The Pirates Continue to Win Series, Management Continues to Prepare Fans to be Underwhelmed

6-26-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

The Pirates have won 5 of their last 7 series.

You can do that and still not have a winning record, it’s just real hard to do.

On June 1st, the Pirates were 27-31 and had just beaten the Blue Jays 8-1 and they’d go on to lose the series the next day to drop 5 games under .500. It was a real set back for the club, just starting to show some signs of climbing out of a month long funk at the dish.

Since that point, they took 2 of 3 from the Dodgers, 2 of 3 from the Twins, lost 2 of 3 to the Cardinals. On to the Rockies where they took 2 of 3, the Reds went down the same way. Tampa took 2 of 3 and just yesterday the Reds surrendered another series losing 2 of 3 to our Pirates.

No sweeps in either direction. An underwhelming record of 10-8 but a net positive all the same. The kind of baseball that over time gets you up and over .500 at some point, but more likely helps maintain where water finds its level. It also doesn’t insulate you should your team ever have a losing streak, there’s very little fat to help absorb the shock.

Thing is, you have to do it long enough, and you really can’t afford slip ups.

It’s to the Pirates credit, they’ve played good baseball this month and they’ve done it with some fairly stark deficiencies offensively.

This is exactly what Ben Cherington meant when he put out what many of you have affectionately termed word salad. It was for sure that, but it’s also become almost a running gag for me.

The Pirates tell the truth, they just do it in the wrong way, at the wrong time.

Let me explain what I mean.

Did you ever have someone at work have a grandparent die and they were like 98 or something crazy like that? Inevitably, in an effort to say something, you’ll hear co-workers say things like “Well, they had a full life”, or “Hey, hard to complain about 98 years”. You know what I mean? They’re nice things to say, and entirely true, but maybe not something the grieving party is ready to hear.

The Pirates do this stuff all the time and the only reason I point it out is because if they want to, they have an entirely true and positive story to tell, and I just did it.

The arrow is pointed up, and they’ve pulled it off much like the end of last year with an incomplete pitching staff and a team not hitting consistently enough. They’ve actually gotten themselves to 2 games clear of the basement of the division, partially by beating the Reds themselves. They trail the Cards who they get another crack at soon because they dropped one to them.

It’s a boring story, but it is the story fans will and should accept.

Instead, our Pirates reps in my mind always want to talk about why something is hard as opposed to how they intend to make it better.

I hear Derek Shelton on the Fan talking about how offense is down all over the league by way of defending Andy Haines for the Pirates hitting woes. It’s not untrue, hitting is down the league over, it’s also not something that in my mind a coach needs to be talking about. Not in this context anyway.

Talk to your own team. Who you expect to get better and how you’re going about it. What you plan to do if you ultimately can’t get the improvements you’re looking for?

Things like that. Be real about what’s up, you don’t have to tell me it’s hard, we all know that, I just don’t need to hear that things are tough all over. You’re my manager, my GM, my Team President, I want to hear solutions and methods to achieve them, not laying track in the middle of June for how tough it’ll be to acquire what you need at the deadline because everyone else will want it too. That sounds a lot more like what I expect from the Pirates in Free agency, not the trade deadline.

Yes Ben, teams in general like to acquire good players at the deadline if they can, and those good players cost a lot in prospect capital and more bidders can make that price go up even more. This is always the case, no matter what your team needs. Good hitters, good pitchers, well, there are always more shoppers than product.

Honestly, that’s his problem, not mine.

Again, it’s true, it’s just not a welcome message. I want to hear how he plans to attack it. Or that he plans to attack it. What I hear sounds more like trying to soften the blow for me over your eventual underwhelming attempt to get something done.

The Pirates have a good story to tell, and it doesn’t require blaming any league wide issue, or anything more than a slight improvement in their standings league wide. But it is improvement.

I want the Pirates to improve and add and keep getting better, and words are just that, words. That said, I’m tired of them trying to soft land the dismount even as they haven’t really leapt yet.

The team is undermanned, and yet, they’re slowly but surely climbing and maintaining their claim to a post season berth. They need help, and they’re proving it might be a worthy investment.

Talk about that. Talk about why you want to add to this group. Not why it’s hard to do it.

Talk about what is and isn’t working, not about how hard you work at the task.

There’s a time for all that other stuff. After you win, you can tell me how hard something was, or how hard you worked on some aspect. Until then, I’d like them trained on putting their foot on the gas and making an effort.

Again, there’s a story to tell, it’s positive, if still a little dry, take adding some spice to the story as a challenge and reward this team for showing you they have some fight in them. Let’s start hearing some from management.