Opening day of the Major League Baseball season is upon us and, surprisingly, the Pirates are the most interesting pro team in Pittsburgh.
This doesn’t mean I’m expecting greatness from the Pirates, or even them making the playoffs. But, compared with the Penguins and Steelers, they have a vibe about them that could keep things interesting for a few months.
With one of the top pitchers in baseball, Paul Skenes, the runaway pick in ESPN’s preseason package to win the National League Cy Young Award this season, the Pirates have a rising star.
Still, the ESPN types don’t think Skenes is enough. Of 28 participants in the survey, none picked the Pirates to win the NL Central and only one thought the Pirates might slip into the playoffs as a wild card.
That owes to an offense that is a lot of question marks beyond Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz and maybe DH Andrew McCutchen. The bullpen also is uncertain.
Skenes and Mitch Keller are great at the top of the starting rotation, reminding of the 1948 Boston Braves with their “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” rotation. Some blanks beyond them need to be filled if the Pirates are to be playoff contenders.
But the competition for fan interest in the Pittsburgh pro sports scene is, shall we say, limited these days.
The Steelers are looking to continue a trend of shopping for starting quarterbacks in old folks homes. And, embarrassingly, one of those codgers, Aaron Rodgers, is being noncommital. A published report has the Steelers giving Rodgers until April 21 to make up his mind.
Judging by what Rogers has done lately on the playing field, the Steelers just might be better off if he wasn’t interested.
Meanwhile, although the Penguins remain mathematically alive to make the Stanley Cup playoffs, earlier this week the analytic site moneypuck.com reduced the Penguins’ playoff chances to zero, right there with the likes of Chicago and San Jose.
It seems the Penguins, like the Super Steelers of the 1970s, have made the mistake of holding onto star players too long and failing to replace them with younger talent.
This would mark the third consecutive playoff absence for the Penguins, with the record worse in each successive season.
Even though the Steelers started geriatric Russell Wilson at quarterback much of last season, the team did make the playoffs, but only to suffer a characteristic first-game loss, the fifth straight time for that.
When I was a young man, the Steelers just making the playoffs would have been cause for wild celebration. Six Super Bowl wins later, not so much.
It’s the same for the Penguins, whose fans aspire to more than seeing Crosby and Malkin rack up additional personal milestones.
On the other hand, for Pirates fans who last celebrated a World Series title back in 1979, the prospect of having a competitive team, with one of the best pitchers in the game, is generating some excitement for a season that begins today in Miami.
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