The Pittsburgh Pirates more than batted around, scoring nine consecutive runs in yesterday's game against the Colorado Rockies in the seventh inning before making an out, and 10 runs in the whole inning in an 11-4 victory. That's a record of sorts.
Altogether, the Pirates outscored the Rockies 19-11 over the weekend. It could have been enough for a 3-0 sweep.
But it wasn't. The Rockies won the first game 3-1, wresting away in the ninth inning what could have been a 1-0 victory for the Pirates. And therein lies the problem.
So far in the season, the Pirates have scored 162 runs and given up 158. With an odd number (37) of games, intuition suggests that the Pirates should be just above .500 by the odd game, or 19-18. Instead, they're 16-21.
The Pirates have won four games (11 percent) with double digit run totals. That's 41 points in a handful of games in which the opponents scored only seven.
On the other hand, the Pirates have lost one game each by scores of 1-0, 2-0 and 2-1. Right there are the three "missing" wins. And they could have gotten back a 1-0 win Friday night, but they didn't.
A boss told me once early in my career that it is consistency, not the occasional big score, that gets the promotions. A similar rule seems to hold for baseball teams.
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