Photo Credit: Frank Victores/USA TODAY Sports
The Pittsburgh Pirates represent what a true underdog is. No one saw them making it out of the NL Central, especially with the Cardinals’ tremendous lead. However, now they seem like a lock for the Wild Card spot where they could see another division foe, the Chicago Cubs. The Buccos are really painting baseball fields, black and yellow.
The Cardinals have 88 wins while the Pirates have 83 wins on the season. In the MLB and even in their division, the Pirates have really stepped up. Not too long ago, the Pirates were pretty much ignored and seemed doomed to stay mediocre forever. Twenty years of consecutive losing seasons isn’t really an easy feat to overcome, but the Pirates did it. After a lot of changes in their roster and a new mentality, they seemed like a new team.
In 2013, the Pirates never imagined they’d get as far as they did. However, most of the credit has to go to their roster and their vastly improved outfield. There are definitely three players who immediately come to mind when the Pirates come up and that’s Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, and Andrew McCutchen. However, the Pirates have a lot of hidden secret weapons but those three have to be some of their best.
Marte is a left-fielder from the Dominican Republic and in his third year as a Pittsburgh Pirate. His 2015 season has really been one of his best yet. His career-high runs scored so far are 83 and he has already scored 76 for the season which Marte can surely beat in the remaining games. Marte has 16 home runs, 26 stolen bases, and only one fielding error the whole season. His 2-run homer against the Giants really showed that Marte can perform under pressure which is something that a lot of teams strive to find.
The youngest of the group is Gregory Polanco. He is a 23-year old right fielder from the Dominican Republic in his second year as a Pittsburgh Pirate. Though Polanco is young, he still brings a lot of depth to the team. In his 2015 career, he has 43 RBIs already ten more than he had lasts season as well as seven home runs, and 24 stolen bases. Fielding is a completely different story for Polanco though because he has played center fielder, right fielder and left fielder in just this season. His six errors don’t really mean much in comparison to his 218 putouts and nine assists. With Polanco still really early in his career, there’s a lot of time for him to improve, not that he really needs to improve on much.
Arguably one of the most famous Pirates, Andrew McCutchen rounds out this extremely talented group. Cutch is the veteran of the group in his sixth year in the MLB. He has become one of the Pirates most dangerous offensive weapons with 149 home runs and 552 runs batted in, in his career along with a Gold Glove Award, 5-time All Star, 2013 NL MVP and a 3-time Sliver Slugger award winner. Some may think that batting is McCutchen’s main talent, but his talent as a center fielder is not something to easily forget about. In his career, he has 2,288 putouts, 49 assists, and a relatively low 29 errors. Off the field, Cutch has really become a big fixture in Pittsburgh especially for his dreadlocks which he cut off in 2015 and the money was donated to various charities in Pittsburgh.
If the Cardinals were in a different division, the Pirates would most likely be in the #1 spot in the NL Central and it would be because of Marte, Polanco, and McCutchen. Those three are a rare and deadly combination that could make the Pirates from notable losers to playoff contenders.
