The Pittsburgh Pirates weren’t a team on many people’s radars coming into the 2024 MLB regular season. But, as the first full week of the season is nearing an end, they have been the talk of the baseball world.
After sweeping the Miami Marlins in four games to start their season, the Pirates got their second series against the Washington Nationals started off with a bang. Pittsburgh defeated Washington 8-4, pushing their record to a perfect 5-0.
This is the best start the Pirates have gotten off to in over 40 years. The last time that they began a season 5-0 was back in 1983 when Johnny Ray had the highest WAR for a position player on the team and Rick Rhoden had the highest one on the pitching staff.
That season’s squad ended up finishing second in the NL East with an 84-78 record, missing the postseason. While this year’s squad has a long way to go in the season, optimism surrounding the squad is very high.
Manager Derek Shelton could not contain his excitement about seeing his team get off to such a hot start. While the Pirates are barely out of the starting gate of the season, Shelton believes there is significance to getting off to a hot start.
“There’s significance to getting off to a good start,” Shelton said. “You come out of spring training and all the things you talk about that you kind of want to implement — and we’ve talked a lot about what our intent should be and how it should be — [and] we’ve kind of executed that in the first five games.”
The Pirates have been getting contributions from everyone on the roster in the early going. They made MLB history when Jose Hernandez recorded his first career save on Opening Day, followed by Ryder Ryan and Jared Jones recording their first career victories in the following two games.
The pitching staff performing as well as they have to this point has been the biggest surprise. There were a lot of unknowns, especially with the starting rotation, coming into 2024 but through five games, they have done an excellent job.
There were no such worries about the lineup, as the Pirates are deep and talented. This is a group that can really hit, which has been on full display thus far. Pittsburgh has the third most runs in the MLB with 39 behind the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, who got a head start playing in the Seoul Series in Korea and have seven games played.
This is the longest streak to start a season scoring 6+ runs in every game for the Pirates in at least 124 years. Something special looks to be brewing in the Steel City, as even more high-upside young talent is in the pipeline ready to help sooner rather than later.
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