Five Pirates Thoughts at Five – The All Star Break

7-10-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Even as the Pirates and every other team in the league for that matter, are selecting players they hope one day might represent their organizations in the All Star Game one day, every team is also suiting up their representatives and shipping them off to Seattle for this year’s festivities.

All stars come from all over, 1st round all the way to the last pick in the draft, or even draft snubs, but when you pick 1:1, You best not miss, and if you do, it better not be because you were smarter than anyone in the room who begged you to head in a direction you ignored.

1. The Mid-Summer Classic

I used to love the All Star game, I loved the old timer’s game the day before, you know, seeing what uniform Boog Powell would wear this year, or would he just look like a NASCAR and cover himself with the logos of all his stops? I loved seeing my team’s cap out there on the field and the honest to god league pride that used to exist between American and National League Players.

I understand why much of that has changed, and to some extent the genie is out of the bottle. We care more about a red carpet appearance show tomorrow than seeing a bunch of old geezers pretend to throw Vaseline balls and feign umpire dust ups ala Savannah Bananas style shenanigans.

But I have to say, I think there are a few things they could consider that could be fun or at least give me personally a bit more of what I’d like to see, both in the game and the festivities surrounding it.

I’d love to see them bring back the Old Timer’s game in some capacity. Maybe the rosters must be made up of guys who retired in the last say 10 years and they have to have played at least 5 seasons, and really celebrate these players, many of who will just be good players, not HOFers. The rosters would change every year based on eligibility, and the two captains pick the teams in alternating fashion. It’d be fun seeing guys like J-Hay or Melky Cabrera get some post career time in the sun.

Or, they could promote and broadcast widely some of what they actually already do.

Like, did you know there was a HBCU showcase game? I didn’t, turns out they played it on Friday.

The All Star Futures game got some love, that was on Saturday and was followed by a Celebrity solftball game. Just sayin’, might be cool to have these Futures players hang around and see the old timers and get to meet them.

The Home Run Derby still gets attention, that’ll be today, I think I liked it better in the past where balls in play that weren’t homeruns were “outs” and you got like 10 outs per round. It didn’t put as much stress on some of these guys to swing out of their shoes 50 times and I felt it spoke to bat control as well as just raw power.

The game itself, I’m not sure it’ll ever mean anything again. I’m happy for those who get selected, just like the Pro bowl guys in the NFL, but I probably won’t watch more than Keller and Bednar and aside from that it’ll just be kinda on.

2. Former All Star Bryan Reynolds Needs to Find it

Bryan Reynolds is having a fine season. He’s got a .265 batting average, his OPS is up around .785, homeruns are down a bit, RBI’s are up a bit, RISP is pretty awesome actually.

But it’s a “fine” season so far. His deal is still a DEAL, but he really isn’t at the height of his powers right now, and hasn’t been since the first 10 days of the season.

He’s been on the IL with a back issue so obviously coupled with the struggles makes you at least question his health.

He’s behind his 2022 pace which was behind his phenomenal 2021 pace that followed his awful 2020 and terrific Rookie season in 2019.

Good player, and let’s be real, in this league, he just got a “good player” contract extension, so let’s not blame him for it being the biggest in team history and expect him to be Clemente.

What I expect though, is a lot closer to 2021 than what he’s done since.

Not that it would matter if I did, but I don’t have any advice, I can’t even really see what he’s doing differently. I’ve seen him handle high fastballs, which used to be a real issue for him. I’ve watched him work hard to lay off that inside slider that breaks out of the zone at his ankles.

If anything, I honestly think his eye is too good, and more importantly he isn’t grasping that umpires by in large have bigger zones than he does in his head.

For Bryan it’s usually about timing, and sure, I see some of that especially after returning from the IL, but I really think this is more about that last point and stubbornness that what should be called a ball will be every time.

I think if he can just expand his zone even slightly, he’ll snap right back into form.

Right now, at the very least, you can’t say offensively he’s been as dynamic as you need him to be for this club to ultimately get where they want to, and I’m not even referring to this current season.

I hope this doesn’t read as “concern” as much as fairly saying, we really should expect a bit more from Reynolds, especially now that he’s going to be a central figure in how this whole thing shakes out.

3. The Mayor of New York? Sean Casey

First, if reports are true that Sean Casey will be named the new hitting coach of the New York Yankees, congrats!

Second, so you mean the Yankees didn’t think their offensive approach was working and they decided to make a change? Like, right in the middle of the season? Is that allowed?

Did they have to frame the last guy to get rid of him? Like are we going to find out it was his coke at the White House?

I was led to believe something like this would take an act of god.

There are things that can be done short of firing Andy Haines, I’ve mentioned them in this space before, you can basically minimize him in some aspects and repurpose him if you like, but what you can’t do is allow one guy, or one philosophy, regardless of who it came from to hold up what you’re doing.

I’m a firm believer, when you’re trying to overachieve with kids, the best thing to do is let them be their fully authentic selves, at least at first.

