PHOTO BY DAVE DICELLO

The anticipation and excitement that annually accompanies the Pirates’ home opener has this year been augmented by promise.

That’ll happen when a team as downtrodden as the Pirates have been for as long as the Pirates have been begins a season by winning five times in five tries.

Alas, good starts, or great starts, are just a start.

And they’re quickly forgotten when the pace can’t be maintained.

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Last year’s Pirates started 20-8. Then they lost 19 of 26, and then 10 in a row and 12 of 13 shortly after that on the way to 76-86.

Yet 76-86 constituted an improvement over the 62-100 debacle the Pirates had endured the season before. So the anticipation and excitement over the Pirates’ PNC Park debut would have been justified even without the hot start.

The question this season, as it is every season, is can what’s worked early in the season be maintained, and where do the Pirates intend to ultimately take it if it can?

Specifically:

• Will the starting rotation ultimately be this team’s undoing? Right now, it consists of Mitch Keller and four question marks. But with rookie Jared Jones having debuted in spectacular fashion and Paul Skenes a phone call away in Class AAA, the expectations for the rotation are subject to change.
• How long will Skenes be kept in the minors rather than be inserted into the rotation? He can’t change the landscape from Indianapolis.
• Can Henry Davis catch? The early returns have been positive, but the Pirates played Davis in right field rather than behind the plate last season for a reason. It’s unlikely Davis became Johnny Bench since then. But with his bat, Davis doesn’t have to be a Gold Glove backstop. He just needs to be competent.
• What does Aroldis Chapman have left? He’s been effortlessly effective in his first three appearances, or so it has seemed. But at this stage of his career, at 36 and pitching for his fourth team in the last three seasons, Chapman’s baggage includes blow-up potential.
• Were the veterans the Pirates acquired brought aboard to help improve the Major League roster or the pool of prospects in the minors? Assuming Chapman does his part, will he be dealt to the highest bidder at the trade deadline? Starters Martin Perez and Marco Gonzales, first baseman Rowdy Tellez and centerfielder Michael A. Taylor are also candidates to be moved if there’s a market for their services if and when the Pirates determine they aren’t going anywhere. Are they ever going to commit to seeing a season through, assuming all goes relatively well, to adding at the big league level rather than subtracting when the time comes?
• And, last but not least, are the young stars ready to shine, and how brightly? The sky appears to be the limit for Oneil Cruz. Will he stay healthy and enter the stratosphere of his potential? And will Ke’Bryan Hayes wind up earning MVP votes by season’s end, as some in the media have suggested?

There’s reason to believe the bullpen will be a strength and that the Pirates will be a sound defensive team (the Davis question notwithstanding). And they should be capable of scoring runs.

The rest is TBD.

But enough answers in the affirmative to the questions that will ultimately determine the Pirates’ fate isn’t out of the question.

They may finally be onto something again.

At the very least we can’t yet be certain they aren’t.

Play ball.