Most days I try to be more optimistic than this, but today it's cloudy and rainy and I'm in a down mood, so naturally it occurred to me to write something about the Pittsburgh Pirates. Call me masochistic.

No, really, it's simpler than that: Someone asked me who I thought the worst team in baseball was. I had a healthy debate with a friend on this subject; he conceded that the Pirates figure to be just as awful as they've been every year since 1500 B.C., but the Giants are lined up to be truly, historically execrable.

To my thinking, there are four teams in serious running for the worst record in baseball in 2008 and the resulting #1 draft pick in 2009: the Baltimore Orioles, the Florida Marlins, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the San Francisco Giants.

• The Orioles won't get there because, even after trading Miguel Tejada and Erik Bedard away, they're still better than the other three teams involved. They still have Nick Markakis and Adam Jones, mad Dr. Angelos has apparently ordered Brian Roberts to stay right where he is, and their pitching staff is reasonable. Yes, they're in the AL East and that sucks for them, but they're merely a bad team, not a truly terrible one. They'll win 68-70 games, which won't get them to the #1 pick.
• The Marlins have Hanley Ramirez on the team. He alone pretty much ensures they won't be the worst team in baseball, unless he gets hurt and misses most of the season. Then we can talk. Again, they'll be bad, but Ramirez by himself is worth a good 7 or 8 wins, meaning they'll win 69, not 62.
  

That leaves the Pirates and the Giants. Let's break this down into the three basic categories: Offense, defense, and pitching.

Offense is the easiest to analyze. Here are the PECOTA-projected VORPs for the starting lineups:

* (Doumino is an unholy amalgamation of Ryan Doumit and Ronny Paulino. Their VORP projections are pretty close to the same, though PECOTA is projecting Paulino to get more time.)

This is how terrible the Giants' lineup is, folks—even assuming Brian Bocock's involvement will end very soon, they're a whopping five and a half wins worse than the Pirates. There's one important mitigating factor, though: The Pirates have no depth anywhere besides first base (Steven Pearce) and center field (Chris Duffy). An injury to any of their other six starters will be disastrous to them, as the organization has nobody above replacement level to plug in. The Giants, on the other hand, thanks to Brian Sabean's particular taste for lunacy, have several guys on their bench or in AAA (Fred Lewis, Kevin Frandsen, Rajai Davis, etc.) who are still in their 20s and thus ineligible to play for Brian Sabean's team, but nonetheless better players than the guys in the lineup. An injury in any of the corner positions is likely to improve their lineup.

And then there's defense. The Giants have a pretty good defensive team; all of their fielders rate as plus gloves at their positions except the totally deep-fried Ray Durham. Their outfield, in particular, is very good. The Pirates, on the other hand, are quite the opposite: Everyone in their lineup except Jack Wilson and maybe Jason Bay is average to below-average with the leather at his position. Jose Bautista is particularly terrible (-23 at third base last year).

Stories you may have heard about the Pirates' excellent young pitching have been exaggerated by writers who are trying very hard to find something nice to say about the worst-run franchise in professional sports. When you take the time to look under the hood, what you find is underwhelming. The Pirates have one good pitcher, Ian Snell, and one average or slightly above pitcher, Tom Gorzelanny, whose peripherals lagged behind his ERA last year and suggest an average pitcher, not an ace in the making. Beyond that, they have one sort of acceptable mediocrity (Paul Maholm) and nothing else; Zach Duke, who looked so brilliant a few years back, appears to be on his way out of the major leagues.

The Giants are similarly thin in the pitching staff, but much better at the top. Whereas the Pirates have two pretty good pitchers, the Giants have two awesome, legitimate aces in Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, and one sort of acceptable mediocrity, The Barry Zito Contract. (mlb.com and espn.com and such should change Zito's name in his profile to The Barry Zito Contract. This would also be a pretty good name for a rock band; maybe Zito can start that band himself?) Beyond that, the Giants have pretty much nothing. The Pirates figure to have a better bullpen than the Giants, but both 'pens are comprised of guys you've never heard of, and bullpen performance is volatile.

On balance, the Pirates stand to score 5-6 wins' worth of runs above the Giants, but the Giants are going to take all of that back, and perhaps more, by preventing runs. Between their, on the whole, mediocre pitching and their bad defense, the Pirates are likely to be near the top of the league in runs allowed. Tack on the horror that ensues if the Pirates lose, say, Jack Wilson or Freddy Sanchez from their lineup, and I like the Pirates' chances of finishing 2008 with the worst record in baseball more than the Giants' or anybody else's.

One more piece of evidence before I go: Look at last year. Jason Bay collapsed last year, but just about everything else went right for the Pirates—Gorzelanny and Snell stepped forward, Jack Wilson had another career year, Adam LaRoche was pretty much as advertised on balance, Xavier Nady and Nate McLouth and Freddy Sanchez had good years, everyone stayed health. And the Pirates went 68-94.

Well, this year, they've brought back exactly the same roster; there are no changes of significance. I don't think it's likely they'll be as fortunate with health or performance as they were last year, and I don't think Jason Bay's coming back around, either, at least not back to a star level. It doesn't take much—an injury to Snell, for instance, or Jack Wilson, will do it—to make the 2008 Pirates worse than the 2007 Pirates; 63-65 wins is a distinct possibility here.

This is the thing that makes the Pirates and Giants so much worse than everybody else around: The Orioles and Marlins may be terrible, but they're also young, and some of their players are projectable. The rosiest scenarios for them get them conceivably as far as 80 wins. The Orioles, for instance—the best-case scenario for the Orioles is Markakis and Jones immediately become stars, Roberts has a strong year, the pitchers are above average, the bullpen pitches well—that gets them into the 80s in the win column.

The Pirates are not only terrible, but they aren't young. Most of their regulars are at or past their prime already. And the Giants are not only terrible, but they're the oldest team in the league, a management failure of catastrophic proportions; there's no rational explanation for why Brian Sabean still has his job. What's the absolute best-case scenario for the Giants? That Zito finds the magic again and Cain and Lincecum turn into Glavine and Smoltz, and they allow the fewest runs in the league. Even in this scenario, and even assuming perfect health for their entire lineup, they're still going to score the fewest runs in the league, and the team's absolute ceiling, if everything goes right, is maybe 76, 77 wins.

The Pirates, same thing. Almost everything went right last year, and they won 68 games. There is not a single player in their starting lineup, except Bay, who can reasonably be expected to perform better this year than he did in 2007, and Jack Wilson can reasonably be expected to perform worse. And in the pitching staff, Snell and Gorzelanny may improve, but just as likely one or both of them will get hurt, simply because that's what young pitchers do. Paul Maholm and Zach Duke give us no reason to expect improvement, and the Pirates' bullpen was actually pretty good last year; the guys that pitched the important innings (Matt Capps, Damaso Marte and John Grabow) pitched very well. You can't expect improvement there, either.

Truthfully, just on the (relative) strength of the Giants' division and weakness of the Pirates' division, it's going to be hard for the Pirates, or anybody else, to finish 2008 with the worst record in the game. But on balance, you can't expect improvement from this year's Pirates; in fact, I think you have to project a little bit of decline. From 68 wins. And that's why the Pirates, despite playing in baseball's weakest division, are your best bet to finish 2008 as the worst team in baseball, even if the Giants manage to ace them out by a game or two in the L column thanks to their schedule.

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