The MLB season is still but a baby.  Most teams have suited up for just about half a dozen games.  

Having said that, there can still be notable accomplishments recorded over the season’s opening week.

To this point, 28 of the 30 big league clubs have seen a member of their starting staff surrender at least one home run.  Over 60+ innings of baseball, it’s expected that even the most careful of gents would make a mistake and the opposing hitter would take him downtown.

Yet, the group of starting moundsmen from Detroit have refused to give in, still sporting an impressive goose egg in the “home runs allowed” department (White Sox the other staff yet to succumb).

The Arizona Diamondbacks have already served up a whopping 12 bombs as a team while Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and company happily await their first.

It will undoubtedly be a difficult streak to keep going, especially with the next series taking place out west against the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers.  Hanley Ramirez, Matt Kemp, and Adrian Gonzalez all pose a legitimate threat to send one flying over the fence on any swing.  

But for now, we’ll enjoy this rare uninterrupted display of collective long ball prevention.

Sweet Smell of Success (for one night at a time)

Winning two games in a row in any sport is hardly worth mentioning.  Technically, it qualifies as a winning streak, but that’s more of a literal definition than anything else.  

It’s a given that over the grueling regular seasons in professional sports that a club will emerge victorious in consecutive outings every couple of weeks.  Or months, at least.  

Try telling that to the Detroit Pistons.  

With just five games left in this indescribably depressing season, the team is in danger of playing the entire post All-Star break portion of the schedule without once winning back-to-back contests.

It’s almost unheard of.  

To find the last Pistons team to play such uninspired second-half ball, you have to go all the way back to the Dick Vitale-Richie Adubato coached squad from 1979-80.  That ill-conceived unit dropped 26 of their final 28 games, obviously failing to register consecutive victories at any point in the year’s second stanza.  

In the 34 years since, every version of the Pistons has completed this task at least once.  It’s not asking much.  Over the season’s final two months, win a game, then come out and win again a couple nights later.

The Kent Benson-led 1981 squad won just 21 games, but they mixed in a couple mini winning streaks down the stretch.

In ’94, Don Chaney watched as his team dropped their final 13.  But they still managed to win three in a row just a couple weeks prior -- this despite relying on significant minutes from both David Wood and Pete Chilcutt, who were actually released prior to that season by a local B’nai B’rith chapter in suburban Minneapolis.

The team wasn’t much better the next year, and the wins were again few and far between.  But rookie sensation Grant Hill and “280-pound” Oliver Miller (mind putting the other foot on the scale, Oliver?) made sure those boys posted consecutive triumphs at least once so as to avoid inclusion on this infamous list of losers.

The 2013-14 Pistons are on the doorstep of such futility.

And the chances are very good nothing will change over the season’s last ten days.

Now, it is worth pointing out that the Pistons are coming off a win, having come from way behind to nip the Celtics at home on Saturday night.  So they do have a chance.

But the next date is Tuesday on the road in Atlanta, where the Hawks will be supremely focused in trying to maintain their slight grasp on the conference’s final playoff spot.  

Compare that level of effort to the Pistons’ Brandon Jennings, who generally takes his game day nap shortly after the opening tip, and the odds are very good you’ll be opening up Wednesday’s paper to see an “L-1” next to the Detroit slot in the standings.

Mix in difficult trips to Chicago and Oklahoma City, and it’s almost a guarantee this team will complete the entire second part of the 2014 campaign without ever winning more than one game in a row.

Many a wise man have philosophized that the first step in any major undertaking is the hardest.  The ones to follow naturally become easier over time.

Apparently these Pistons never got the memo.