Kovacevic: Can Pirates face real opponents soon?

Show me a baseball team that takes care of business against lesser opponents, and I'll show you a contender.

But show me those lesser opponents day after day after day, and I'll show you a yawn that would make a hippo blush.

Pirates 7, White Sox 0.

Uncle already.

Look, full credit where it's due: There were times, even in the three playoff seasons, that the Pirates didn't take care of business. Their repeated failings against the Reds, in particular, were prominent in never having won the Central Division. So taking two of three against anyone is awesome.

Heck, all of this is awesome:

Same goes for this Tuesday night at PNC Park, where this 24-17 team took care of the White Sox, the absolute abyss of Major League Baseball at 10-28, and 24-year-old starter Reynaldo Lopez, who lasted all of two innings in serving up six runs, seven hits and more meatballs than Colangelo's in the Strip.

Including this house special to Adam Frazier on his second pitch of the night:

Again, good for Frazier. He'd lugged a .231/.286/.308 slash line into this, and launching that home run, his third, had to have lifted a burden. And maybe it did because, when I'd later ask if he realized it reached 10 rows above the Clemente Wall, he grinned and replied, "I'd have been OK with one."

Good for everyone else, too, because it seemed they were all allergic to outs after that. Gregory Polanco singled, Starling Marte doubled, Josh Bell doubled them both home.

"Frazier set the standard," Bell would say. "The rest of us just kept it going."

Finally, after the obligatory mound visit brought two outs, Colin Moran's high fly to left resulted in poor Nicky Delmonico corkscrewing himself into a human divot for an alleged double:

Word is, the grounds crew will have that all patched up for the 12:35 p.m. matinee finale Wednesday.

But the rest of the damage can't be undone. Meaning to our collective eyeballs, because we can't unsee all this garbage baseball being wrought by the Pirates' many sordid opponents to date.

This will change, of course, at least after one more with the White Sox, then four with the 17-27 Padres, then three with the 14-28 Reds. But after that, there'll be two series each with the Cardinals and Cubs, as well as the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, representing the first real challenging run of the still-young season.

So can we hit fast-forward?

I'm honestly eager to see how this group does. The offense looks to be there and, assuming the injuries in this game to Marte and Francisco Cervelli aren't serious, it'll only get stronger when Josh Harrison returns this week. I'll bet they can hit with anyone. The pitching is unpredictable, but at some point the bona fide holes need to be exposed in the event that — just go with me on this — management would want to add to the roster.

Let's see it. Let's see something real.

In the interim ...

"You're just trying to take care of business," Moran told me, bringing up that phrase on his own. "If you prepare for the game at hand, everything kind of works itself out. We'll play who we're playing, play a hard nine innings, stay within what we can control."

I asked Mr. Even Keel if being even-keel as a team can help.

"That's a credit to our leaders in here," Moran came back to that. "They've set that tone."

The leaders are all the obvious ones, so I went to Sean Rodriguez, who's right up there, and asked him the same. And man, was that worthwhile.

"There was a time in 2016 when we were really struggling against teams we should beat, and Ryan Vogelsong got up and spoke after a team meeting," S-Rod would tell me. "And what Vogie told us was that the only difference between a championship team and a team that's just got talent is that you take care of business. Playing up to winning teams? Everybody does that. But when you're playing someone under .500 or someone who's down ...?"

He hesitated.

"For lack of a better term, you kick the s--- out of them when they're down. That's what he said. You've got to get after them. You've got to act like you're playing a team you're supposed to beat."

Yowza.

• "I don't know how Trevor Williams does it."

Those were the words of an experienced, intelligent American League scout when we spoke two months ago in Sarasota, Fla., and they've been resonating every time the guy takes the mound, gives up a bunch of solid contact and still walks off with seven zeroes, as he did in this one.

Six hits, six strikeouts, 10 batters retired on three or fewer pitches, a four-pitch seventh inning, no walks ... no sweat.

