Gary’s Five Pirates Thoughts – On the Road Again

4-21-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

Lots to get to today, so let’s just dive in.

Lets Go!

1. Paul Skenes Changed Everything

I think a lot about that scene in the Pirates “war” room a few years back, waiting to hear results for the draft lottery, the one that ultimately would give them a chance to select either Paul Skenes or Dylan Crews. Ok, some of you want to pretend they had Wyatt Langford on that multiple choice too, that’s fine, either way, we know how it turned out, and we know who they selected.

I think about this moment a lot. They had no idea they were drafting the end of the free ride. They drafted the pressure that crushed them. #LetsGoBucs pic.twitter.com/CkyDfBte85

— Gary Morgan (@garymo2007) April 21, 2025

Simple statement, and I’ll clarify. In that moment, they were elated they were about to select what almost everyone saw as a transformative, generational player. They were right, but they had no clue it also would end their free ride with the public patience or that he would bring with him pressure to compete that they’ve rarely been forced to confront.

The national spotlight was suddenly shined on an area MLB happily ignores, Pittsburgh. And Pittsburgh, well, they forgot how nice it was hiding in obscurity. How easy it was to hide behind their inability to spend like the big boys, and then boom, a 600 MIllion dollar arm was dropped in their lap.

They could no longer pretend because they couldn’t sign that on the open market that they were stuck there hoping and praying they could scrape together enough talent to just get in. They got that talent and don’t have to pay him anywhere near that to provide his services.

That’s supposed to be the small market dream, instead, they essentially took the miracle like the Polio Vaccine and assumed it would also cure everything else that ailed them.

Suffice to say, it didn’t. And now they have fans who haven’t watched in quite some time, national media who haven’t paid attention in even longer paired with the player himself being a fierce competitor and they’re being forced to face up to the fact that they didn’t do anything to surround this gift.

One star doesn’t make you competitive, especially one star who pitches every 5th day (first time they actually allowed that on Saturday FYI, its been 6 or more every time previous). He helps, he’s a good ambassador already for the city and the team, but he can’t do this alone.

Fans saw their flaw in thinking almost immediately, and called them on it. National Media, who know the limitations this team has, even if they won’t admit it freely, jumped on to add in their 2 cents about what this team should have, could have done.

The thing is, when that scene up there occurred, no matter how good they thought Skenes was going to be, nobody predicted he’d get here, and be one of the best in the game before the All Star Break the year after being drafted.

And they were caught with their pants down. My question is, why didn’t you buy a belt this offseason?

The truth is, they, meaning the team weren’t ready for the firestorm that came with him. From a system development standpoint, from a financial investment standpoint, even from a place of understanding how the landscape would shift they missed. They weren’t prepared for payroll to jump, just go up marginally in 2025, and instead of realizing Paul Skenes required a change in the plan they established before he even transferred to LSU, they figured, well, fans will get it, they’ll be happy with just improving, and how could we not with this guy?

Wrong again.

Lastly, Fans weren’t ready. Pirates fans have had exactly one player like this. Gerrit Cole was good, and had huge expectations, but he didn’t start like this at all. The first thing fans thought here in Pittsburgh, what year will we trade him?

It’s so hard to “trust the process” when the process hasn’t worked, and you know based on experience that extending this guy was going to be a pipe dream before he even threw a pitch.

Thusly, he hasn’t brought the excitement that the organization thought he would, mostly because they can’t dispute it comes with an end date, and even if they could, we know it’s fairly likely they won’t.

They can’t fix everything here. It’s just not on the table in this league, not structured like this, but were they to do something out of their character like find a way to extend him 5-6 years beyond arbitration, I do believe fans would at least understand it’s not all going to come crashing down in 2028 or 2029.

Skenes changed the game literally, and figuratively.

2. “Cloud over the team” Andrew McCutchen

Andrew was asked by Kevin Gorman of the Trib about what it’s like hearing the chants of “sell the team” or boos for his manager and teammates.

“I understand where they’re coming from. I’ve been here long enough, so I get it,” McCutchen said Sunday morning, before the Pirates played the Cleveland Guardians in the finale of a six-game homestand. “I just hate it for the guys who haven’t been a part of it and haven’t been here for very long. They’re like, ‘Man, these people seem pretty upset.’ You have to go out there and try to perform and do well when there’s this cloud over the team.

“Obviously, everyone is trying their best. It’s tough when you’ve got ‘sell the team’ chants going on and you’re trying to compete and do well. It’s just hard, no matter what. You’ve got all that going on around you while you’re trying to focus on doing one thing well, and it’s hard to filter out the negative and focus on yourself at that moment. It’s tough. Now you’ve got guys who don’t play every day showing up in the lineup with that cloud over them, it becomes a challenge. The game’s challenging in itself but when you’re dealing with a lot of fans who seem to be fed up with the way things are going it makes it a little more challenging. All we can do is try to do our best as a club to try to block it out and try to win the ballgame, but I can’t control what they do, how they feel. I understand.”

