Keep the Angst Coming!

The dispirited Pirates dragged themselves onto the field Monday night following their extra-inning loss to Astros on Sunday, one in which they blew a four-run lead in the ninth. Clearly still dragging this heavy burden, they wearily turned to face the Milwaukee Brewers and...won, 14-3 behind two touchdown passes by Ben Roethlisberger to Hines Ward and a stifling defense.

Okay, too early for the Steelers references (but who can blame Pirates fans for counting the days to football training camp), but for a day at least, the Pirates did resemble their tough-as-nails pigskin counterparts, who shrugged off a 7-5 record in November and rode seven straight wins to the Super Bowl. The Pirates won't be in the World Series, or even the playoffs, but they have shown on this home stand (3-1 thus far) that they still want to play ball as much as the guys who play across the lot at Heinz Field.

One has to wonder about this Pirates team. They follow up the most stirring win of the year with the most depressing loss of the year and then follow that up with a blowout win. They could easily be undefeated on this home stand after playing atrociously in three road losses in Arizona.

The enigma that is the Pirates grows even murkier when one looks closer at their record. They are one game over .500 at home, which doesn't sound like much until you look at the five teams with the worst won-loss records in baseball. Of these (in descending order, Washington, Chicago Cubs, Pirates, Florida and Kansas City) none has a winning home record except the Pirates. They have won five of their past seven games at home against Central Division opponents Cincinnati, Houston and Milwaukee (and are leading the latter as of this writing tonight, 9-1), all with records at or above .500, but have losing records against the lowly Cubs and Marlins. And, of course, on the road, they are abysmal, at 4-22, better than only hapless Kansas City.

What gives? Well, they don't hit on the road, for one thing. At home, the team had scored 124 runs in 25 games (before tonight, which will pad the total), or about five per game, nearly enough for the generous pitching staff. And about half of that total has come in the past seven games. In 26 games away from PNC, on the other hand, they have scored a grand total of 84 runs, or about 3.2 per game. The best pitching staff in MLB is going to have trouble dealing with that meager production, and the Pirates are not closing to having the best. They have, in fact, given up more than five runs per game on the road.

Then there is the matter of one-run games. The Pirates have lost 1o of them on the road. Cut that in half and you don't have a dream season, but you don't have a disaster either. The team went 1-6 on its seven-game trip to open the season and was outscored by a total of eight runs. In 13 of the 22 losses, they either led or were tied at some point in the game, many of them in the late going, and in a number of other losses, they scored one or more runs in the ninth inning to bring themselves to within a single tally, but couldn't get over the hump.

Just why all of this is so is difficult to answer. Why does Jose Castillo, for example, hit about .330 at home (he hit two homers and drove in six tonight) and about .260 on the road? Their travails put me in mind of the Colorado Rockies, who for years have been among the worst road teams in all of baseball. Of course, that was always atrributed to the team's high-altitude home ball park, Coors Field, where until recently, averages and run counts were hugely inflated. When the light-air Rockies went on the road, their bats seemed to take on a burden of lead. But that doesn't explain the disparity for the Pirates, who play in a ball park that is not known as a hitter's paradise.

Well, tonight's game is over, and one can only wish that the magic air wafting in off the Allegheny and Monongahela could blow forever. Pirates 12, Brewers 1. Maybe we can prorate these runs over the next road trip?