Pirates face tough challenge ahead as wild-card hopes keep fading

Sunday morning on his weekly radio show, Ben Cherington expressed that the Pirates' plans to compete for a playoff spot haven't been altered by the team's recent 10-game losing streak. That set the team back significantly over a span in which they went from being serious wild card contenders to the National League Central Division cellar.

"We're going to keep fighting," Cherington said. "We had a very difficult stretch, and we've also seen the team play really well and win a bunch of games over a two-week stretch at different points of the season. No reason we can't do that. Believe we can and are very capable of doing that, so we're not changing our goals. But the best way to accomplish the goals is to show up every day, do the work we need to do in pregame, our practice and be intentional about that, focus on improvement, win every pitch and the outcomes will add up. When they're not good enough, we acknowledge that and, ultimately, I am most responsible for that. Got to keep continuing to make the team better so we put ourselves in an even stronger position going forward."

The Pirates ended a skid that matched the sixth-longest in franchise history by winning two from the Mariners Friday and Saturday. But the series ended with a thud, a 10-3 loss Sunday afternoon at PNC Park. 

Now, turning their focus towards a three-game road series against the defending champion Rangers, the Pirates find themselves sitting at 58-65 on the season. They're still in last place in the NL Central, trailing the first-place Brewers by 13.5 games. Prior to the losing streak, first place in the division was six games within reach. But more importantly, the hopes of defying the odds and earning a wild card spot are fading with each addition to the loss column: 

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That seven-game differential between the Pirates and the Braves for the final wild card spot presents a significant challenge to overcome with just 39 games remaining in the regular season. Of those games, a total of 17 of them are against divisional teams -- Reds, Cubs and Cardinals -- ahead of the Pirates in the wild card race. That stretch alone could make or break them. Additionally, they play nine games against expected American League playoff teams in the Guardians, Royals and Yankees, and still have three left against the Central-leading Brewers. That makes up 29 of their remaining games. Not exactly the easiest road ahead. 

For the Pirates to even match the 84-78 record that allowed the reigning National League champion Diamondbacks to sneak their way into the postseason as the third wild card team last year, they would have to go 26-13 the rest of the way. It was a simpler task for Arizona last year, as they sat at 62-61 -- a four-win upgrade over this current Pirates team -- at the 123-game mark in the season and were two games back of a wild card spot before finishing with a 22-17 record in the final 39-game stretch. 

The Pirates have plenty of teams to make ground on to have a chance at a postseason berth and the odds don't seem to be in their favor given their lack of consistency in stacking wins and the challenging schedule they have to close out the regular season. Plus, this year's wild card field -- led by the Padres, Diamondbacks and Braves -- seems much more competitive than last year's.

But don't tell that to those in the Pirates' clubhouse, though. Guys like Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Paul Skenes aren't about to give up hope. They're aware of the challenges this last month and a half will bring, but they still believe in the team's ability to fight til the end. 

"You just take it day by day. You can't look ahead and you can't look behind," Kiner-Falefa said. "I think any time you're in a race and you start trying to look ahead at winning this game or winning that game, that's when things speed up. I think we just try to win every series from here on out and see where we're at at the end. Hopefully we're in a good spot and if not, then it is what it is. We'll just try to go and play clean baseball, and I think the goal is, from here on out, just to win every series." 

Interestingly enough, winning each of their remaining 12 series is what it would take for the Pirates to get to the level of last year's Diamondbacks and realistically put themselves in a position to have a chance at a playoff spot. Much easier said than done, but if they somehow managed to win all but one game in each of those series, they'd sit at 27-12 with a final record of 85-77. 

"We've just got to go out and put ourselves in the best position to win one at a time and go from there," Skenes said. "It's just about going out one day at a time and executing." 

The Pirates will take a shred of momentum into this upcoming series in Arlington, Texas, as their series win over the Mariners was their first since a late July trip to Houston that preceded the long losing streak. 

"Yeah, I mean, you take out those 10 days and everybody's feeling high and mighty and coming off a lot of good series wins," Joey Bart said. "We struggled a little bit, but you got to put that in the past and work forward. This series here was a good one to take two out of three and try to get some momentum rolling." 

The Pirates didn't get the results they wanted in Sunday's series finale, as Jake Woodford was tagged for seven runs (five earned) in four innings and the offense was limited to five hits, including a two-run home run by Bart in the sixth inning: 

Still, Derek Shelton sounded pleased with the overall effort this weekend. The wins featured offensive performances in which five or more runs were scored and solid starting pitching performances from Skenes and Bailey Falter surely helped the cause. 

"We came in and won two of three against the best starting pitching in baseball," Shelton said. "Today, obviously, wasn't our day. But to come back from the road trip and win two of three, that was important to us. I was pleased with how we responded coming off the trip." 

When asked about what the approach, the belief and the attitude has to look like over the final 39 games of this season, Shelton said, "The belief is that we've tried to win every day. We went through, like I said the first day here before the first game, we played well for three and a half months and went through a really tough stretch. That was a stretch on our schedule that we had circled. We knew it was going to be tough coming out of the break. They gotta continue to go and again, proud of the way they responded during the first two games here." 

Regardless of what has occurred during what has been a season-defying month of August, the Pirates have put themselves in a position where there isn't a lot of room for error. If they want to have any chance at somehow salvaging this season and in order to play into the month of October, they have to treat every game as a must win. But looking ahead isn't going to do any good. Taking things one game at a time is the ideal approach when facing the types of challenges that currently stand in their way. 

"That's it, just show up every day ready to play. That's really all you can do, you know what I mean?" Bart said. "Try to get together, try to band each other up and go after it. And that's what we're going to do moving forward."