So, a couple thoughts here. First, Andrew has expressed the part of this whole thing I’ve hated most and that’s the effect it has on the players, many of which have done nothing wrong but get acquired by the Pirates. Cutch spends a lot of time trying to convince that room that this is a great place to spend a career, and show that the fans love is undying if you do things the right way here as a player. I’m guessing he doesn’t try all that hard to convince anyone after a good chant filled game.

And then on lineup changes…

“You have to be consistent in every way,” McCutchen said. “I don’t know what that entails for us, but I know you are going to constantly have lineup changes and that’s what we seem like we do here. We have a lot of lineup changes. It’s not necessarily the same lineup every day. I think it’s just the more consistency we can find in the lineup and if it’s possible that we’re able to do it and we get some guys — I know that some guys are injured, get them back — maybe we get that opportunity to be more consistent as a lineup. As of right now, we just have to work with what we have and go out there and try to get the job done. That’s all you can do as players and as individuals, is to try and do your job. It’s a lot easier said than done. That’s what we have to do.”

The frustration fans have expressed over the past handful of seasons in regard to this subject, finally expressed by someone in that room.

Finally, someone who isn’t happy to be sitting. And vocal about it. Finally a player speaking to the importance of consistency in a lineup.

I’m not saying Cutch has open beef with Shelton, but this is very much so shots fired. He’s a player who has directly impacted this owner to change things in the past, and I have no doubt he understands the power his words carry here.

More than anything, congratulations, you aren’t crazy for hating the constantly changing lineups, Cutch just confirmed it’s a problem for him too, and he’s one of the very few in that room who have earned the right to speak to it.

This has a better chance of spawning change than any chant or sign in the ballpark. Its also why, despite playing tough competition on this trip, getting on the road, all the way across the country from Pittsburgh, maybe even playing too late to have fans notice, well, it might just be good for this club. They might get more cheers on the road than at home. That’s on them, but it’s kinda on us too. They’ve made the roster not good enough, we’ve made home feel like enemy territory for guys who again did nothing but get acquired here.

3. Spencer Horwitz Finally on Rehab Assignment

We’ve already traveled down the road of this season enough to know, even if Spencer Horwitz is a star, he alone is not turning this ship around.

That said, he was easily the “biggest” piece they acquired, and they’ve already been beaten by the guy they featured in the return. I think he’ll be good, and it’s great to see he’s progressing.

I think we’ll see him make his way back up here by early May, and again, that’s a good thing. This guy has hit in this league, and he did it on a team that doesn’t just hand out opportunity to youngsters like candy. In fact, he hit well enough that they played him out of position at second base where he struggled mightily, but the bat was good enough to keep playing him.

Its ok to be excited about him getting back, and to think he’ll help.

The hole is too deep to expect it to be enough.

Enmanuel Valdez has been handling the lion’s share of 1B playing time, especially after Endy Rodriguez hurt his finger, and he’s been hitting.

He too has 2B experience, and yes, he too isn’t a good second baseman. He also has been wielding a bat that will be hard to bench. I could make an argument that he’s been the Pirates second best offensive player.

So while I’m happy to get Horwitz back, I’m afraid it’ll come at the expense of one of the few who has been performing. Thus nullifying the injection of help to a degree. And I’m not even getting to Nick Gonzales returning, because frankly, I’ll take poor defense in exchange for offense to replace Adam Frazier. I won’t take that to replace Nick.

4. Try or Don’t, in Between Nets Nothing

Fans can be stone stupid. I don’t blame them, I mean, as a fan it’s not your job to see someone go 0 for 10 and force yourself to be happy about it.

But a baseball team needs to be smarter than that. They need to understand what a real opportunity looks like, how many at bats, or innings that is and then they need to drown out the noise and let the subject have a shot.

You know how frustrating it is to see the Pirates give a guy like Tommy Pham get the bulk of at bats in the first month, and I’m here to tell you, if they chose to do the same thing with Matt Gorski instead, you’d likely be frustrated again.

These aren’t the same situation though. Pham has 10 years of evidence, including 3 or 4 of him after beginning to trend downward.

Gorski is a stereotypical long in the tooth prospect carrying a poison pill.

Often what this team will do when they decide to give a guy like Gorski a shot, they’ll call him up, play him once, maybe twice a week and suddenly this kid who was tearing up AAA is now sitting around, facing better pitching when he does get a shot or pinch hitting against specialists late in a contest.

Then we’ll all look at his 2 for 30 over the span of 3 weeks and determine, he stinks, or the MLB coaches broke him, or the hitting coach messed him up.

Look, it’s a different level, it’s going to be harder. Add in not facing pitching regularly, it becomes really a lot harder. Add in having the process play over and over, up and down, back and forth a couple times and well, you start to make it impossible.

