Over the course of this reliably intriguing baseball season’s first half, critical analysis has calcified around the notion that there are no great teams in 2015, but that if there is, it lives and works and wins in St. Louis.
Still, great teams need validation not from critics or analysts or sabrmagicians, but competitive validation that should best be conferred upon the Cardinals or yanked from their grasp by these Pirates, who’ve been every bit as good and perhaps better since the last time they went eyeball-to-eyeball nearly two months ago.
So look what baseball gives us for the final weekend before the All-Star break: Cardinals, Pirates, four big episodes on the banks of the Allegheny, climaxing for Sunday Night Baseball’s national audience as the National League Central race pivots toward the balance of the summer.