The tone around the Pittsburgh Pirates feels different this year, even if Opening Day didn’t go as planned. Pittsburgh didn’t do enough on the mound or defensively to win the game, losing 11-7 to the New York Mets.
While it was a tough loss, there’s confidence, and I think that’s just as important as anything else for this team right now. The Pirates will lose games and look bad at times, but they have talent and think they can win.
That’s a step in the right direction.
“I mean, we're just better,” Bryan Reynolds said, per Lancaster Online. “Everybody's feeling that, knowing that. The goals are always the same, but they're actually attainable now, and they haven't been in the past and we've had to pretend like they were.”
The Pirates have had some talent on the mound for the past few years, as Paul Skenes is the best in the world and Mitch Keller has been good, but things feel different now.
“In years past too, we've kind of said the same thing, but it was just talk and everybody knew it,” Reynolds admitted. “But yeah, this year is the actual time that we can go do it instead of talk about it.”
Pittsburgh, looking to make the playoffs, understand that at some point, it has to go out there and win. There are some tough stretches the Pirates will face, but as long as they play as well as they can as a group, they should be fine.
“What we've been talking about lately is we need to quit talking about [winning] and go do it,” Mangum said. “I think that we're going to do that. I'm really excited about this ballclub, and I am fired up to be a part of it.”
For years, the Pirates have been the laughing stock of baseball. I don’t want to say that’s changed, but there’s definitely more optimism about this team externally and, more importantly, internally, than we’ve seen in a very long time.
“I mean, everybody just kind of knows talk is cheap,” Mangum added. “We can talk about winning as much as you want. Everybody has dreams and aspirations of winning in camp, but at the end of the day, it's like, you’ve just got to go do it.”