Gorski is just an example. Cheng was up here for 5 days and had 4 at bats. Peguero has had 3 stretches in the bigs. A cup of coffee in 2022, a more extended look in 2023 where he posted a .237 Average in 213 PA, with 7 homeruns and a .653 OPS.

In 2024 he was only given 10 plate appearances and he was up here for almost 3 weeks.

Those numbers in 2023, um, don’t look now but that’s a better pace than 75% of this current MLB roster.

It’s his last option year, our SS can’t play SS but can play 2B, and our starting 2B is injured.

Yeah, let’s just start Adam Frazier instead. In fact, lets call up Cheng instead, and not play him a lick.

Bring up kids, but you have to play them too, or else what you create is a sea of Quad A players that will either be ruined entirely or “discovered” at their next stop. We’ve seen this time and again. Even guys like Henry Davis, up and down, over and over and when he gets here, 2 games a week, maybe.

He’ll surely discover the secret formula for this level getting 4 at bats every 4 or 5 days.

Some of these guys just aren’t going to make it, I get that, and you know I get it, but Endy Rodriguez starts, plays in 15 of the first group of games, 50 PA, hitting .178 following up his extended look in 2023 of 204 PA hitting .220.

OK, why him and not some of these other guys? That’s the right way to see what you have so I don’t hate it, but where has this grace been for Alexander Canario, should I assume first ballot Hall of Famer Tommy Pham is holding him back?

Think back to Bryan Reynolds. He was called up in 2019 because of a catastrophic injury to Starling Marte, and he hit, then Hurdle sat him, he played and hit again, then Hurdle sat him, then again, he played and hit and Hurdle said, ok let’s see where this goes, he went on to finish 4th in Rookie of the Year voting.

Why? Because they gave him an extended shot and did the rarest of rare things, he hit in a couple of the very few opportunities they planned to give the youngster who was supposed to fill in for an emergency and head back down, after all he had only had 54 PA in AAA.

There is no success without opportunity, but in baseball, you can fail while never being given a chance fairly easily.

The main point here really should be, you’d be better off if you weren’t experimenting all that much at this point of a build. Good teams have maybe 1 situation like this in a given year and if injury related, the opportunity lasts about that long, and they get most of the time to give it a shot.

5. Is There Really Any Chance This Management Team Survives 2025?

I mean, yeah, but it looks a lot like one of those TikTok videos where a guy throws a checker down a flight of stairs into a checker sized slot in a box. They often don’t show you the 1,419 attempts before it finally went in.

Is there a lane? Sure, but, well, you’ll see, when I lay this out, your first comment is going to be something along the lines of “yeah f’ing right Gary!”.

So here’s my list of things that would have to happen. Also, don’t pretend this list is designed to make you happy, it’s not, it’s intended to be just enough to potentially placate the owner and cause him to run it back.

• They have to best .500. It’s not good enough, especially for where they are right now, but it is the bare minimum. I think there’s a fair shot Shelton would still be replaced here, but if they don’t get to this point, it’s over, and probably for all three of them.
• It’s fine what Paul Skenes has said so far, Cutch too, but it can’t go a lot farther than that. If it starts getting into openly questioning the roster or other players, or even the efforts of some players, it’ll be very hard to run it back next year.
• Don’t finish in the bottom two of the division. As with point 1, not good enough, but it could at least be painted as progress of some sort. The caveat here is they’d have to fall on their sword and admit they didn’t have enough this year, they miscalculated, they’ll do better. Problem is, this message would only have any effect on Nutting, not fans, so I doubt it helps.
• Have Henry Davis, Bubba Chandler, Jared Jones, Spencer Horwitz, Nick Gonzales types make some noise this year. It’s going to take this in order to have any possible chance fans see next year in a better light. There’s zero chance they believe you’ll go out and sign better next year, so it better start showing itself internally.
• Swing a big trade for lower level prospects fans aren’t very familiar with and have the return last beyond 2025. In other words, improve the team without stealing any of your perceived “can’t miss” prospects. MUCH easier said than done, but how else is a GM on the edge to prove themselves?
• Sounds simple, but Williams can’t have any more PR problems. And I don’t mean the little blips that disgruntled fans try to blow out of proportion, I mean real dumb moves that embarrass the boss, and hurt the fans. And you know the difference. It’s like when you hate a restaurant, and your friends want to meet there, believe me, you won’t have a good experience, because that wad of gum in the urinal will become rant worthy at the table. Feel me?
• Extend either Oneil Cruz or Paul Skenes. End of list, and honestly, this could be the hardest to pull off out of all of them. Obvious reasons. People are most pissed off because you’re wasting time with these guys, and they know damn well they’ll be gone. Well, prove to them at least on this, they’re wrong.

I’m sure there are more, but this list is already likely well beyond reality, so I can either pile another shovel or two on the grave or call it a day cause the casket is long since covered.