It's like Deja Vu All Over Again for the Buccos

Don't jump off the ship. We've seen this before.  

After one time through the rotation, shortened to a 4 man rotation because of the off day, the Pirates are pulling an Adam LaRoche special.  That is, they're not hitting early in the season.  Let's hope they don't pull a real Adam LaRoche and wait til the second half to start hitting.  I was curious as to how they compared to the last 2 years in the first four games.  It's obvious that they are not quick starters out of the gate.  Take out Andrew McCutchen and a hot 4 games by Jose Tabata in 2011 and the numbers would be sickening.  But, take away McCutchen at any time during the season and it would not be good news.  He is the foundation of this team and we saw last year that when he gets hot the sky is the limit.  

Of course there has to be a reason for them to get off to this slow start.  I know what it is.  It's the weather.  They played those first three games in Pittsburgh and it is spring and not even in the 60s on a regular basis.  I could almost go for that reasoning, but they were playing the Cubs, so any disadvantage from the weather should be offset by the fact that IT'S THE CUBS.  I know the Pirates don't have that much to be proud of the last 20 years, but IT'S THE CUBS.  My parents weren't born the last time they won the World Series.  So, yeah the weather, that's why they started off with 1 win in their first 4.  Wait, they're playing in LA now and they still didn't hit.  I don't think there's a coldspell happening in lalaland right now, but I could be wrong, didn't check the weather yesterday.  Let's go to weather.com.

Doesn't look too bad.  A balmy 56 at the worst.  Not exactly The Bahamas, but not Alaska either.  I can't see how that would affect their hitting.  They did spend a while in Florida this Spring.  That should have warmed them up sufficiently.  Ok, enough of the joking around.  The Pirates are fishing for their first winning season in a couple of decades.  They need to take advantage of every quality pitching start they have this year and so far they have wasted 3 and barely mustered enough offense to pull the 4th out.  Their offense really has to start clicking.  They will not hit home runs on a regular basis.  McCutchen will hit them consistently, Jones will continue to go on home run tears here and there, Alvarez will continue to mature and increase his home run numbers and Marte will hopefully show some power.  Don't count on significant power from the rest, although Walker could break out  and that would be a huge bonus.  I'm counting on him just to hit somewhere near .300 and hit alot of doubles.

Yeah the Pirates are off to a slow start, and they can't really afford to continue it if they have any design on winning the NL Central.  But we are only 4 games into the season and, as they say, there is a lot of baseball left.  Let's see where we are after 10 games.  Maybe more than the weather will be heating up in Pittsburgh, namely the bats of those Buccos.