Five Pirates Thoughts at Five – Paradise City

11-25-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Just about every time I’ve sat down to write during this offseason my mind has been filled with the same thoughts. Essentially, here are the places they need to add, here’s how I think they might attack it, and after that, there’s really precious little to discuss that isn’t at least a little predictive.

That’s fine, prediction is part of all this of course, but where the Pirates are right now, I think you’re lying to yourself for the most part. There’s a lot of bad bets out there, some based on little more than the near constant drum beat that for some reason the Pirates are going to do less this offseason than the last one.

Logically, this seems silly to me, but I’m not spending my every waking minute thinking I’m convincing the owner to sell or fire people either, so I really see no reason to expect such a happening.

Thing is, I might think it’s silly, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

It’s make or break time for this club and the truth is, no matter what they put together this offseason, we probably won’t know what it’s going to look like until it starts playing out.

So Happy Thanksgiving week everyone, and let’s do my all time favorite band too, Guns N Roses.

1. November Rain

Yeah, I was humming this to myself walking around a very wet Light Up Night in Pittsburgh this weekend, but this would probably be more accurately put November Reign, because Termarr Johnson has absolutely ruled November, with excellent stints in the Arizona Fall League and now for Team USA.

In the AFL he didn’t put together a high average, but nobody wanted to pitch to him either. 54 plate appearances, led to only 40 at bats. A .250 average but his extra base hits combined with 14 walks created an OPS of .919.

It’s important to remember, this kid is only 20. Fans have largely forgotten that as he’s been around for a while, but the frustration with his development, well, it’s overblown, again, he’s 20, finished the season with AA Altoona and he’ll very likely be 21 in AAA.

Far too early to pretend you or anyone else knows what he’ll be, but he’s certainly not the bust many have decided they already see.

The Pirates have pitching they can deal for help, but anyone who wants Johnson in my mind should be refused. This organization doesn’t have enough bats like this to pretend they can deal from it.

Yes, the team needs to improve right now, but they can’t afford to make moves that hurt their ability to produce their own hitters, especially the ones that are close. Termarr is that, close, and his swing has never looked more pure.

I for one think he’ll take a spot on this roster before the end of the season, and when he gets here, we’ll again have to force ourselves to remember just how young he is. Every level he jumps is another level he’s the youngest or close to the youngest player there, some kids thrive in that, others wilt, Termarr has more of the mental game down than most will achieve in a career.

Get excited about this one, I really think it’s safe, and I don’t think you’ll be waiting all that long to see it at PNC.

2. Double Talkin’ Jive

There’s a chorus line in this song that plays in my head just about every time I hear a team official speak. “Double Talkin’ Jive get the F out Mother F’er cause I’ve got no more patience”

It’s almost too perfect, maybe Axl was a Pirates fan.

Way back when the Pirates were first shopping for a new GM, my one hope wasn’t for some talent evaluation expert, or an analytics wonk, or even someone who had a ton of success with trades. No, what I wanted more than anything was a communicator, specifically one who didn’t act as though he was smarter than everyone else watching. One who admitted mistakes, and clearly outlined how they’d fix them.

Someone who could clearly articulate the challenges of managing this franchise in this system without making it sound hopeless or that the problem is our failure to be patient.

I’ve been disappointed by this and considering they have Travis Williams to in theory help in this department, I’m doubly disappointed.

At the end of the day, the only communication that will change hearts is the action of winning, but had they done a much better job of explaining the process on the way here, perhaps patience wouldn’t be at the depth it currently sits.

Look, it’s easy to say you want to hear the truth, but there are reasons that’s off the table for certain things, for instance, a GM by MLB rule is not allowed to comment on a free agent player negotiation. They can say they talked, but they can’t confirm or deny any amounts, they also can’t disclose medical information or anything else that might have led them to not signing a guy.

That’s one reason and one situation, but these types of things are littered all throughout baseball.

That still doesn’t excuse how just simple English could help fans buy in more. Instead, this team chose to hang their hat on the “get better” phrase and visibly not do so.

Again, do we want the truth? What if they had come out and said the first 3 years were about buying time for prospects to get here, not trying to win. It’s what happened, none of us are dumb, we know that, so why didn’t they just say it?

By choosing to pretend they had a chance to really improve in say 2022, it makes saying it this offseason less believable.

When you’re selling a process, you better be pretty clear about when and how it plays out. We simply have not been given a lot of reason to believe they’re telling us what’s what, and even if they actually do come through this year, many won’t forget the 4 or 5 times they were mislead.

3. Welcome to the Jungle

The Pirates decided to non-tender Connor Joe, Bryan De La Cruz and Hunter Stratton last week, and while I already wrote about this, I guess now I’m going to write about the reactions a bit.

First thing to say here is, Hunter will likely re-sign on a minor league deal. The other two, well, maybe it’s best if we just talk about some suggested reasons these moves were made I’ve heard since the news dropped.

They Chose to Keep Ji-Hwan Bae and Alika Williams over Connor Joe and Bryan De La Cruz – I mean, technically, yeah, but they aren’t in 40-man trouble. Meaning, these moves weren’t made to make room to keep anyone, they were made independently. Bae and Williams weren’t up for arbitration, if they were, solid chance they too are on the unemployment line.

