Pittsburgh Pirates look to get back on track against Oakland Athletics

The Pittsburgh Pirates once 9-2 start is very much in the rearview window at this point, the Pirates enter the last days of April with a 14-15 record on the season and losers of seven of their last 10 games.

This past weekend, the Pirates fell twice to the San Francisco Giants and will now travel across the bay to take on the Oakland Athletics. As expected, the Athletics have been one of the bottom-tier teams in the league through the first month of the season, though they have performed slightly better than expected with a 12-17 record.

After splitting a four-game series with the New York Yankees last week, they took two of three against World Series contenders, the Baltimore Orioles this past weekend in the Charm City and now return home for their clash with the Buccos.

The Pirates will also be hoping for improved results on their performance from last season against the Athletics. Last year, the Athletics took two of three from the Pirates in Pittsburgh, outscoring the Pirates 24-12 in an early June series which included an 11-2 defeat on June 6.

Entering this week, the Athletics' pitching has kept them mostly afloat with the 10th-best ERA in the AL at 4.13. Offensively, despite having the fourth most home runs in the league, the Athletics have the 14th-best run-producing offense in the American League, scoring just 84 runs on the season, an average of 2.89 runs per game. As a team, the Athletics have produced a team slash of .203/.275/.348.

With that, here are this week's pitching matchups for the series.