BRADENTON, Fla. -- So how hungry are the Pittsburgh Pirates? Hungrier than Kobayashi at Coney Island. Hungier than Adam Richman at an all-you-can-eat buffet line.

Hungry. Ravenous. Ready.

How hungry? How ready? Well, it's still two days before their full squad has to hit the field, but every veteran player on the roster is already working up a sweat under the Florida sun.

"Mentally, physically, we're ready to get started," said the face of this franchise, Andrew McCutchen, on Sunday. "Says a lot about who we are -- and what we're trying to do here."

And you don't need to be a descendant of Bill Mazeroski to understand exactly what they're trying to do here. They've been there, done that Wild Card Game thing. Now it's time for the best Pirates team since Barry Bonds left town to take the next step.

"What we want to do," said their manager/philosopher-king, Clint Hurdle, "is make the extraordinary the standard."

So in two days, when his full roster gathers officially for the first time, Hurdle has the Pirates' 2015 slogan all ready to be unleashed:

And Then Some.

Order your T-shirts now.

"Basically," the manager said, "we've come up with a little chant: 'And then some.' What we've got to continue to do is do the things we've done -- and then some."

That means all the big things and all the little things. All the work and all the prep. Only two teams in the National League (the Cardinals and Dodgers) have won more games over the past two years than the 182 the Pirates have won. But there needs to be more of that ahead -- and then some.

"It's a mission mindset," Hurdle said, "because truly, when you're on a mission, you don't measure sacrifice and effort. You don't measure it. You just do it. You keep doing it. The days that are hard, you've got to find a way to do it. You keep going."

And if that's the message, it's about to get delivered to a receptive group, a group that has already obliterated its messy past with two straight trips to the grand, transformative October stage.

If you get there once, it's possible you got lucky. But when you get there two seasons in a row, you're real. So the Pirates have reached the stage, in the evolution of their franchise, where they no longer have to defend anything they've done or anything they still aspire to do.

"There's nothing to prove," said McCutchen, a man coming off his third consecutive top-three MVP finish. "We know what we're capable of doing. And we know where we want to go. We know we can win. We've shown that. We know we can compete. We've shown that in our division. So we're not the team that everyone just kind of looks at and says, 'OK, it's just the Pirates.' We're not doing that anymore."

Yeah, that 20-year streak of sub-.500 seasons isn't just history now. It's ancient history, thanks to those two straight NL wild-card games the Pirates have now hosted.

The first, which turned into an exhilarating 6-2 win over the Reds, "was one of the best professional experiences I've ever had," GM Neal Huntington said. But the second, an 8-0 obliteration by the Giants last year in chapter one of Madison Bumgarner's march toward immortality, "was the biggest punch in the gut I've ever had," the GM said.

"So I understand that wild-card game is great for the game," Huntington said. "But I'm hoping to let somebody else play in that game."

What they've done, since the shock of getting Bumgarnered wore off, is build the deepest roster of any Pirates team in more than two decades. Just look at the players they've added over the winter who don't even have a starting job: Long-time nemesis Corey Hart, former Tampa Bay Rays super-utility man Sean Rodriguez and the biggest international signing in franchise history, infielder Jung-Ho Kang, coming off a 40-homer season in the Korea Baseball Organization.

Meanwhile, this is a team overflowing in talented players whose best times are yet to come. Like right fielder Gregory Polanco, packing 15 new pounds of pure muscle as he heads into his first full season. And Ace of the Future Gerrit Cole, the former No. 1 pick in the country who has gone 21-12, 3.45 in his first 41 big-league starts. And left fielder Starling Marte, whose .975 second-half OPS was the fourth-best in the National League (behind only Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Buster Posey).

So Hurdle, now heading into Year 5 of his managerial tenure, says unequivocally: "I believe that, on paper, this is the strongest club we've had, setting up and walking into spring training."

Not that the Pirates are exactly question-free, you understand. They lost catcher Russell Martin to free agency, and he's virtually irreplaceable. They're moving Pedro Alvarez to first base, where he has played just five games in his professional career. And they're counting on 38-year-old A.J. Burnett to provide innings and leadership, after a rough season in Philadelphia in which he walked more hitters (96), allowed more earned runs (109) and lost more games (18) than any pitcher in the major leagues.

But if stuff goes wrong, there are answers and reinforcements to be found in one of the best farm systems in baseball (ranked No. 7 by Keith Law). So no wonder this camp has such a relentlessly upbeat vibe. Just about every piece this team needs is in place -- and the group can see it, feel it and taste it.

"We've got what we need," said Andrew McCutchen. "So let's go play."