Why wouldn’t they at least try with De La Cruz? – Well, they could have I guess. 3.8 or 4 million is a lot to spend on a player you almost for sure have to upgrade on entering the season. If they don’t bring in someone better, this argument becomes valid, especially if he does what he did in Miami before being traded. That homerun total would get people talking regardless of all the other stuff he clearly didn’t do well.

The Pirates gave up 2 top 20 prospects for him! – Well, yeah, but neither are anywhere near MLB, and if you ask me, neither will be. A worthy shot, especially when you take into account Miami wanted more and asked for it from every team interested. Trades like this don’t work out all the time, but these types of deals are things a team like this has to try on occasion.

It’s not like they’ll actually upgrade, this was just to save money – OK. I mean, what do you want me to say? I personally think both of these players can be upgraded on and fairly easily. I also think Nick Yorke, Billy Cook and Jared Triolo essentially made Connor Joe expendable. Even if he’s an MLB average player, these 3 could all easily be that too. At the end of the day, these players are yes, cheaper, but also, far more room before reaching their ceilings. At this point, the Pirates essentially decided Connor and BDLC had both already reached that point or at least were close enough to it that another year wasn’t likely to change their opinion.

Back at the beginning of the offseason, I told you this team was going to have to cut from somewhere or there simply wouldn’t be anywhere to upgrade, well, welcome to somewhere. Now it’s up to them to show us how much better they can be.

4. Bad Apples

The Pirates chose to make very few staff changes after finishing with the same losing record 2 consecutive years, so they better hope their issues were due to a couple bad apples and that they disposed of them before they spoiled the whole bunch.

Andy Haines wasn’t the guy standing there with a bat on his shoulders but this team is full of kids who have known nothing else and honestly, while I have hope Matt Hague will bring in a fresh set of eyes, I also fear he’s going to have to spend time breaking bad habits before he can instill new ones.

My fear is that they waited too long to make this move. Nick Gonzales has improved, but he’s had Haines in his ear from the first official at bat he took as a prospect. He knows nothing else professionally speaking anyway, and it makes me wonder how he’ll react. After all, he did fight through and manage to reach the league, then hold his own. In other words, it was at least to a degree working for him. Yeah, we all saw the shortcomings too, and I’m sure he’s not satisfied with what he accomplished, but he’s been slowly building and when you have that working, it can be really hard to change things. Or, maybe more accurately, be mindful to not change too much.

Others like Jack Suwinski are highly impressionable. He’ll take lessons he’s taught and even if they contradict, he’ll do everything he can to follow all of them. He also does his best work developing in the offseason and here he is with a new coach that I’m sure will try his best to gather information and understand what he is, where he’s been and what he could be, but that’s a tough job, for both sides of this equation.

A big part of what Hague brings to the table is supposed to be distilling information and presenting it in such a way as to keep the hitter free in the box.

He’s got his work cut out for him. Some of these guys probably like all that information, think it’s helping them and might still ask for it, regardless of what Hague thinks is the right way to go.

It was obvious if nothing else, Haines wasn’t helping many players reach a better version of themselves, here’s hoping Hague has more success, because that success will breed more trust, and he’ll desperately need that to actually achieve his goals as the new Pirates Hitting Coach.

5. Don’t Damn Me

When you’ve been writing and talking about the Pirates for as long as I have, it’s near impossible to hide your opinions.

Yet almost every day someone reads a Facebook post or Tweet and decide they know everything I believe.

I have almost 2,000 articles published on various sites, and close to 500 hours of audio out there, I couldn’t hide my opinions if I wanted to. LOL

If you want to have a conversation about baseball, I’m more than happy to. If you want to start by telling me a list of things I clearly believe, don’t expect me to just accept the false accusations and pretend it’s ok. It’s not.

See, I can say that the Pirates did a great job managing Paul Skenes first professional season and it doesn’t have to mean I think they’ve done an equally good job with anyone else, let alone everyone.

I can say it’s perfectly fine to decide Bryan De La Cruz isn’t good enough or worth the money and it doesn’t mean I’m predicting they have a sure fire All Star in their sites.

It’s not just me, we do this to each other on social media every day. Try reading what people actually say, not assuming you have the key to decipher every intended word in between the lines.

I have one goal and it’s to call Balls and Strikes, even if I personally expect more balls than strikes when it comes to this team.

The argument that something can’t happen because it usually doesn’t, well, that’s ok, but isn’t Paul Skenes an example of something that quite literally doesn’t happen here? Maybe let’s start talking about what is, instead of what was. It’s not like it’ll change where this whole thing goes anyway, might as well judge every situation individually and try to use the information we currently have.

I want to talk about baseball, and I’d like to do it in such a way as to entertain any thought that might be even considered crazy. That’s a lot more fun, if you start deciding what will and won’t happen based on history. Sure, history should inform us, but if we use it as uncompromising gospel, where the hell is the fun of talking ball going to come from?

The only thing you have to fear is being wrong, and honestly, who cares? Be wrong, have fun, talk about the game like I don’t know, it’s an actual game.