Pittsburgh Pirates Wake-Up Call

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.

Marte owns Coors Field

The Pirates just finished up a beautiful sweep of the lowly Colorado Rockies yesterday afternoon. The game required some late heroics, but the Pirates still managed to pull out a victory. With the Cubs and Cardinals continuing to win, the Pirates also need to keep winning just to have any chance of catching the Cardinals while simultaneously holding off the Cubs. Fortunately, the Pirates have a chance to both put the Cubs out of the race for home field in the Wild Card game and to narrow the Cardinal lead to one game in the upcoming series.

But before we move onto the Cubs’ series, we have to discuss Starling Marte and his recent dominance. Over the last seven days, Marte is batting .387 with an OPS over 1.100, and he holds a .338/.373/.532 line in September. This is thanks to Marte’s historic owning of Coors Field. This past series, Marte tied the Pirate record for most hits in a four game series with 13. In total, Marte went 13-20 with 7 RBIs and just one strikeout in the series. He also dominates Coors Field historically, as he holds a .395/.481/.605 career line there. Many players’ batting averages go up at Coors, but Marte clearly performs better than most.

More from Pirates News

Looking towards the Cubs’ series

The Pirates begin their third-to-last series of the year at Wrigley Field in a contest this afternoon. And yet again, the Pirates will have to face Jake Arrieta in this series, as they’ll see him in the finale. They’ll also face Jon Lester, so it will be tough getting out of this series with two wins. But fortunately for the Pirates, even if they get swept, they’ll still hold a half-game lead on on Chicago for home field in the Wild Card game. I certainly don’t want to see the Cubs play at Wrigley Field against the Pirates, considering what PNC Park was like two years ago.

The Cardinals continue to win, but if the Pirates can make up just one game on St. Louis either before or after they face each other, the Pirates will control their own destiny. That would take a sweep over them next week, but stranger things have happened. And a tie in the division could force the Pirates to trot out either Gerrit Cole or Francisco Liriano in a division tie-breaker game, depending on the tiebreaker scenario. Tiebreaker scenarios are always crazy to think about. Between Liriano and Cole, who would the Pirates use a potential division tiebreaker contest? And if they lost that and then won the Wild Card game, A.J. Burnett and J.A. Happ would most likely start the division series. That would be interesting to say the least.

Around the net

In a piece from a website that is fantastic (aka Grantland), Ben Lindbergh writes about how Pirates’ fans can cope with the possibility of facing Arrieta. Grantland always puts out good work, so make sure to check it out.

And Rob Biertempfel of the Tribune-Review writes about how the Pirates are taking advantage of using iPads in the dugout. More cool initiatives taken by the Pirates, as per usual.

The Pirates need to keep winning. That division is still within reach until they’re mathematically eliminated, so we can’t give up hope justyet.

Next: Should the Pirates bring back Neil Walker next season?