Could this be the year?

Could this be the season when the Pittsburgh Pirates, mired in a consecutive losing season streak longer than the life span of a bull snake, finally have a winning record?

The answer is, amazingly, yes.

Don’t look now, but your favorite neighborhood loser may finally be a winner.

It’s not hard to see why.

Last season, the Pirates showed they were heading in the right direction with a pretty exciting three-plus months of baseball.

As late as July 18, the Bucs were in first place in the NL Central.

Unfortunately, the major league baseball season is about six months long.

The bottom fell (thank you, Jerry Meals), but the team offered a glimpse of life in the ‘Burgh should the Bucs be good again.

This season may be that year.

The club made some savvy moves in the offseason, especially in bolstering the pitching staff.

The recent trade for A.J. Burnett gives the Pirates’ rotation something it has lacked since, oh, the early 1990s: a proven winner and a power pitcher at the top.

Burnett had a lousy season in 2011, but don’t forget the dude led the American League in strikeouts in 2008, the last season he didn’t spend in the Bronx.

Some players don’t do well in New York. Pittsburgh may be just the place for Burnett.

The Pirates also made the shrewd signing of left-handed power pitcher Erik Bedard.

The knock on Bedard over his career is that he can’t stay healthy. But when he has avoided the disabled list, he has been borderline dominant.

Those two guys added to a rotation that features Charlie Morton, Kevin Correia and either James McDonald or Jeff Karstens is pretty solid.

The lineup, though, is the big question mark.

Like with the pitching staff, the club added a few nice pieces in catcher Rob Barajas and infielder Casey McGehee.

Barajas hit 16 home runs last season. McGehee clubbed 23 and drove in 104 runs to go with a .285 average in 2010 for the Brewers before a season-long slump hit him last year.

The one glaring weakness in the Bucs’ lineup has been power. Now they have a little more pop.

The young nucleus is still intact with Andrew McCutchen, Jose Tabata and Neil Walker.

But the glue that will hold this lineup together is Pedro Alvarez. He must stop being a human windmill and make better contact this season.

Striking out 80 times in a little more than 200 at-bats just isn’t going to cut it. He needs to take that next step or the Pirates could be looking at another sub-.500 season.

And if this losing streak reaches the life span of a snapping turtle, it’s going to be very, very bad.

Mike Kilroy is staff writer for the Butler Eagle.