Morning Rundown: Pirates Entering Final Stretch For Regular Season

Just 22 games remain on the schedule.

Sep 08, 2023

It all kind of clicked with me when I was writing up the Gameday article for the series opener against the Atlanta Braves - just 22 games are left in the regular season.

Realizing there was that few games left really got me reflecting on the season as a whole, starting over at P2 before coming over to here to finish things up.

The start to this site has been amazing, more than everything that I could have expected. Everyone’s support here helped me make that trip to Greensboro, and we will start to see the results of my travels show up later today.

With all that has gone it, the best thing to focus on to close out the season is along the lines as the players that I talked to in Greensboro - it’s all about finishing strong.

The Pirates have a chance to wrap things up very well, but it won’t be easy. They’ve won seven of their last nine games, and currently sit with a record of 65-75, officially crossing over their win total from a year ago, taking them out of competition for another 100 loss season.

In fact, just a 5-17 record the rest of the way out gets them to 70 wins.

By going 10-12, still a losing record, gets them to my win total prediction of 75 going into the season while I was at P2.

80 wins - 15-7

81 wins - 16-6

82 wins - 17-5

That is what they would have to finish to reach each of those win milestones. To do so, they will face a very NL East heavy schedule the rest of the way out. Of the 22 games they have left, 13 of them are against the NL East.

The only team from that division they don’t play will be the New York Mets. The next week’s worth of games (three vs Atlanta, four vs Washington) will be against those teams.

They’ve also getting a string of teams that will be fighting for their playoff lives down the stretch, with all but the Nationals at .500 or better. The Yankees, as of Thursday night, have a 70-70 record but are also in last place of their division.

Collectively, the remaining schedule has combined for a .532 winning percentage with a record of 522-459.

Regardless of what their final record is, the Pirates have a good opportunity to really close things out on a strong note, and set the tone going into the offseason.