In a season gone this wrong for the Pittsburgh Pirates, at least one thing needs to get right.

Perhaps it started to happen this past weekend.

The Pirates’ 5-4 win Sunday afternoon at PNC Park completed a three-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers. They scored 24 runs in three days. A volcanic eruption by Pirates (7-17) standards.

An ability to hit was one of the few aspects that was supposed to be a positive in 2020.

A season that seemed destined for failure from the start.

Yet, prior to sweeping the Brewers, we hadn’t seen much of that. The Pirates began Sunday’s action with only 97 runs — 28th in Major League Baseball. The team also started the day last in MLB in team OPS (.639) and on-base percentage (.283).

Kevin Newman is down to .269 from .308 a year ago. Colin Moran’s torrid start has faded. He’s hitting just .232 in August and has only one home run in his last 15 games. Gregory Polanco had five hits over the weekend — including a go-ahead home run Sunday — to RAISE his average to .151. Similarly, Adam Frazier also had five hits over the three games to get up to .200.

Plus, Newman and Moran both left Sunday’s game with injuries.

Beyond all that, though, the most important angle of this recent awakening is to get the swings of Josh Bell and Bryan Reynolds back on track over the last 36 games.

As of Monday morning, Bell is hitting .205. He has just two homers and 10 RBIs. He has only four extra base hits, while totaling 28 strikeouts — and an on-base percentage of .250 (OPS .545).

Reynolds is hitting .220 with two home runs, seven RBIs and 28 strikeouts. He’s also looking at a .304 on-base percentage and a slugging percentage of .394 (.694 OPS).

Keep in mind those numbers for Reynolds include what has been his hottest stretch of the season (6 for his last 13).

Forget the struggles of the other hitters. The team has the biggest investment in those two. Bell’s $4.8 million deal to start the season was the second-highest contract on the team, and Reynolds was supposed to be significant return in the Andrew McCutchen trade for years to come.

They are the organization’s position players with the most cache. Bell was an All-Star in 2019 and Reynolds was fourth in National League Rookie of the Year balloting. If there are to be crowds allowed at PNC Park again in 2021, you’d imagine that those two would be at the center of the team’s marketing campaign.

Unless the Pirates trade Bell. And if they do, they’d be doing so at the bottom of his value after a down 2020 and a slide in the second half of 2019.

If there is any reason to have optimism for 2021, those two are going to have to crank it up in the batter’s box before the end of 2020.

“I have been getting outside of myself and maybe trying to do too much and make up too much ground,” said Reynolds last week. “I just need to stay inside myself and get a good pitch to hit and not chase.”

Manager Derek Shelton says the biggest issue for the switch-hitting Reynolds’ swing has been clear.

“When we saw him go through struggles, he was late,” Shelton said Sunday. “Now we are seeing him be closer to on time. And the encouraging thing is, it’s from both sides of the plate.”

Shelton also says timing is the issue with Bell this year, not so much a mechanical problem.

“Timing is not a mechanical thing. Timing is a mental thing,” Shelton says. “‘I’m going to get myself ready to hit.’ (Timing) is a thought process. It can lead to mechanical issues. Or fixes. But it is a thought process of being ready to hit.”

Identifying the problem is one thing. Solving it is another. Reynolds may have gotten on that path against Milwaukee. Bell is still figuring things out.

At this point, the numbers for 2020 are going to be irrelevant. The progress for 2021 is all that matters.

It’d be nice to see a little of that in the second half of whatever this jigsaw puzzle of a season ends up being.

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