Pirates pitching staff unlocks historic feat in dominant sweep of Cardinals

The Pittsburgh Pirates are playing excellent baseball of a sudden, and the offense has finally awoken. Riding a six-game win streak featuring five blowouts, the Pirates are one of the hottest teams in baseball. While the offense is the headline right now, the pitching staff has remained stellar, and has matched the lineup with an historic feat that represents a new high-water mark.

Following this dominant sweep over the Cardinals, this pitching staff has now gone 31 straight scoreless innings. They did not allow a single run against St. Louis, marking the third time in franchise history that the Pirates did not allow a run in all three games of a series. The last time Pittsburgh accomplished this was back in 1976 against ... the Cardinals.

Mitch Keller was one of the arms that helped reach this major feat, throwing seven scoreless innings in Game 3. He also unlocked another piece of history for this organization, reaching the most career strikeouts at PNC Park with 394.

Thanks to the pitching staff allowing just four runs in this homestand, the team as a whole also set another record with their 43-4 run differential. They are the first team to score that many runs over a six-game span while allowing fewer than five runs in MLB History. The next-closest was 42 runs scored by the Cincinnati Reds in 1884. 1884!

Pirates pitching staff sets all kind of historic feats in outstanding sweep over Cardinals.

This team is firing off all cylinders and are now all of a sudden 12 games back of .500. There's no sugarcoating that the season as a whole has still been less than ideal, yet less than a week ago, they were 18 games below the mark. They are also nine games back of a Wild Card spot as well.

With a big series against the Mariners starting on Friday, the Pirates have a lot of momentum to keep this winning going. This remarkable run they have been on has been the best this team has looked all year, and now Don Kelly is 26-24 since taking over. Kelly may be saving Ben Cherington's job and is shifting the narrative of this team.

This six-game win streak has been exhilarating, and they have a chance to keep it up with Seattle on Friday. That game on the 4th of July will be interesting, with Bailey Falter on the mound with a chance to make more history with this scoreless stretch.