This Team Must Choose an Identity; Are We Trying to Win or Train?

6-15-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

The Pirates management group probably didn’t expect the division to be this bad. They probably didn’t expect the team to overperform in April. Most likely felt May was a correction.

Thing is, as we sit here on June 15th, the Pirates are still in it. Still leading their division, still over .500, and yup, still not winning games they could or should.

Here’s the thing though, at least a decent percentage of this in my mind points to a team that isn’t sure what they’re managing.

Derek Shelton has been tasked with overseeing what amounted to a 3 year tryout and development camp. They’ve done some good things in that time and helped some players really start to find themselves. I have no doubt the Pirates hoped the roster they put together for 2023 would perform better. I’m sure they thought they’d even win a few more games, but nobody was under the impression they’d put together a division contending team.

As we already covered, no matter what they thought, they are in fact in it now.

Does someone want to nudge Derek Shelton and Ben Cherington and let them know? Because I’m still seeing a team that thinks winning a game comes in second to training or development.

For example, it’s incredibly important to this team and this team’s future to help Roansy Contreras through what he’s dealing with, and if this was 2022 and they were already 10 games back and 8 games under .500, ok, put him in the pen, try to fix him on the fly. This isn’t 2022 though, this is 2023, you’re in first place, up big on a division rival, you just got a decent outing from a call up you didn’t expect to get one from.

Carlos Santana is quite literally sacrificing his body for you to get outs, but you’re prioritizing training over winning.

What the Pirates are trying to do here is thread a needle. Here’s the ideal outcome for this situation. Osvaldo Bido starts for 4-5 turns, Roansy comes in as his “piggyback” for those turns, and hopefully by the end of that time Roansy is ready to try a script flip where Bido comes in for him, if it takes, ok, Ro is fixed and we move on with life.

If that effort costs you 3 or 4 wins in 2022, so what. If that effort costs you 3 or 4 wins in 2023, well, I think you see the difference.

But which is it? Are we trying to win or are we trying to develop? You certainly can do both, but when the effort directly interferes you don’t have that opportunity.

Jack Suwinski gets the opportunity to hit lefties, Rodolfo Castro doesn’t get the opportunity to face righties often. Both of these decisions are made by the same manager. One is an effort to see if a potentially dynamic talent can be even more so, the other is made out of fear of losing. Game on the line last night, Roansy who had shown even in his clean inning he had no interest in throwing a baseball over the plate was left in to die. Rodolfo Castro was lifted for Marcano to pinch hit.

Which is it boys? Are we training or trying to win?

As a season unfolds, plans should adapt. They clearly have to a degree, we already discussed how in a couple different ways, but you’d hope they lean heavily toward the winning games side of things because if they don’t, pretty soon the only choice on the table will be development.

If the answer to this group is development as opposed to winning, ok, well, get the prospects up right? I mean the reason they aren’t is because “to win” you have to have that super great defensive catcher right?

See what I mean?

Their decisions tell me one thing, despite where they are in the standings, this management team has openly decided to ride the fence and see which direction they fall later. That might very well be smart, but you can’t manage a team to win like that and bluntly, you can’t really develop the way you’d like either.

We could do this all day.

You let Rich Hill throw 119 pitches in an effort to win. He hasn’t done that in YEARS, has a history of injury and is one of the 2 veteran arms this team has left with very little MLB ready talent to back them in AAA if any.

That win was SUPER important.

Why wasn’t last night’s contest?

Listen, sometimes you just get beat. Most losses don’t send me to the site to start going after a problem, but I can’t shake the feeling that management doesn’t believe in the team this year, and considering how many of these players are under team control for years to come, perhaps that’s not the message you want to send.

This isn’t about thinking Roansy is no longer someone worthy of working with, it’s about suggesting the position this team has managed to put itself in should make it important to have that training take place where it can’t hurt the team.

In management of any kind really, sending mixed messages is worse than offering none. Everyone down to the individual should know without a second thought what the goal is, and if it’s not winning, I’d simply suggest you never ever easily surrender a chance to get in the dance, World Series ready or not, it’s never guaranteed the future you think you see is actually coming.

Don’t waste the opportunity you now have, even if it wasn’t planned.