Just win, baby

So it's the morning after and my baseball team is still dead, interred brutally and without much ceremony by Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants by the unattractive score of 8-0.

Pitching is everything in the playoffs, particularly in a one-game playoff. And so, as a Pirates fan, the only appropriate response today is to shrug and say "What are you gonna do?" -- because when it's one-and-done and the guy on the bump facing you has his good stuff, "done" is pretty much the only future you have.

And you want to know something?

I don't have a problem with that.

I don't have a problem with the one-and-done format, even if it did my Pirates wrong. That's because I tend to see it not as a playoff game, but a play-in game -- same as the play-in games in the NCAA Tournament, which the NCAA insists on calling the first round despite the fact it's not.

I don't like that the Pirates are out 72 hours after they got in, but if you see it as a play-in game, then they were never really in to start with. And it's their own fault. Had they not played like goofs for the first two-and-a-half months of the season, they'd have won the division the way they should have and wouldn't have had to beat Madison Bumgarner with his stuff working just to stay alive.

So, that's that. And now?

Now it's on to the playoffs. For real.