Red Sox fans only know half the pain that Pirates fans do after another postseason flameout

For the second consecutive year, the Boston Red Sox hit a Yankees-shaped wall in the postseason, falling to their biggest rivals in the Wild Card Round. It's understandably a tough fate for a team finally on the other side of a lengthy rebuild, especially after they went all-in at the trade deadline.

But the outcry of Red Sox fans on social media suggesting this is the worst two-year playoff run ever is clearly just a "prisoners of the moment" situation. As Pittsburgh Pirates fans know all too well, there's a certain two-year stretch of postseason baseball that can never be topped.

That's right — it's time to relive those 2014 and 2015 Wild Card Games.

Pirates' 2014-15 playoff runs remain MLB's all-time unluckiest stretch of postseason baseball

Following an incredible 2013 season which ended with 94 wins, a trip to the NLDS, and trophies for Andrew McCutchen (MVP), Clint Hurdle (MOY), and Francisco Liriano (CBPOY), expectations were high for the Bucs heading into 2014. They more or less delivered with an 88-win campaign, but that left them to host the Wild Card Game against the even year San Francisco Giants.

That proved to be the worst possible matchup, as the human buzzsaw known as Madison Bumgarner tore through the Pirates' lineup with no regard for human life. When all was said and done, the Giants walked away with an 8-0 victory behind their ace's four-hit shutout.

Things were supposed to be different in 2015, as the Pirates improved their record by 10 wins. They were still forced to host the Wild Card Game because the Cardinals won the division with a 100-62 record, but it was indisputably one of the best teams in franchise history.

Unfortunately, they never even got a chance to show off their prowess against the Cubs on that lone October night. Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta was just as dominant as Bumgarner from the year before, and a home run from Kyle Schwarber into the Allegheny pretty much sapped the life out of PNC Park. It was another scoreless defeat, with the Pirates falling 4-0.

I should hardly need to remind you of how inevitable those outcomes felt at the time. Bumgarner's shutout was merely the appetizer to one of the greatest postseason efforts of all time, as he wound up recording an unthinkable over 52⅔ innings that October. Arrieta, meanwhile, was just putting the finishing touches on perhaps the greatest second half in baseball history, having record a record-low 0.75 ERA following the 2015 All-Star Game.

That was the Pirates' reward for averaging 93 wins over the course of two incredible seasons. No matter what the Red Sox say about their recent losses, at least they had the opportunity to play multiple playoff games each year before being sent home.

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