5-6-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
As a writer, podcaster, fake media, whatever you call me anymore, I’ve started to find it difficult to fully take a lot of mental trails I start down.
Let me give you a for instance.
Last night, I sat down to start writing a piece about Oneil Cruz being wasted too, you know what I mean? Like we keep talking about Skenes, and rightfully so, but Cruz is the one who is going to start costing money very soon, and Cruz is on pace for some pretty astounding numbers if you’ve followed this particular team for any length of time.
So I was going to go down the trail of explaining where he is, compare him to others, try to come up with a figure that makes sense and see if it sounds reasonable.
Then inevitably, I have to stop. I reach a dead end in my happy little trail and the sign almost always says the same thing.
How can you think about or talk about THIS GM doing anything at this point that effects a regime he likely won’t be here for?
See what I’m saying?
I’ve had similar thoughts about Paul Skenes, and yes, even Bubba Chandler. But how can I really explore that? I can’t get past that sign in the woods.
If I feel that way, how does anyone on the team or working for the team approach their day to day? Think about it for a second. We’re talking about something as simple as transferring someone to the 60-day IL, you honestly don’t know if you’ll be there to see the guy come off the list.
What if Cherington wants to trade a top prospect for some right now offensive help? I wonder, would Bob let him? Not because Bob weighs in on baseball decisions, I’ve been told and it’s been reported a hundred times he doesn’t, but because, If I’m Bob, I’m looking at what this dude has done and asking myself before I let him pull a big lever, realistically, is he going to be here to deal with the fallout?
Now, some of you are for the first time ever in your head, go Bob! Cause you don’t want him making any big deals either.
I’m guessing of course. Perhaps in baseball, the egos are just so massive that even when their seat is too hot to sit in they feel total ability to do what they see fit under their purview and their assumption at all times is that they’ll be here, they’ll be right, it’ll all work out. I’d imagine you don’t get a job like that without a certain level of hubris.
If you’re a player though, like Oneil Cruz for instance, you’re just breaking out, at least showing real signs of it, this team is literally performing worse than they did when you debuted, you can do math and see that adding what you want probably ensures Skenes isn’t extended, if you felt it was ever possible. I don’t know what I’d think. Again, as a player, you probably at some level simply believe whatever you think you can do is more than enough to win something, so maybe this tornado in the front office stuff just happens completely out of sight and mind for them.
All I know is, a lame duck is a hard situation to be in with management, and that’s if you truly believe and have some evidence that shows you should keep your job. This situation is worse in a way, because we can all see what’s broken, and we can’t really even shop for supplies to repair it until someone tells us it’ll still be here to be repaired.
The fans feel it too.
It’s not just impatience for the same old stuff like “look at the kids”, “the future is bright”, that stuff may all be true, and sure, fans are tired of hearing it, but this year there’s an added layer of simply having no idea where anything is headed. Who will be here. What will a new regime do?
The entire franchise is paralyzed.
Draft preparation, trade deadline preparation, extension talk, when to and not to care about Super 2 or service clock, all that stuff.
I can’t even talk about what “they never” or “they always” do, because honestly, a cornered animal won’t always react how you’d think or as to their nature.
I remember this feeling, and it was 2019.
Arguably the most truly sad part of all of it, Bob Nutting replaced a group that thought they were smarter than everyone else, picked high almost every year and pulled through very little in the way of internally developed talent, which was the entire premise of their regime. And he brought in another entirely new group that did all those things worse, except this one can’t trade either.
I’d like to think he would have at least retained some of the warning signs coming that he missed from 2016-2019 so that perhaps he could prevent total disaster from taking place this time, unfortunately, it seems he did the same play with different actors.
If Bob is truly going to not sell, and again, as of now, he certainly isn’t planning on it. Someone needs to get to this dude and make him understand, it’s not necessarily about being capable of paying 350 million a year in salary, it’s about making sure you’re always right around 100, even when bottoming out, if only to continue to have worthwhile pieces to sell off as you go.
Oh, and if you develop players well, you’ll be happy to be selling them off. In fact, if you really develop well, you’ll have enough to replenish and yes, sell for established pieces you need to fill the team.
If you’re baseline is 100 and your peak is 140, nothing will change about how the league laughs at you. The fans won’t be satisfied to the point where they shrug and accept losing cause you spent. It’ll always take some magic tricks to win divisions or playoff series, but you’ll get more regular bites at the apple.
You’d be Milwaukee.
Even when you want to “rebuild” wouldn’t it be better to be selling off say Luis Arraez with a couple years left of arbitration a few years ago as opposed to trying to find a taker for Rich Hill or Carlos Santana? Carry more payroll every year, have better things to sell in your “store”, get better prospects in return, develop them and keep the ball rolling.
Sure, extend guys when it makes sense, but this CAN be done in this market, without even asking Bob Nutting to become some altruistic figure here.
It takes his willingness to spend up front once, and smart people to run it.
The alternative is the cage of their own making I started this whole thing with. Cherington had very little to sell when he got here, didn’t do very well selling them, then proceeded to never bring in or develop anything he could afford to sell while still pretending he was building something.
So here we are. Sitting in a cage we watched them build around the franchise, incapable of doing much more than argue with each other about hating and blaming the right or wrong people, and hoping that next time they’ll get lucky and find someone smart, passionate or influential enough to finally do things differently, or the CBA to shut the game down, take away everyone’s toys and make competing at least financially the law of the land.
This stuff predates Bob Nutting, whomever has owned this team since at least 1986 had little to no interest in spending money to make money here, and seemingly were incapable of hiring executives who could find a way to function under it. Maybe it’s impossible, but something tells me there is a better way to do things, even with admitted restraints.
No matter what, it’s hard to even look past the All Star break and pretend you know where this thing is headed.
Ok, maybe you can with the record.
Steel City Pirates 