I have a bad feeling I am going to sound like a broken record down the stretch this year unless there's a sudden turnaround. The Pirates' woes nearly always align with a poor pitching performance. Now this does not mean that the offense is not to blame from time to time. For instance, Gerrit Cole put together a solid start Friday against the Phillies, going six innings giving up just one run. By definition, that's a quality start and should be enough to give his team a chance to win, especially against the Phillies, who are merely 45-53 on the year and still rebuilding. However, the Pirates let a rookie by the name of Zach Effin throw a three-hit shutout against them en route to a 4-0 loss.

Let's look back for a minute though and put this game in perspective with respect to the week. Sunday was the 18-inning marathon game which showcased Starling Marte's home run and the young Pirates fan's ride of emotion of which the MLB posted a video on Facebook more times than Mark Melancon's blown save. Unfortunately, the entire team played a great game and Melancon just made a mistake pitch that tied the game with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the ninth. After the off day, they returned home to have Mark Melancon blow yet another save only to be saved by Josh Harrison's heroics in the bottom of the inning. Again the headline will lead to missing other key events like when Jordy Mercer led off the bottom of the 7th with a triple, yet he failed to score. This on top of a poor Jeff Locke start left me and likely other Pirates fans shaking our collective heads. Liriano showed signs of his former self Thursday going 6.2 innings and fanning 13 en route to a solid win. I already mentioned Friday's result, but they were able to rebound nicely Saturday to take of business despite injury concerns surrounding Tyler Glasnow.

So the Pirates find themselves in desperate need of consistently solid starting pitching with just a few days until the July 31st trade deadline, yet they sit on the cusp of the playoff race due to their recent inability to capitalize and win against below average baseball teams, the kind of teams that playoff caliber ball clubs take care of business against every time. Will they lose the next few games and put Neal Huntington in a position to sell the likes of Jon Niese for some help in the near future, but let's say the Bucs get hot. Now Huntington is in a bind because the fan base would expect their team to buy, but for a small market team like the Pirates, there isn't enough money or discardable prospects to go after a big name, ace pitcher. Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised if the Pirates remain silent as July 31st comes and goes whether they are making a playoff push or not.