The Pirates are walking a plank of their own making

It's more than safe to say that 2016 has not played out to plan for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Coming into the year, they were billed as part of a three-headed National League Central monster along with the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. But now in mid-September, they're already eliminated from contention in the NL Central and have drifted to a distant six games out of the wild card race as well.

For a team that won 98 games just a year ago and has three times played in the NL wild card play-in game in as many years, what could have caused such a severe downspin, seemingly out of nowhere?

Perhaps the thing that's most odd about the decline of the Pirates is that most everything that was good for them ceased to be this year. They returned much of the everyday nucleus that had made them such a diverse threat over the past few years, led by arguably the game’s top outfield trio in Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco. In addition, there was a rotation paced by one of the NL’s top duos over the past two years in Francisco Liriano and Gerrit Cole, who combined for a 31-15 record a year ago. Top it all off with a bullpen that finished with lowest team ERA in 2015 and a top-notch manager in Clint Hurdle, and everything said that the Pirates’ status as one of the premier teams in the game was established for 2016 — until it wasn’t.

It has been a year in which they have seen every extreme, the definition of a roller-coaster year, ranging from a 15-9 April to a trio of months in May, June and August in which they played slightly above .500 baseball, all the way down to downright abysmal June, which carried a 9-19 mark. The nail in the coffin of inconsistency is currently being hammered home as well, as the Pirates have sunk to a 2-9 start to September. Even in a National League wild card race where being .500 is enough to keep a team firmly in the heart of things, they have not been able to match that speed.

The reasons for this deterioration from one the game’s most balanced and overall dangerous clubs has been a rash of varying issues. The starting pitching staff, which was one of the game’s deepest a year ago, is a fading photograph of itself. Starting with A.J. Burnett’s retirement and followed by the departures of J.A. Happ and Charlie Morton, the Pirates' starting pitching has been ravished by injury, failed acquisitions and vast disappointment from both holdovers.

The team’s prized young arm in Cole has been able to produce quality starts in just over half of his outings, a far cry from the ace status he was on the verge of owning. To make it worse, there is concern over his elbow health, after dealing with a pair of triceps and rib issues earlier in the year. Jeff Locke’s ERA has ballooned up north of five runs per game, and he has been relegated to the bullpen. Free agent acquisitions in Jonathan Niese and Juan Nicasio failed to replace the level of production of the departed starters from a year ago, while highly touted prospects Tyler Glasnow and Jameson Taillon have failed to add that significant push the club needed.

Yet, it was a pair of stars who fell to earth that most significantly hurt the Pirates' potential in Francisco Liriano and Andrew McCutchen.

Since coming to Pittsburgh in 2012, Liriano had been the picture of consistency, winning 35 games carrying a 3.26 ERA. However, that standard he set was shattered this year, as his ERA ballooned up to 5.46, and he allowed four or more runs in 10 of his 21 outings, walking four or more batters in as many games as well.

With an inept Liriano joined by a less-than-optimal Cole struggling to lead the way, the pressure fell back to the everyday lineup, which until this point had revolved around the all-around brilliance of its perennial All-Star McCutchen. However, at the worst possible time he's had a career-worst season, as he too has been unable to inspire a Pittsburgh revival.

McCutchen has been one of the most consistently brilliant players in baseball since making his way to the Pirates in 2010. Yet after a career in which his average season has seen him play at a level of a 5.3 WAR, his performance has inexplicably dipped across the board. His .246 average entering play today is his lowest in five years, while his .328 on-base percentage is over 80 points lower than his five-year norm. As a result, he is driving in fewer runs, scoring runs at a vastly career-low level, walking less and striking out more. After finishing in the top five in the NL in WAR for past six years, his value has dipped below replacement level to a -0.9 mark.

Although Marte and Polanco have had strong seasons, it's clear the team is unable to steady its production without its best player at his regular level of All-Star production. And with it being essentially a lost season for McCutchen at this point, it's no wonder that it is approaching the same outcome for the team as a whole.

It's also no wonder why GM Neal Huntington did not know whether to go left or right at the trade deadline, when he halfheartedly embarked on a minor sell-off of a few key assets on the team, including All-Star closer Mark Melancon to the Washington Nationals, in addition to exiling the lost Liriano to the Blue Jays. The directionless year that the Pirates have taken has seemed to change even the front office’s focus on how to right the ship, as the team began competing again briefly in August before dropping five of six contests against the Miami Marlins and Houston Astros in late August, all of which came at home.

That highlights perhaps the largest issue that the team has not been able to overcome: The Pirates are uncommonly bad at home. A previously impenetrable home team, winning 62 percent of their home games in the previously menacing confines of PNC Park since 2013, only the Cardinals have had more success on their own home field than the Pirates had coming into this year. However, they have forgotten how to defend their own turf, seeing their home record descend to a sub-.500 level this year, at 36-38. Since September has hit, their home woes have continued, dropping five straight to the Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers, and more recently losing three of four at PNC to the Cincinnati Reds.

These type of failures to operate have doomed the Pirates to a middling season that they have not been able to right. Time will tell if this season is an aberration along the path for one of the game’s previously most menacing clubs, but with 2016 on the verge of being an official lost cause, one can only look back and see the many potholes that caused their sudden fall from prominence.