9-11-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
Baseball and 9-11 will always be intertwined. The sports world played a huge role in helping to heal the nation and I’ll never shake the images of our President throwing out the first pitch. Younger people probably won’t see that the same way we all did, but mentally, we were all at least a little concerned some terrorist was going to shoot him as he stood on that mound.
We made mistakes as a country in our reactions and laws that came from it, but we also came together and made those mistakes as one.
1. Hayes Calls Out an Umpire…
Nobody is going to say it better than Ke’ Himself…
Look, Ke’ is right here, egregious call, one of many this year. Why this one set him off in particular, hey, who knows, maybe it’s as simple as he’s currently hitting the baseball so it matters more.
This story has been building all season, and if you live in a Pirates bubble, you probably think they’ve been unfairly targeted. I’m here to tell you, it’s league wide. The strike zone has not been consistent and even when it has been, it’s certainly wider than it has been historically.
This might not be the smartest way to go about things, umps have held grudges within the games just from coaches barking this year after all, but MLB doesn’t really provide a mechanism for guys to complain. At some point guys are going to “lose it” or go public with their dissatisfaction.
I’m quite sure Hayes will be fined, could even get a game suspension, but if it shines a light on MLB for having no accountability mechanism in place for umpires, hey, thanks for spending some of your money Ke’!
In all sincerity, umpires probably aren’t any worse than they’ve ever been, with a few exceptions. Every fan watching at home has this imaginary box for the strike zone painted there, and while it’s a good frame of reference, it’s also not accurate. For it to be accurate, cameras in the outfield would need to be consistently placed, the depth of the strike zone would need to be extrapolated. Fans aren’t the only ones seeing that, in the dugout players are on the iPads immediately seeing where the pitches were and it’s lead to an environment of near constant complaint from fans, players, and coaches alike.
That isn’t to say that some umpires like Hernandez, Buckner, or Diaz aren’t exceptionally bad, it’s instead to say, it’s unclear how much worse they are as opposed to others we just didn’t see because technology didn’t provide such an opportunity.
All I know for sure is, once they do onboard some form of Automatic Balls & Strikes system in the coming years, better won’t be good enough. The system will come with the plausibility of perfection and once that sort of thing is plausible, it quickly becomes the only acceptable outcome.
Until then, lets just hope the umpires propensity to hold a grudge doesn’t adversely effect Hayes or for that matter his teammates.
2. Run Through the Finish
The Pirates currently have 66 wins with 19 games remaining. Now, the difference between finishing this year with 66 or 75 wins is really negligible. It won’t change any of the needs, it won’t change the standings, it won’t do anything tangible, but finishing strong will do something I think could be important for 2024.
They’ve already beaten the 100 loss mark, but you don’t want to finish within shouting distance of that mark at this point. You want all these kids to look around the room and with zero hint of irony say “hey, we weren’t all that far from a playoff spot”. A reasonable jump from year to year in MLB isn’t as high as many would assume. You finish a year say 8 games under .500, next year setting your goal at finishing over that mark is entirely reasonable, in fact it should be expected provided your team is on the way up vs on the way down.
If this were a veteran team and the only difference next year was set to be which veterans they bring in to augment it, ok, the record doesn’t matter much, but on this team, when it’s almost all kids with room to improve, the way they feel, how close they feel they are to the next milestone or goal, the better.
The draft lottery has taken away straight wins and losses dictating where you pick, and frankly, this is a team that should no longer be looking at draft selections as “part of this”, instead as fortification of talent that one day could supplant one of the talented players we already have performing in a role.
So win boys. Win for those of us who suffered watching you build to this point, but more than that, do it for you. Do it for all the kids who came up here with energy and hungry for learning. Do it for Oneil Cruz who probably adds 2.5-4 WAR immediately, which as you know would improve the record even further.
More than anything, do it so this management team can’t look you all in the eye and pretend the process is enough this off season.
Like James Franklin the Penn State Head Football Coach said after West Virginia accused him of running up the score, you can’t play your guys and expect them to not try or play full speed. Well, when you have a roster filled with kids, you can’t expect them to do anything short of try like hell to make sure next year they spend all 162 in black and gold.
3. Oviedo’s Stand
Batters who don’t want pitched inside to will never go away. Anthony Rizzo did it all the time, and we watched Ronald Acuna Jr. lose his mind as well. Johan Oviedo has been largely encouraging this year but his reaction to Acuna getting salty cheeks from having a pitch or two inside for me was incredible, and important.
It’s great to see Oviedo not only stand up to a player like that, it was even better to hear him after the game plainly acknowledge that he’ll do it again.
