PITTSBURGH -- Baseball is a team sport, but not necessarily a synergistic one.

A batting lineup can run hot or cold, but that has little impact on how well arms and gloves can limit the opposition. There can easily be a disconnect between scoring and defending, perhaps more so than any other team sport.

Even in football, with its natural separations between offense, defense and special teams, success (or failure) on one side of the ball can affect field position for the other side. Not so in baseball, where the game state resets every half-inning.

But that doesn't account for the physiological effect that seeing teammates do well can have on the flip side of things.

"It's definitely fun baseball," Josh Bell said after Tuesday's 7-0 win over the White Sox, in which the Pirates l...

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