Hi, everybody. I'm Dan Kovachwich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports, and this is double shot of pirates.

The pirates being a good baseball team, pirates being 19 and 16.

Yes, last place, but also better than 13 of the 15 teams in the American League. I'm not kidding. You can look that up. And the reason for that,

and it shouldn't be some great secret, because it's available to you in any set of expanded

standings, is that the Pirates to date have faced the most challenging schedule in all of Major League Baseball.

Not like an opinion, but fact, how do I know that?

If you ever go to your standings and you go to the super expanded one that has all the

little detail, how you do in one-run games, how you doing extras and so

forth, you'll find one that says greater than 500. And what that means is exactly what it

sounds like. How are they against teams who are currently better than 500.

The pirates are 10 and 9 against teams better than 5.

The only other team that's faced more such opponents are the nationals.

And the nationals to their credit are 10 and 13.

I think a lot of people thought they were going to, myself included,

thought they were going to be a disaster.

But that's it.

The pirates have faced, or pirates are 10 and 9 against these teams,

which means they're better than anybody against the best teams.

The Brewers, by comparison, have played one series against a team with a better than 500 record.

That was Pittsburgh.

You get the idea here.

The pirates have actually gone through more of a test than what even they might realize.

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