Pirates’ early surge

The Pittsburgh Pirates are 6-3, and that is the first thing that matters. On Sunday, they beat the Orioles 8-2 at PNC Park, finished a three-game sweep, and pushed their winning streak to five games. A week ago, they were 1-3 and already doing the familiar early-season math of small deficits and wasted chances. Then the offense woke up, the rotation settled down, and the shape of the season changed fast. The streak began in Cincinnati, which is part of why it feels real. The Pirates did not pad their record against a soft patch of schedule. They dropped the opener to the Reds, then won the next two by identical 8-3 scores. In the second of those wins, Paul Skenes looked like himself again after a brutal first start. He gave up one run in five innings, struck out five, and cut an absurd early ERA down to something merely messy. That mattered because Pittsburgh is still built around run prevention. When Skenes looks normal, the whole team stops looking flimsy. The more surprising part is that the bats have carried equal weight. In the sweep-clinching win over Baltimore, Ryan O’Hearn homered and drove in four runs, Oneil Cruz added a two-run shot, and the Pirates scored six times in the first two innings. That is not the old Pirates formula of scraping for three runs and praying the bullpen can hold on. This roster was reworked to hit with more force, and in the first full week of the season, that idea stopped being theoretical. That change was visible before Sunday, and not just because of the scores. Pittsburgh’s home opener on Friday was also the major league debut of Konnor Griffin, the 19-year-old shortstop who arrived as baseball’s top prospect. He doubled in his first at-bat and helped the Pirates beat Baltimore 5-4. Calling up a teenager this early is the sort of move teams make when they think the season is asking for urgency, not patience. A hot start gives that kind of decision room to breathe. It also changes what the next few days mean. At 6-3, the Pirates are not chasing stability anymore. They are defending momentum. The upcoming series against San Diego now lands differently because Pittsburgh has created a little pressure for everyone else in the division. Early wins do that. They make a team’s experiments look like conviction instead of desperation. There is still plenty here that could wobble. Skenes’ ERA is inflated because of one disaster start. Griffin is 19. Five straight wins in April do not prove a roster is finished. But the useful thing about a streak like this is not what it proves. It is what it buys. The Pirates can keep Griffin in the lineup without acting like every at-bat is a referendum. They can let the rotation settle into place. They can play the next series from ahead instead of from underneath. And for one weekend, at least, they looked like a team that expected to do exactly that. Braxton Ashcraft gave them six strong innings on Sunday. O’Hearn, one of the offseason bets meant to deepen the lineup, delivered the loudest swing of the day. The crowd at PNC Park was only 11,956, small enough to make the scene feel provisional. The scoreboard was less shy: Pirates 8, Orioles 2.