Pittsburgh Pirates Wake-Up Call – a big series win

Welcome to the Pittsburgh Pirates Wake-Up Call, a daily feature here at RumBunter.com. Every morning at 9 AM, one of us will give you our random thoughts on the goings-on around the Pirates’ organization, and we’ll throw out a few links to some good Pirates-related items your way from around the web as well.

The final playoff push

The Pirates have just four series left this season. The team is on pace to surpass their 2013 win total of 94, and currently holds the second best record in all of baseball. The four game deficit in the NL Central is still going to be very difficult to make up in the team’s final 13 games, but a sweep of St. Louis in their upcoming series against them would make up three of those games, so it’s not impossible. And locking down home field advantage over the Cubs for a potential wild card game is important as well.

Having recently lost Jung Ho Kang for the season (whose loss cannot be understated), the Pirates will have to battle even harder as they finish up this year. The Pirates managed to win two of three against the Dodgers without Kang, and the Dodgers are clearly a very good team. Losing Kang is a huge blow, but the Pirates still have the talent to win and do well in the postseason without him. They got to the playoffs the past two seasons without Kang, and won a decent number of games before Jordy Mercer‘s injury when Kang was still not an everyday starter, so there’s no reason they can’t win without him moving forward.

More from Pirates News

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• Pittsburgh Pirates: Free Agent Starting Pitchers Still Available

Big series win against the Dodgers

The recent series win against the Dodgers was big for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the Pirates kept pace with the Cubs and Cardinals. They haven’t been eliminated from the division race yet, and they put an extra game between themselves and the Cubs. Of course, they have one series each against the Cardinals and the Cubs, both of which will most likely be the determinant in how the playoff race ends up shaping out. Secondly, the Pirates showed that they could score runs against both Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw, two pitchers that they could face in a postseason series. While they didn’t knock the cover off the ball against them, which they more than likely wouldn’t do in the playoffs, they still scored against them, which is all you want to be able to do against the best pitchers in the league. Now the Pirates travel to Colorado for a four game set, which should be a series win. Taking three out of four against one of the worst teams in baseball would be big before facing the Cubs next weekend.

Around the net

Neil Walker himself knows that his time in Pittsburgh is most likely coming to an end. Check out a piece on him from the Tribune-Review here.

Are the Pirates a team of destiny? And does Andrew McCutchen have any shot at the NL MVP? Check out a piece on those topics and more from the Post-Gazette here.

If the division is to remain within reach, the Pittsburgh Pirates have to take at least three of four from the Rockies, and I think they will.

Next: Moving forward without Jung Ho Kang