Where Things Stand
Happy Monday, everyone. I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend. The Pirates pulled off the biggest comeback in franchise history and won two of three on the road against the Reds. That made for a pretty fun weekend. That gives the Bucs an 8-5 season series record against Cincinnati and moves them to 74-82 for the season. It took until the final game of the third to last series of the season before they were guaranteed a losing season. They were also not eliminated from the playoffs until this weekend. Sure, losing seasons and playoff eliminations aren’t something to brag about no matter how late in a season they occur, but it most certainly is progress. In Saturday night’s game, they managed to overcome a 9-run deficit to win. I was out of town at a college football game and missed the entirety of that game and of course, that’s what I miss. It always works out like that.
As of the time of this newsletter going out, the Cubs have a one-game lead over the Marlins for the final Wild Card spot. The Cubs have the Braves and the Brewers for their final two series and the Marlins have the Mets and the Pirates. I kind of like the chances of Chicago missing the playoffs. I don’t like the idea of the Pirates sweeping Miami in the final series of the season and putting the Cubs in. The Reds are two and a half games back and they have Cleveland and St. Louis remaining. I think the ideal situation would be for neither of them to make it in. At least that’s what I’ll be hoping for.
Up Next
The Pirates will travel to Philadelphia for a three-game series against the Phillies starting tomorrow night at 6:40 P.M. EDT. The Phils are 87-69 and are comfortably in the top National League Wild Card spot. This probably won’t be an easy series, but we will likely see both Keller and Oviedo get starts which will give them a fighting chance. We’ll take a closer look at this series in tomorrow’s newsletter. Maybe by then, the probable pitchers won’t still all be TBD. That’s probably asking a lot, though.
Fanboy Awards 2023
The annual North Shore Nine Fanboy Awards will take place on October 18th. This is always fun. Keep an eye on this newsletter for additional information as the show approaches. I really haven’t laid out the plans for the newsletter for after this week. It’s been a long season and I will definitely be ready for a bit of a break. I’ve enjoyed doing this all season long and I imagine that after a couple of weeks, I’ll be itching to get back to it. At that point, we’ll start recapping the season. There won’t be a set schedule for when new newsletters will be released. It will just be random up until shortly after the beginning of the year when we’ll get back to every Monday until Spring Training starts. There are some other big things coming from North Shore Nine and as soon as I’m allowed I’ll share those with you. I do know that NS9 Jeopardy will be making a return this off-season. Keep an eye here for those dates. The off-season is when the Podcast Department kicks things into high gear. I know that sounds odd considering they just did a postgame show after every single game except one. But they will be getting back to the regular weekly show that we all know and love. The season may be drawing to a close, but that doesn’t mean that your favorite NS9 content will be drying up. Thank you for sharing the season with us.
Alright. That wraps us up for today. We’ll be back here tomorrow previewing the Phillies series. As always, #LetsGoBucs!