5-27-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
Memorial Day they say isn’t for celebration, it’s for solemn reflection about the sacrifices made to ensure our freedom. It’s hard to separate the two, if the country wasn’t worth celebrating, all these incredible people wouldn’t have felt it was worth sacrificing for.
I’ve never lost someone personally in combat. I just have a ton of people who were willing to give it all and managed to make it home. I tend to think about how lucky I am to be able to say that more than anything on Memorial Day.
1. They’re 25-29…
I guess I’m not feeling the overwhelming belief that the season has been a disaster. Feels like they’ve already absorbed a decent amount of injury and for the most part, kinda took the blows. Bullpen probably got hit the hardest so far, probably dipped farther into the depth than they’d like. Probably disappointed by more than a couple performances.
The offense has been hot, stunk and now they’re back to hot. The Rotation has just kinda balled out all year and is arguably it’s strongest right now, even if Martin Perez has to go on the IL and they go to Quinn Priester, I could argue there’s a good chance that’s actually a potential improvement.
I don’t like Andy Haines methods, I haven’t fully decided what I think of Derek Shelton, Oscar Marin has done an objectively good job and I mean throughout the system.
They’re carrying some dead weight and they need to make some improvements, both internally and via trade. The dead weight is more a crime of wasting space than it is a deployment thing. They aren’t playing those guys much, and it feels like they’re very right handed heavy.
All in all, they’re in a good place. This pitching staff should, even counting on nothing more than typical rebounds in performance by some relievers, really give this club a shot at reeling off some wins. The Wild Card will be in play this year, I feel it in my bones. If the Starting pitching stays healthy, I’d be crazy to suggest otherwise.
All that being said, there are absolutely going to be more tough stretches too. This isn’t a team that’s going to gel and win 90 games, not without some additions from outside.
They have 41 games before the All Star Break. I’d like to see them win 23 of them. That would be 23-18 and I think would force management’s hand to put more into this roster, this year.
2. Development
There are few things more casually tossed out as causation for losing like development. It’s probably number 2 behind Bob Nutting’s spending.
The truth is, development really never ends. You’ll probably take that as a platitude but honestly, it’s a constantly moving target. A race to develop into a fleshed out version of yourself as early as possible to maximize your years with your physical gifts intact.
Then it turns into becoming the best version you can be. Gaining experience and adding to your bag of tricks, to not only use your physical gifts, but think the game the way veterans have taught them and coaches have instructed them through the years.
There will be droughts and boons for most. Some will never get past that initial blast of talent that got them there in the first place. The journey is sometimes too easy and once they’re at the pinnacle of the sport, they lack the internal drive to put in the work it takes to be more than someone talented enough to reach the Bigs and become a player who took their talent and married it with hard work to have it last.
If you manage all that stuff, you might wind up being a player who’s still playing, sometimes well beyond your prime years and then you have to focus on learning how to succeed with what you have left. Maybe even change entirely what made you successful. Perhaps you were a 5-tool guy and now you just don’t have all of those anymore.
The point is, Development starts with talent. Hard work beats talent…. When talent doesn’t work hard.
What development definitely isn’t though, it’s not just some thing you can say in one word and tag with success or failure.
For instance, the Dodgers are often tagged with being excellent at development. They are, as evidenced by all their Rookie of the Year winners through the years. They also spend a ton of money and fill their MLB roster, so they aren’t often asking kids to fill roles with no safety net and they have little reason to rush guys unless there’s an injury issue. Trying to fill out that roster affords them to sell off prospects who are close too, and when they go off and become someone else’s prospect, they lose responsibility of their “development”. If anything, they’re really good at identifying the right guys to move. Guys like Michael Busch, drafted in the 1st round back in 2019, the Dodgers took their time. He showed power, lots of strikeouts and finally in 2023 he put the type of season together that 27 teams in the league couldn’t have ignored.
For the Dodgers, he needed protected from the Rule 5 Draft, so they gave him a cup of coffee and it didn’t go great. Being a team that expects to not only get to the playoffs but win the whole damn thing this year, the Dodgers had no patience for or room to develop him further at the Big League level. So they traded him to the Cubs for a couple Single A level prospects. It’s now on the Cubs to “develop” him. The Dodgers don’t get blamed that he’s up here striking out a ton and hitting homeruns. The Cubs will get the credit or blame now, we’ll have to see as he continues to develop.