I feel like what this onboarding structure does to players is much like Lloyd McClendon changing Chad Hermansen’s batting stance upon his promotion to MLB. Even if it was good advice, you don’t take a kid who has experienced success doing his thing at every level and then set forth immediately tweaking it at the MLB level before he’s even seen his way fail.

If you make changes and that player struggles, they won’t learn as much as blame you for messing them up.

Prior to the rant…. no matter what the Pirates do here, look, just saying you can’t do anything mid season or whatever for continuity’s sake, well, it’s Bull.

4. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

There is a strange and awful, storage unit I’ll call it in MLB, and most teams have one.

Every year it seems teams lose pitchers to Tommy John, and every year someone is working their way back from it. It destroys timelines, and ETAs. It crushes prospect rankings and expectations are almost always lowered.

And still, we go on watching this play out, forgetting about the existence of guys who were looked to as really exciting just a short 2 years ago.

Max Kranick is working his way back to the hill after having Tommy John back in 2021. Who? Oh, that kid who had 5 no hit innings in his debut and then struggled a bit in his next several opportunities?

What made Max interesting was the explosiveness of his fastball and he had just harnessed it, exactly what he needed command wise.

If the surgery was successful and he works his way back, that’s a quality arm, someone you did have high hopes for, a guy who at the very least could play an important role in the bullpen, maybe that’s where he was headed anyway.

No longer a top prospect, now just a guy who’s a little too old to be in AAA for the folks who play couch scout by reading Baseball Reference.

I say this because in 2025, I’ll be reminding many of you about Michael Burrows, who’s working his way back from TJ, and I’ll be reminding you why we were excited, and you, and most of the prospect wonks will have forgotten what he was. He’ll no longer be that lock for the rotation of the future he was looking like, but he just might be needed, just a little later than planned.

It’s not ideal, but again, it happens every year, and just about every year, we welcome them back and pretend we missed them even as we try to struggle with understanding how they fit back into the picture.

Heck, we could be asking ourselves many of these questions about JT Brubaker in 2025 as well.

Whatever you see in 2024/2025, You’re likely wrong, me too, nobody can really know, and nobody knows how one of these returning players could factor in to the picture.

All you can do is make sure you feel you have a lot more than you need.

I mean, we don’t even need them to get injured to shuffle them off and out of our future plans. I can’t tell you how many I’ve seen write something like …. Skenes, Keller, Solometo, Jones, Priester in 2025.

Did Oviedo Die? Have we decided Roansy is a bullpen guy or all out bust? Is Ortiz suddenly just a circus freak who performed a 4 week trick in 2022?

That projection could of course be right, but man, don’t execute what you have here right now on the way to looking forward to younger talent. If it happens and they force their way in, great, but it could be a long and winding road for anyone.

I always encourage people to try not to do much more than dream about what could be. When you lock yourself in on what it “should be” you won’t be open to what the pitching situation as a whole becomes. A living breathing and ever changing body of arms that if you’ve done it right give you 1,500 quality innings.

5. We’re Closer

When the team is losing, just about everything Ben Cherington says is going to look and sound awful.

So when he said this season had been frustrating, but we’re closer, let’s just say, it wasn’t received well.

He of course means his overall trajectory, the team in his mind is closer to being a good team than they were say this time last year, which if you believe they will be good at some point is of course true.

Now, I said this after last year’s draft, I felt they had enough in the system to be a “good” meaning above .500 team in the system. Even if they went el cheapo, that’s the skeleton I think this is being built on at this point.

As I look to next year I see this to build on pre-addition of free agents. These players may not all be locks for the 26-man, but they’ll at least have some claim to a spot.

Reynolds, Cruz, Hayes, Triolo, Gonzales, Rodriguez, Bae, Davis, Suwinski, Joe, Peguero, Williams, Marcano, Castro, and I’m not even going to stretch it further. Probably could, but I won’t. that’s 14 currently internal and under team control position players. Again, to be added to, not anointed. I’d love to add Cutch but that’s against the spirit of this thing, call it an educated guess though.

Keller, Bednar, Oviedo, Ortiz, Contreras, De Los Santos, Holderman, Hernandez, Bido, Crowe, Moreta, Perdomo, Mlodzinski, Aldred, Priester, Jones, Kranick, Selby. I’m not even adding Skenes, I won’t even stretch it further into the Solometo’s and Nicolas’ of the world.

Once again, they’ll need to add veterans.

But those are much better bones than what they had to build on in say 2020.

They will have to spend, and your skepticism is well placed, I get it. The goal of rebuilding is to raise the talent level of the entire organization and ultimately bolt on hopefully affordable things when you get to the point it’s spilling over a bit.

Now the game is about making the right decisions. Is that prospect good enough to displace one of these “bones”? Need to be right more often than wrong. More than that, you need to get value when you move on.

Bottom line, he’s not wrong, it’s just not something you wanna hear when your team is losing and you’re tired of hearing “next year”.

6. Bonus Point – Bonus Episode

Last night Jim Stamm and I got together for a video only episode of the Pirates Fan Forum for Draft night. Check it out if you’re interested, lots of Paul Skenes reaction in there from us and a ton of fans.