The Pirates are five games over .500. Will this be different from last year? It sure feels different

The Pittsburgh Pirates finished off a weekend sweep of the Kansas City Royals with a 3-2 victory yesterday afternoon at PNC Park. It was the Pirates first interleague sweep since 2001.

The Pirates have won four games in a row and are now five games above .500 at 32-27.

Also, Sunday's win combined with a loss by the Cincinnati Reds means that the Pirates sit here today in a tie for first place.

Based on last year, this shouldn't be a huge surprise beings that the team was in first place as late as the end of July. And it certainly doesn't mean that these young Buccos are out of the woods just yet and bona fide contenders. We all remember how things started to quickly unravel last year starting in late-July, and it sure wasn't pretty.


But the fact that the 2012 addition was able to weather the storm of having the toughest schedule in baseball during the first two months and came out on the other end still hovering around .500 may be an indication that these Pirates aren't like some of the teams from past years.

Because of the team's brush with playing over .500 baseball for a sustained period of time last summer, now the Pirates roster is full of young players who have sort of "been there and done that" when it comes to having a winning record in June and July.

What's been going on over the past three weeks--the Pirates are 14-6 over their last 20 games--shouldn't be foreign to these guys like it may have been a year ago.

The experiences of playing in front of huge crowds in 2011, who actually came to PNC Park to watch baseball and not the band Train, may also prove to be beneficial to these young Pirates as they continue on their 2012 journey.

Andrew McCutchen aside, I don't think these Pirates have the offensive lineup to compete for an entire year, and it remains to be seen if the pitching can stand up to the strain a 162 game schedule, but if they can take it one step further than they did last summer, and we're still talking about a relevant Pirates team when the Steelers are playing preseason games, that would certainly give Pirates fans even more hope for the future.

Let's Go Bucs!