“You never want to provoke a fire. You never want that situation to happen. It’s baseball. You try to throw to the weakest [zone] that the hitter has — especially him. He’s a really good hitter. He’s a really good ballplayer. I’m not going to give him anything easy. He has to understand that. He’s really good and I’m going to throw in. It’s part of baseball. We’re not playing chess. It’s how baseball works.”
“You never want to hit him. I know it’s your career. I know it’s dangerous. There’s a lot of things that can happen. But it’s pretty much the same when you hit a ball hard and it goes right at me — you’re still hitting at me. It’s not like you want to do it on purpose. It’s just part of the game. I’m going to be mad at you because you hit a line drive that hit me in the ribs or my face or my hands? I can’t be mad at you. You’re just trying to do your job. I’m just trying to do mine.”
Brilliant, truthful in every way.
It may just seem like one player making sure another player doesn’t win an argument, but what it means to me is some of these younger guys like Oviedo are getting tired of bowing to those who are supposed to be their superiors.
This kind of push back, this kind of attitude, that stuff is valuable on a team where few have their MLB big boy pants quite yet.
There is no reason to give in to hitters like this, and as talented as Acuna is he also is notorious for trying early on in contests to establish he doesn’t want pitched inside, if not get the opposing pitcher warned and take the arrow out of the quiver all together. Johan is right though, a guy like Acuna can reach and do damage on sliders 6 inches off the plate, a credit to his talent of course, but at least partially because next to nobody pitches him high and tight. This allows him to lean out and cover everything.
I can’t say enough about how impressive every single aspect of Oviedo’s handling of this was.
4. Yoshinobu Yamamoto
If you don’t know the name, you will before too long. Yamamoto is just about Japan’s hottest pitcher and there’s a solid chance his contract will be posted for MLB teams this off season.
Somewhere between 7-10 teams sent representatives to his last outing, a no hitter, his second of his career, and your Buccos were one of them.
Now does this mean they’ll get him? Of course not. That said, this isn’t a player this team typically would even invest the travel scout on. Now, a player like this typically isn’t coming here on a 8-10 year 200 million dollar deal, these tend to be more along the lines of 4-5 years and in the reasonable zone, something like 12-15 AAV. Something the Pirates should be more than willing to extend. This is always paired with a posting fee, essentially paying his Japanese team for the opportunity to bid. You’re out that money even if you lose out, so those 7-10, will get whittled down to 2-3 and if you’re in that mix, well, don’t miss.
Again, I’m not saying this to get your hopes up, but this is the type of thing that could help a team who’s pitching is lagging behind the position players a bit and at least even things up. It’s good to see them investigating things like this.
The competition will be fierce though, teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Philly, Chicago Cubs are all involved and all have a history of signing Japanese stars. Again, it’s an uphill fight, but there could be more upside in this than a MLB free agent of the same value.
Developing story, and honestly one I didn’t expect to be paying attention to this off season.
5. Flips & Flops
There isn’t much you could do to this roster right now. Not while having any concern about 40-man moves that will need made in December. That said, 2 moves I think need to happen.
First, Henry Davis will come back soon and with Triolo already here it spells the end for Vinny Capra most likely. That needs to happen if only to let Henry spend more time getting acclimated.
Next, I think it’s time to swap Nick Gonzales for Alika Williams. Alika has played great defense, but he’s gotten a nice long run and Gonzales has hit since being sent down. Important to show there is some reward for that in my mind. Whatever was working for Williams at the plate, has fizzled out, whatever they wanted to see from Nick, well, it almost has to be in the numbers he’s wracked up.
Not wasting the end of the season is almost as important as winning games, these moves might just help with both.
Then on the mound, I’d like to see a good run of Oviedo, Keller, Ortiz, Falter and Jackson as starters, let them finish the season with no openers, lets allow them all to finish strong. If not, if your gut says some of these guys still need protected or held back, bring up Priester. It’s beyond time to go back to a 5 starter model adn let this bullpen heal.
Steel City Pirates 
“It may just seem like one player making sure another player doesn’t win an argument, but what it means to me is some of these younger guys like Oviedo are getting tired of bowing to those who are supposed to be their superiors.
This kind of push back, this kind of attitude, that stuff is valuable on a team where few have their MLB big boy pants quite yet.”
This is a big point for me. This team lacks guys with some attitude. Very short on guys who mean business. Lots of ho hum dudes, Hayes, Reynolds, Suwinski, even Cutch to a degree. I think about AJ Burnett and that element of not backing down to anyone and letting them know it. Need more FAFO guys!
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