move our sights from the present off to some distant, murky, uncertain future yet again. Just thinking about having to do this again makes me tired. 

The Pirates finally got back on track last night with their 4-0 win over the Brewers. The next step now is to actually stay on track. A win this afternoon wins them only their second series of August and it ensures that the Cardinals will be in town with no more than a one game wild card lead over the Bucs. That's obviously not an ideal situation, but it's also not a bad one. Of course, all of this relies on the Pirates winning a second game in a row. They've only won two in a row twice this month and they haven't beaten the same team two games in a row since the trade deadline (they beat the Cubs on August 31 and September 1). I guess we're shooting for baby steps here; win the game, win the series, worry about the Cardinals when it's time for the Cardinals. 

First pitch today is 1:35. Erik Bedard goes against Mark Rodgers 

The Pirates are playing bad baseball and losing a lot of games. Stop that, Pirates. 

Shaun Marcum returns from the DL tonight against Jeff Karstenst at 7:05. 

The Pirates were pretty busy for a Friday afternoon in August today; they sent Daniel McCutchen back down to Triple-A and brought Jordy Mercer back from paternity leave (this brings the roster back to 13 position players and 12 pitchers, which makes sense given that the Pirates were both off yesterday and will be off again next Thursday), they sent Yamaico Navarro down to Triple-A for Jeff Clement, and they claimed Hisanori Takahashi off of waivers. Clement will presumably be with the club in Pittsburgh tonight and they'll have to make another move when Takashi gets into town whenever that may be. 

There were a lot of Pirate fans clamoring for Clement to get called up, but my interest in him has waned quite a bit since the Pirate offense came to life in June. The reality is that Clement is 28 and he's not even matching his Triple-A numbers from 2003. It's a cool story that he's come back from so many injuries to have a big league career again, but I don't think he's any more likely to help the Pirate offense right now than Yamaico Navarro was. Takahashi, meanwhile, seems like a decent claim. He's a lefty, which the Pirates need in the bullpen if they're not planning on calling Justin Wilson up (which ... next topic), and he had a 4.1 K/BB ratio before being demoted by the Angels for his 4.93 ERA. At the very least, that K/BB ratio may indicate some hidden value, though he does tend to give up a bunch of homers and that makes him like the lefty the Pirates already have in the bullpen in Tony Watson. I don't know who the Pirates will remove for Takahashi, but I do know that if it's not Chad Qualls that I'll be pretty upset. 

The Pirates are back at PNC tonight to play the Brewers. Wandy Rodriguez looks to make his first good start as a Pirate. Mike Fiers goes for the Brewers. He's given up 12 runs in seven innings over his last two starts. First pitch is at 7:05. 

The Pirates are 7-13 in their last 20 games. Andrew McCutchen hit worse in those 20 games than Gaby Sanchez. The pitching staff is cracking at the seams, the bullpen is a smoking crater that the team refuses to acknowledge or fix, and the Pirates are out playoff position for the first time since June 27th, sitting a full game behind the Cardinals for the NL's final wild card spot. 

This is a crossroads. If the Pirates are a good baseball team, they really can't play much worse than they've been playing and they keep doing this for much longer. Despite their struggles over the last three weeks, the Pirates don't really need to be an exceptionally good baseball team from here on out to take a wild card spot; they just need to stop being a bad one. With 38 games left, the Pirates play the Brewers (57-66, 17-21 since the break) nine times, the Cubs seven (47-76, 14-24), the Astros six (39-86, 6-33), and the Mets (57-68, 11-28) four. That's 27 games against teams that are medicore, bad, or downright awful. If the Pirates just go 15-12 in those games, that puts us at 82 wins without even considering the six games against the Reds, three against the Cardinals, and three against the Braves. If the Pirates win five of those 12 games, that's 87 wins, which will at the very least keep them in the thick of the race for the last wild card spot right down until the last week and it could even be enough to sneak into the wild card play-in game if the Dodgers and Cardinals don't start playing better baseball. 

If we just look at the season from the viewpoint of the last three weeks, 20-18 seems like an incredibly tall task for this group of players. If we look at what the Pirates have accomplished over the course of 123 games, it seems much less improbable. That's the crossroads we're at: is this a good team in a slump, or a mediocre team that played way over its heads in June and July? Are the problems we've seen from James McDonald and AJ Burnett and Wandy Rodriguez of late mechanical things that can be fixed down the stretch or are they fatigue issues that won't go away as the season goes on? Can Andrew McCutchen pull himself back together and get hot to finish the season, or is he out of gas again? Seriously, what the hell is going on with the bullpen?

None of these questions have immediate answers. The team's poor play of late has certainly sewed enough doubt in my mind that it's hard to see this group of players getting back to the pre-All Star break hot streak that they were on. Even with lots of Cubs and Astros dotting the landscape ahead, it's really tough to envision this team reeling off an 8-2 streak to put some of these fears to bed. They don't really need that, though, to stay afloat. They just need to stop being awful and move back towards something resembling average. At the very least, that'll be a good start.