But your perception of how great the Dodgers are at development won’t change will it? Don’t cheat this part of the game by pretending you can define it as some metric you can measure.
The game itself IS development. Every day. Every year. Every player. Every team.
3. If the Pirates Need to Call on Quinn Priester…
Martin Perez left yesterday’s contest with a left groin concern, and the Pirates could probably just use their off days and make it work if this is just a skip a start type thing for Perez. If it turns into a longer thing though, I think Quinn Priester is ready. He’s at least ready to get a shot at owning a rotation spot here for a while. Best case scenario he shows he belongs and the team can consider using Martin Perez in the bullpen when he’s healthy.
If the Pirates manage to finish 2024 with a rotation of Bailey Falter, Quinn Priester, Jared Jones, Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller, they’ll enter the offseason able to focus on the offense and bullpen.
Frankly, I didn’t dream this team could be in this kind of position this year. I thought they’d slow walk Jones, and at best Skenes would get half a year, I guess I just thought best case scenario, they’d be looking promising, but I’m kinda feeling like they could go into the offseason looking pretty established actually.
Johan Oviedo and Mike Burrows should be back in the picture and some others will push in 2025. The Pirates might just find themselves in a very Dodgers looking pitching development situation.
We all know how quickly injuries can change all this feel good stuff to woefully short, I’m not ignorant to that fact, it’s just been a long time since I can recall watching my baseball team head into an offseason with 5 honest to god starters who were coming back, not in danger of being traded due to impending free agency and money saving, in fact, 4 of the 5 will make league minimum next year.
It’s an incredibly fortunate situation to be in, now they just need to not waste it.
4. The Bullpen
A bullpen is underappreciated at best for most fans. We all remember that blow up or bad inning and we all too easily forget the times it went smoothly.
That said, right now the Pirates bullpen is arguably the worst in baseball. This bullpen has a 4.85 ERA, a 1.40 WHIP, they’ve walked 89 batters.
Of these, David Bednar, Colin Holderman and Chapman simply have to be the lynch pins. If they perform, this starting staff is good enough to expect most nights that’s enough. That simply hasn’t been the case.
Colin Holderman didn’t start the season with the Pirates and he’s been really good. David Bednar did start with the Bucs and probably shouldn’t have, but he looks to be getting back to normal a bit.
Aroldis Chapman has done this to a degree at almost every stop in his career. He just hasn’t typically had them pile up together. If he doesn’t get right, the Pirates will have to use him in lower leverage until he does or send him on an phantom IL trip.
Hunter Stratton has been better than you think, promise. Kyle Nicolas and Carmen Mlodzinski probably aren’t ready to be here. They’ve got some work to do here but first things first, they need to find 3-4 guys they can depend on and run out there a decent amount. It won’t be a complete bullpen, but it’s a good place to start.
I can’t imagine there are many arms out there quite yet, but one way or another they need to start getting some guys on the radar. This area was supposed to be a strength, it certainly can’t be a weakness, so let’s work it back to league average internally and see if we can’t push it back to strength before the stretch.
5. Henry Davis is Hitting the Baseball Hard
That’s the most important thing going on with Henry in AAA. I’m not going to type out his stats because honestly, they aren’t all that important to me right now. Some of his homeruns were off of a position player. It just gets muddy when you start breaking down how he’s hitting and try to pretend you know when he’s qualified to come back.
He’s hitting the baseball hard. He’s not striking out too much, he’s walking enough. He’s doing it against fastballs, and breaking stuff, and yes, he’s doing it against AAA arms.
Reality dictates Yasmani Grandal and Joey Bart staying healthy helps determine how much time they give him down there. If they hold their own, Henry has more time to improve.
The best version of this team has Henry Davis on it, I firmly believe that, and I think the Pirates do too. When you send a 1:1 down to AAA, the next time you call them up, you hope is the last.
Expect the Pirates to be seemingly overly patient here, again, so long as Yasmani Grandal in particular can manage to hold it down. His history tells me to expect Henry back before too long. Hopefully he’s still hitting like this when it happens. I completely get wanting to have him take a volume of at bats though.
In fact, secretly, I kinda want to see him slump and come back from it. Prove he can get past it without looking like he’s grinding bats into sawdust and biting his cheek open. We’ll see if they get that luxury, it’s no guarantee he’ll slump at all, lord knows he didn’t last year in the minors.
Steel City Pirates 