4-12-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
You’re all watching this team out the gate, so when I bring up the names of players who haven’t gotten off to a great start to 2024, it’s not going to surprise you.
In fact, the very last thing I’d personally be interested in reading or talking about would be a list of who hasn’t done well and a wall of stats to heckle, especially because the team has started well enough as a unit to allow you to just push down the poor performances a bit and let it play out in the background, well, not for everyone I suppose.
Here’s how I’d like to look at it today. I want to write about every player or coach I think is struggling to start the season and also address through looking at the individuals why each of their situation is unique. Why their leash might be longer than another’s. What options might be at their disposal, whatever pops in my head.
Let’s see what a well rounded look at each does for us, even if we don’t come to conclusions right here, right now, we owe it to ourselves to arm ourselves with as much info as we can.
Jack Suwinski
The Pirates don’t have to keep Jack Suwinski in the Majors. They don’t have to continue to insist he is and can play CF. They do these things because they believe he’s close to fulfilling the promise they believe, and in spurts he’s shown he has.
They’ve tried to avoid having him face left handed pitching, and despite that, in limited opportunities, he’s hit the ones he’s seen. Trying to cut back on strikeouts, he’s swinging earlier in at bats and it’s eaten into his walk numbers.
The power and the walks were what made him a defensible starter by marching his OPS north of the median. So early on his new, and undoubtedly team sanctioned and coached, approach is having him get away from his selective (and frustrating at times to watch) nature at the plate, and instead try to get off a swing earlier in counts. Jack is one of the few guys in this lineup I can honestly say did well under Haines. I’d even contend, had they just had him come back with the same base approach as last year, you might actually see him improve at it, instead, cutting down on K’s is the approach and I think it makes him nearly impotent.
Jack is a guy who in my mind needs to hunt his pitch whenever it comes a lot more than he needs to try to ensure he gets a swing off.
I guess I’d rather see an improvement on the progress he made as opposed to yet another change in direction. He gets the leash he gets because the Pirates haven’t had any other truly exciting outfield talents come along, and 46 homeruns in a couple seasons is something you try like hell to work with.
He’s also shown over those couple seasons that he has the ability to be every bit as hot as he is cold now. Over time, this trait led me to sour on Josh Bell, for what it’s worth.
Lastly, he’s just not playing consistently. They’ve faced so many left handed pitchers he essentially started the season on vacation.
Andrew McCutchen
You get to a certain place in your career and you generally know what you’re going to get out of a player. Andrew McCutchen has been remarkably consistent. He’s a .250 ish hitter, he’ll walk a lot, he’ll K a lot, at least the past three seasons you can say that’s been the story. He’s clearly at 37 a player in decline.
That doesn’t mean he has no value or won’t figure it out, but once you reach a certain age, it stands to reason you get to that place where the decline accelerates. I’m not saying that’s where we are, but I am saying if you aren’t looking for it, you’re not being honest about this player. Your respect for him is in the way of your eyes.
Again, that’s not to say he’s for sure having that experience now, or this year, it’s just to say, you can’t fairly discuss Andrew without admitting father time is undefeated.
The reasons to let it play out beyond he’s a beloved figure, well, he’s notoriously a slow starter, so it stands to reason if we just accept he’s declined in any way, that slow start might have turned into sllooooowwwer. Over time, he’ll adapt to what’s ailing him to a degree. If it’s bat speed he’ll alter his trigger time and that will create other issues or further drop off in another place.
He’ll do what guys who are on this side of the mountain do. He’ll essentially rob Peter to pay Paul. Starting the swing earlier to catch up, leads to guessing wrong more often, as a very basic example of this.
If you’re writing him off, it’s probably early, again, he rarely reaches the height of his powers before June or mid-May, and it’s so established throughout his career, it would be foolish to assume it won’t happen again. Even if what that adds up to is less than last year.
He’s not getting DFA’d, he’s already not starting every day, I’d suggest they could do a better job of taking some pressure off him by not hitting him in the clean up spot, but bottom line, when the end is in sight, it’s human and fan nature to start picturing it, thinking about it, looking for signs of it, so when a player shows some of those signs, impatience comes bubbling up.
If it’s all about needing to hit number 300, well, he’s gotta get back to the Cutch who can kill those meatballs that right now he’s swinging through.
David Bednar
There’s every chance David Bednar will save his next opportunity and not blow one the rest of the season, and in that case this 3 out of 4 failures start to the season will be chalked up to no Spring Training, and our Salem Witch Trials-esque combined psychosis.
That’s the REM – Shiny Happy People version anyway.
In reality, it’s a difficult situation or the coaching staff and the player. First, I think he’ll get a shot on this road trip, I just can’t see his next opportunity being at home. And if that opportunity doesn’t go well, I think we’ll see them change strategy.
Look, there’s a lot of reason to believe the rosy outcome will happen, but a team trying to win that’s already survived a few of these, well, it can’t go on and won’t go on forever.
It’s a huge deal because of the drama involved in a closer failing, it’s a pulling of the rug feeling for everyone and they just feel more damaging, but David is simply learning, with great power comes great responsibility.
When you hold the game in your hand 30-40 times a season, well, everything about it is amplified.
Figuring their way through this will be a process and you won’t feel good about David until he’s done his typical job 4-5-15-lol times in a row, that’s just the reality of early season struggles, but it far too early to lose your mind now.
Henry Davis
He’ll hit, but they’re screwed if he can’t catch.
Remember those simple days where we thought worst case scenario Henry Davis might be a DH?
Well, he’s catching ok, but he’s also just not touching the baseball. He looks frustrated, he’s acting frustrated, his coach has had to talk about it twice in post game now and man that just doesn’t work for some people at the plate.
Like think of it this way. When you see Oneil Cruz look really angry at the plate and he’s 0-3 do you get the impression he’s getting desperate? Do you see a guy who won’t accept a walk because he’s tired of not making that sweet contact? Not really right?
Davis looks recently like a guy who is just going to get his big boy swing off 3 times. For that reason, he’s seeing next to nothing he can hit. He’s struggling to hit the fastball, whiffing on it actually and in zone. So guys just zip that past him and as soon as he shows he’s timing it up with a foul they pull the string and he’s out in front by a city block.
This is kid’s stuff. Meaning young players, not that it’s simple to solve. He’ll find it to a degree, he’s too talented a kid to just not push back, but much like Endy Rodriguez before him, all the focus on defense cuts into how much offensive work you can do.
Henry isn’t out of time, and Joey Bart isn’t going to long term replace him, in fact, pulling the plug on a young catcher like Henry who is clearly struggling to juggle both sides of his game is exactly how you create a Joey Bart.
Yasmani Grandal getting healthy (if/when) shouldn’t matter to either of them either if you ask me, but I can’t speak for the team, and no matter what you hope the future holds, you can’t start a kid who isn’t hitting even .100. If they didn’t plan to give him a good month or two I doubt he’s here, so I won’t change from that now.
We’ve seen this kid hit, we just haven’t seen it when he can’t make it his focus entirely and he worked so hard all off season I wonder about the strength in his legs at this point too.
Early of course, but I’ve seen young frustration before, and I’ve also seen how this team reacts to it, so did Rodolfo Castro, Nick Gonzales, Luis Ortiz. I’m at least open to hearing they want to give him a bit more rest but I’d really prefer he stay in MLB, I just don’t think the lesson he needs to learn resides down there.
Steel City Pirates 