CINCINNATI -- The Pirates have played this poorly before, I’m sure. It’s just hard to remember exactly when.
There was 1952 when they went a franchise-worst 42-112, giving Joe Garagiola enough material to talk about on the 'Game of the Week' for three decades. And there was 2009, when they lost 29 of their final 40 games on the way to a 62-99 finish. The following year, they were even worse at 57-105.
Call it recency bias, if you will, but nothing has seemed as bad as the current stretch. In the three aforementioned seasons, the Pirates did not go from contenders to laughingstock in about 3.