Season in Perspective

Over the course of a long season when the main focus is on the team in front of your own it's easy to lose perspective as to how the team is actually performing compared to the league as a whole.  I think back to The Freak Show and how much fun that run was and how I thought "boy this team is finally coming around!"  In reality they really weren't that good, the division they played in just happened to stink.

This team is pretty much the complete opposite of that.  In any division other than maybe the AL Central the Pirates would have run away with the title quite a while ago.  Here is a look at the standing to show just how good the Pirates were:

NL Overall

Tm	W	L	W-L%	GB	RS	RA	pythW-L%
STL	100	62	.617	--	647	525	.594
PIT	98	64	.605	2.0	697	596	.571
CHC	97	65	.599	3.0	689	608	.557
LAD	92	70	.568	8.0	667	595	.552
NYM	90	72	.556	10.0	683	613	.549
SFG	84	78	.519	16.0	696	627	.548
WSN	83	79	.512	17.0	703	635	.546
ARI	79	83	.488	21.0	720	713	.504
SDP	74	88	.457	26.0	650	731	.446
MIA	71	91	.438	29.0	613	678	.454
COL	68	94	.420	32.0	737	844	.438
MIL	68	94	.420	32.0	655	737	.446
ATL	67	95	.414	33.0	573	760	.374
CIN	64	98	.395	36.0	640	754	.426
PHI	63	99	.389	37.0	626	809	.385

AL Overall

Tm	W	L	W-L%	GB	RS	RA	pythW-L%
KCR	95	67	.586	--	724	641	.555
TOR	93	69	.574	2.0	891	670	.628
TEX	88	74	.543	7.0	751	733	.511
NYY	87	75	.537	8.0	764	698	.541
HOU	86	76	.531	9.0	729	618	.575
LAA	85	77	.525	10.0	661	675	.490
MIN	83	79	.512	12.0	696	700	.497
CLE	81	80	.503	13.5	669	640	.520
BAL	81	81	.500	14.0	713	693	.513
TBR	80	82	.494	15.0	644	642	.501
BOS	78	84	.481	17.0	748	753	.497
CHW	76	86	.469	19.0	622	701	.446
SEA	76	86	.469	19.0	656	726	.454
DET	74	87	.460	20.5	689	803	.430
OAK	68	94	.420	27.0	694	729	.478

The closest team in the AL finished three games back of the Pirates.  They beat the other division winners by 5, 6, 8 and 10 games!  They beat the AL Wild Card teams by 11 and 12 games.  They had a winning percentage over .600 and scored 101 more runs than their opponents.  

But alas the one team they finished behind is in their division.  I'm still going to sit back and enjoy the next couple days following the most wins I've seen the Pirates have since 1991.  In fact I'll enjoy reflecting on the fact that they've average over 93 wins per year the last three seasons.  Hopefully others can reflect on that positively as well.

That is until the ulcer starts to form around 4 PM on Wednesday afternoon.