Uncertainty is the Enemy of Progress

7-20-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

The Pirates have a lot of problems. Breaking news, I know.

The biggest of all of them might be uncertainty.

Nobody knows who will be here after the trade deadline. Most don’t know who will be traded over the offseason. Let alone what if anything their bosses might bolt on to help them next year.

Hell, they don’t even know who they’ll call boss next year. In fact, according to most people I talk to and the few reports that have escaped the orbit of the locker room, they don’t really know who to call boss now.

There is no certainty of message, or goal, or the “plan”, and maybe you’re a fan who thinks to yourself, well, isn’t that the case for every losing team?

Sure, but most teams don’t experience that with a roster that largely will be back.

Players in that room don’t know who’s safe, but they know most of them will be. For the same reason I know it to be true.

The vast majority of this roster is either signed, playing on their entry level deal or just moving into arbitration. Meaning, it’s going to take purposeful decisions to change a whole lot of this roster. And that’s for the ones who haven’t played enough to truly know yet.

Losing brings this about, so does poor communication, and an overt failure to address the same missing pieces this unit has had for 2 seasons.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, I think this team will move most, if not all their rentals, and I think we’ll see them take no swings bigger than Dennis Santana and David Bednar.

There will be interest in others, but I just don’t see them changing anything fundamentally at this deadline.

This too comes from uncertainty.

If you’ll think back to 2019 when Neal Huntington and Frank Coonely were removed, Huntington was given a vote of confidence around the mid season mark, so was Coonely. Both had contracts that extended beyond 2019. Clint Hurdle was given the same assurances, after all, he had won here when given players, surely it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t winning without them.

We all know how that season ended, and we all know that Bob Nutting ate the money he owed all three of them.

I think he’ll do it again, and further, he’s learned from last time, no such assurances of his belief in his management team was put forward this time.

Even so, his silence, one way or another, creates uncertainty.

Baseball players aren’t guaranteed certainty. A player can be an absolute beast for 4-5 years and then suddenly nothing falls, they get a nagging injury that’s not bad enough for the IL, but bad enough to keep you from playing your best and there’s a good chance people wearing your jersey are booing you and the team is wondering if they can move forward with you in their plans.

The roster right now though, well it consists of a few guys who are signed, a few who are too young to give up on, even if they haven’t achieved being a lock yet.

There are players in that room right now who think if they went on a hot streak they’d almost assuredly get themselves traded, and there are others who at this point don’t care where they play, so long as they get to continue their MLB dream.

None of them dreamed about walking into a situation where they were lumped in to the problems of the last 40 or so iterations of the Pittsburgh Pirates that came before them.

I’m not judging anyone for calling for the owner to sell, or renting an airplane, I’m just saying, don’t be shocked when it rubs guys the wrong way, or even when they think playing in a poison bowl of sewage as it comes to the atmosphere might make players play like crap, or prefer to play elsewhere.

Your target is Bob or Ben or whatever, but when it happens at the ballpark, there’s very little chance you hit those targets without shooting right through the guys on the field.

Again, guys who you will largely have on your team next year.

Simplify this as much as possible.

Nobody expected to win from 2020-2023. Nobody expected this team to do more in free agency for the 2023 team than the 2024 or 2025 teams. And nobody should have expected that for the 5th straight year this team still needed an outfielder, short stop and first baseman.

I mean, not one accidental prospect who could at least play to league average in all that time, from any method employed?

For all the rentals they’ve sold off, all the swings at AAAA players, all the draft picks, all the waiver claims, all the position changes, they’ve come up with a fat nothing you can hang your hat on for more than the next 11 days, and even that, is IKF playing out of position.

This General Manager has some bad philosophies as it comes to offense, and unfortunately, it effects the types of players he tries to acquire. And even when it doesn’t, it’s the philosophy they try to mold them into.

It and he need to go.

Bob Nutting needs to bring some certainty back to this room, lord knows Cherington can’t, I’m told he’s only been in the room once since Shelton was fired, and frankly, he talks to the players the same way he does the media so just as well.

It’s not his fault that Reynolds is struggling, or that Cruz isn’t as good as he could be, or that Hayes simply isn’t the hitter he looked like he could be, but it is his fault he brought in nothing concrete to fortify what this team had.

The bottom line is, this job can be done better, despite all the impediments the league and owner put on whomever that is, it simply has to be done much better.

The longer there is uncertainty, the less and less like a team this will look. I don’t think they can afford to let this bleed into the offseason, but if they do, expect more of the same, cause this fish stinks from the head.

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