Asking Pittsburgh Pirates fans to have hope is like asking Charlie Brown to believe Lucy won’t move the football this time. They've learned better.
This time, however, hope actually has a statistical backbone.
Pittsburgh has a Cy Young winner in Paul Skenes and baseball's consensus No. 1 prospect in Konnor Griffin. As Baseball America's J.J. Cooper pointed out earlier this week, it's hard for any team –– even the Pirates –– to be truly bad with two or more exceptional players on their roster.
"Using 5+ WAR as the bar for stardom, Skenes produced 6.