"It was a really good back-on-track outing for Trevor," Clint Hurdle said, referring to Williams getting knocked for four runs and seven hits in five innings last week in Chicago against these White Sox.

Williams is now 5-2 with a 2.72 ERA, both staff bests. It's not a fluke anymore, and no one needs to be asking why. But assuming anyone did — and yeah, I did — the answer on this night would be that Williams adjusted his fastball up to letter-height. As Hurdle described it, "He elevated by design."

That's a risky move against a lineup with at least some pop, but then PNC Park's infinitely friendlier to right-handed pitchers than Guaranteed Rate Field.

"Some of the balls they hit here tonight would have been trouble out there last week," Williams acknowledged.

But he offered no regret about the approach:

• Kyle Crick and Richard Rodriguez each put up a zero to contribute to the Pirates' seventh shutout, an insane figure for a pitching staff still loaded with question marks. Not even sure what to do with that.

• Williams had one jam, really, with runners at the corners and nobody out in the fifth. But he struck out a relief pitcher, then did likewise to Yoan Moncada, then got Yolmer Sanchez to ground out. And I mention this only because, right before Sanchez's roller, one fan — someone down along the first-base line — did a two-strike clap.

Yeah, it'll be rough here in that regard for the duration. Paid attendance was announced at 11,847, but I was told the actual turnstile count was closer to 7,000.

Even that seemed excessive:

This won't change, as I've written before. The weather was beautiful, the Pirates are winning, and it doesn't matter because season tickets and group sales are everything in professional sports. Very little of either were sold in the offseason.

• "That's the other thing I like about this team," S-Rod also told me, this time referring to the attendance. "We're not allowing the atmosphere and all that to affect us. It's easy when it was against the Giants and we had the big crowds. This is a little different. You've got to basically separate from it, focus on the game, focus on the job at hand."

• The job's being divided as evenly in Pittsburgh as anywhere. Get this: The Pirates are the only National League team to have as many as five players with 20-plus RBIs: Corey Dickerson's got 27, Bell and Cervelli have 24 each, Polanco 22, Moran 21, and Marte's right there with 19. In the other league, the Red Sox have six players, the Indians five, but both include their DH.

• Bell, after going 2 for 4 with three RBIs and continuing to look more comfortable with every plate appearance, gave me this: "It's coming. It's coming."

• Read into the two injuries what one will, but I'm convinced Cervelli is fine and concerned that Marte wasn't visible in the clubhouse. Also, there was a whisper afterward that Jose Osuna's starting Wednesday, though that obviously could be at any of three positions.

• It didn't come into play in this game, but Hurdle's bumping of shellshocked George Kontos from the setup role — which he announced before batting practice — is the right move. Yeah, Kontos "hasn't had a spell like this often in his career," as Hurdle put it. But any manager showing increased flexibility in his alignment of bullpen roles is welcome in modern baseball. Because accompanying that announcement was Hurdle making known that no one is in that role now, that he'll apply pitchers situationally.

Someday, every inning but the ninth will be that way.

• More credit where due: Jason Martin, the 22-year-old outfielder acquired with Moran and two others in the Gerrit Cole trade, was named the Class AA Eastern League Player of the Week after an incredible stretch for Altoona in which he had at least two hits in six consecutive games, and three hits in three consecutive games. He went a cumulative 15 for 24 with two home runs and nine RBIs, and a single Tuesday night extended his hitting streak to seven:

Another day, another monster game for @_JM55 ? pic.twitter.com/vusP86Mg0X

— Altoona Curve (@AltoonaCurve) May 15, 2018

Overall figures: .360/.419/.631.

Martin had spent only 79 games at the Class AA level while in the Astros' system.

• Megaprops to Moncada, Chicago's crazy-talented youngster, for doing the Lord's work in crushing a foul ball off the Pirates Charities sign in the fifth. Alas, the Golden Triangle's ugliest eyesore is still standing.

Someday, man. Someday.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY