Pirates find themselves on the wrong side of history again after sweep by Mariners

The Pittsburgh Pirates arrived in the Pacific Northwest riding the high of a season-high six-game win streak, but the Seattle Mariners quickly pulled the Uno reverse card on them and held them scoreless over a three-game series shutout.

After shutting out the St. Louis Cardinals in all three games of their previous series, the Pirates became the first team in MLB history to have back-to-back series of three or more games with a sweep of shutouts for and against, in either order.

That's hardly the kind of history any team wants to make, but it's the kind that the Pirates have been making all season en route to a league-leading 13 shutout losses.

According to Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this weekend's series against the Mariners marked the first time that Pirates failed to score a run in a series of three or more games since 1888, when they were known as the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. It was also the first time they had been shut out in three straight games in a series of any length since 1959.

Pirates find themselves on the wrong side of history again after sweep by Mariners

It doesn't take long to figure out that the Pirates' offensive ineptitude is primarily (if not entirely) to blame for the team's calamitous showing in Seattle. They managed just 12 hits in 94 at-bats for a .127 batting average. They tied their season-low for hits with just two in the 1-0 loss on Saturday, then proceeded to record a season-high 13 strikeouts in the 1-0 loss the following day.

Pirates have the league's worst slugging percentage (.341) and second-worst OPS (.644) this season. They are also tied for the fourth-worst batting average (.261) and seventh worst on-base percentage (.303). They have hit the fewest home runs (61), scored the second-fewest runs (310), recorded the sixth-fewest hits (694) and posted the fifth-most strikeouts (797).

The Seattle series was merely a microcosm of Pittsburgh's entire season. Considering the disaster of a roster that Ben Cherington's front office has assembled, though, hardly anyone is surprised. The Pirates are doing what they can with what they have, but it's painfully clear at this point that what they have isn't even remotely enough.

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