After four consecutive last-place finishes and two consecutive 100-loss seasons, the Pirates really don’t care who they are beating.

They just care that they are winning.

“We are hot. And we know it. There is no denying that,” said Pirates outfielder/first baseman Connor Joe.

They are. And we can’t.

Usually doormats of the National League Central, the Pirates are out of the gates strong in 2023 with a 13-7 record. They have won four in a row and five of six following a 4-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds Thursday night. The club currently sits second in a division where they usually occupy the cellar.

The Pirates have done one thing particularly well this year. They are beating teams they should. Because they have been so bad in recent years, finding opponents to fit that description have been few and far between.

However, the stars have aligned in a way that the Bucs are bubbling to start 2023, and the schedule has been giving them foes that are stumbling through the first month of the season.

Of the Pirates’ 13 wins, none of them have come against a team that is over .500. The Boston Red Sox (10-10) have the best record of the teams the Pirates have seen, and they are still in last place of the American League East. Every other team the Pirates have faced so far — the Reds, Astros, White Sox, Rockies and Cardinals — all have losing records.

The Pirates aren’t letting that get in the way of their good time, though.

“We don’t think about who is playing good and who is playing bad,” first baseman Carlos Santana said. “We think about one day at a time. Today is today. Tomorrow is tomorrow.”

Usually in a sports story like this one about an unlikely team on a hot streak, now is the time where it would make sense to bust out the “they don’t ask you how, they just ask you how many” cliche.

But in the case of these Pirates, how they are winning is kind of important.

No. Not the strength of schedule for the opponent. Rather how they are stacking the wins.

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They are doing so extremely efficiently. They are getting out to early leads. Then they are building on them or at least maintaining them.

The Pirates are also getting good starting pitching and solid bullpen work. The starting staff is in the midst of a streak featuring 10 straight quality starts. The bullpen is 9 of 11 in save opportunities and has absorbed just one loss.

As for the offense, it’s fifth among all Major League Baseball teams in runs (103).

“Efficiency and really good starting pitching,” manager Derek Shelton said of the keys to his team’s fast start. “There are two things. Our approach at the plate has been really good, and when your starting pitching is as good as we have been, that is a really good mix.”

Underscoring the concept of “how” the Pirates are winning matters just as much as the victories themselves, the frequency with which the Pirates are getting out to early leads appears to be a big deal to the players as well.

In Thursday’s victory over Cincinnati, the Pirates were up 4-0 after one inning. In the series finale of their sweep over Colorado, the Pirates were winning 9-0 after two. In the series opener, it was 7-0 after two.

“Good teams strike first, but then also keep applying the pressure,” Joe said. “The focus moving forward is to not only keep the momentum going, and keep making in-game adjustments, and keep adding on to our lead.”

On the heels of sub-mediocre baseball for the better part of 40 years, every Pirates fan is acutely aware that these good times may not stay rolling for very long.

Once the Pirates finish this four-game series against the Reds, the surprisingly scuffling Los Angeles Dodgers (10-10) come to town. Then it’s a three-game set in Washington against the 5-13 Nationals. So maybe the Pirates can extend this hot streak even longer.

By that point, maybe it’ll be even more about the Pirates playing well, instead of who they are playing.

And if they keep winning in the fashion that they are, that theory will be even easier to advance.

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