Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> and St. Louis Cardinals. It seems unlikely the Cardinals will contend, as they are in the early stages of a rebuild under the new president of baseball operations, Chaim Bloom.<\/p>\nSo, what about the Pirates? Can they contend for their first division title since 1992? They haven\u2019t finished as high as third place in the NL Central since 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe division is going be tough,\u201d Pittsburgh general manager Ben Cherington said. \u201cWe see it as a really competitive division. Candidly, saw it that way last year. We didn\u2019t do our jobs well enough to capitalize on that. Believe it\u2019s going be a very competitive division this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cardinals are going through a little bit of a reorganization, but there\u2019s still a lot of talent on that team. It\u2019s the Cardinals. You don\u2019t take them lightly. The Brewers and Cubs are the teams that have set the pace at the top of the division. That\u2019s what we\u2019re chasing. The Reds are just incredibly talented and proved that late last year, pushing into the postseason. They have a lot of things going for them.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s a really hard division,\u201d Cherington continued. \u201cWe know we\u2019ll have to be at our best.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Reds made it to the postseason last season with just an 83-79 record. They held a tiebreaker over the New York Mets to gain the NL\u2019s last wild card.<\/p>\n
Two of the top projection models in baseball predict the Pirates to get close to 83 wins this season. FanGraphs has them at 82 and Baseball Prospectus at 80.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, we are looking to beat that number,\u201d Cherington said of 83 wins. \u201cWe are not going to be satisfied. We are looking past that number; that\u2019s our goal. Again, as I said, it\u2019s a very competitive division.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe’ve got to own the things that lead to winning. If you study really good teams, elite teams around the world, whatever sport it is, you notice they don\u2019t talk about winning. They just talk about and focus on the things that lead to winning. That\u2019s (manager Don Kelly\u2019s) mantra. That\u2019s what he is focused on. That\u2019s where his energy is, what leads to winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pirates Roundtable also offers a fan community and message board. We\u2019d love to have you join us to talk all things Pirates. Click the \u201cJoin\u201d button at the top of the page to join our community for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National League Central was one of just two divisions in the major leagues to have three teams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[72,5,136,24,50,3938,6009,843,59,4280,4,1218,61,64,67,1175,9281],"class_list":{"0":"post-577817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-alex-bregman","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-brewers","11":"tag-chicago-cubs","12":"tag-cincinnati-reds","13":"tag-division","14":"tag-don","15":"tag-milwaukee","16":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","17":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-national-league-central","20":"tag-new-york-mets","21":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","22":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","23":"tag-terry-francona","24":"tag-the-brewers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116087065264080857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}