Five Pirates Thoughts at Five – A Broken Record

4-29-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

Big one this week and I think some of these subjects are painful to talk about, but you can handle it. I’ve never felt I was writing for everyone, I’m writing for people that want to think their way through the game of baseball. The front office stuff, the procedural stuff, the player promotion and demotion process, all of it.

If you like it, great, if you don’t, hey, I’m only wasting my time.

As Al Bundy said, Let’s Rock.

1. Nick Gonzales Promotion Talk

This is not an ideal situation.

The Pirates need an offensive spark and right now, Nick Gonzales is seeing the ball and hitting it hard. Hey, call him up right?

Well, maybe. Let’s talk it through.

Point 1: Nick is hitting, he’s even cut down his K rate a bit, but he’s still struggling with offspeed pitches. This is and was his issue as an MLB hitter. I find it highly likely he is figured out quickly and once you call him up, you’re obligated to play him for a stretch.

Point 2: Calling him up is still not a bad idea. He has a scouting report from his cup of coffee in 2023, but he’s also seeing the baseball, so the way the offense is going, it might be nice to get a guy who can at least hit fastballs, as opposed to won’t hit anything. They need that spark, and hungry people can’t turn away a hamburger because they don’t like mustard.

Point 3: There isn’t really a logical place to play him aside from second base or DH. One sits Triolo (And Alika Williams too for what it’s worth) and one sits Cutch who’s already sitting quite a bit. They’ve been using Olivares as a right handed DH when Cutch sits and he’d likely be the corresponding move for Gonzales, so, it figures he could get some ABs there. Bottom line, if he comes up you’re looking for 20-25 ABs a week or you simply can’t do that. Not to do simple math for you, but to really point out what that is, well it’s 6 starts a week with 4 ABs average per game. This doesn’t have to last more than a month, but if he comes up, he certainly won’t just sit, this isn’t Canaan Smith-Njigba, at least not yet.

Point 4: It’s ok to let Triolo and Williams take a few less at bats for a month. First off, Williams is already settled in as a bench/backup role player and he’s done so well there I would barely change a thing. So it’s really Triolo who would take a reduction. Again, I’d try to split that with some DH reps for Nick but it won’t be the regular work he’s been getting and while he isn’t some All Star, he’s been pretty productive for a rookie and played some really good second base after early hiccups. It has to be ok though, again, this team needs a spark and Jared while steady, average, still young, well, he’s gotten a solid month now, you can’t be afraid to try something, or you never try anything. It’s not like we’re knocking Corey Seager out of the lineup cause he’s cold.

Listen, those are the arguments for or against. I personally think I’d make the call, see if you can get a couple good weeks out of him, hope for more than that, but try something. Show the room you can swap out hitters just as easy as you do relievers.

If this team really believes in Nick Gonzales’ bat, I suggest they look longer term and start working him at a position of need like corner outfielder or first base. Even if he’s better than Triolo, and despite Termarr Johnson’s start to the season, he and Cheng are going to come and we can’t expect them all to drink from the 2B watering hole.

2. Oneil Cruz

Without looking, what would you guess is the most homeruns Oneil Cruz has ever hit in a season of professional baseball?

Any guesses? 35? I mean he played in Greensboro and Bradenton right?

How about 28 between AAA and MLB in 2022. 17 of those were at the Big League level where he only had 361 plate appearances. He hit 17 in 2021 between AA and AAA, but Cruz has really been a guy who hits for average. Just in his time with Pittsburgh, Low A in 2018 .286, Rookie ball, High A and AA in 2019 .298, 2021 in AA and AAA .310.

The Pirates are interested in his power potential and they’ve trained him as such to the detriment of his average. I’m not even telling you they’re wrong, he has 30 homerun power in this league. Right now, he’s doing neither.

This is a guy who is coming off a season ending injury, with all of 40 plate appearances last year before it happened. He’s come back rusty, a bit slower than he was and maybe a bit tentative to push the issue. A traditionally good low ball hitter, he doesn’t seem to want to push the ankle to allow himself to get under a ball like that the way he had become known for.

I am seeing some things that indicate he’s finding it a bit, but I’m not sure he’s poised to find the hitter many of us had hoped and dare I say expected. At least not quickly. I mean…

We aren’t talking about much here. I’m not sure why there’s no measurement for his Arm strength but you can see, while not accurate, it’s plenty strong. Barrel % is down considerably and that of course would lower Expected Slugging.

Really feels to me like he’s just not comfortable and hitting from a much more defensive mindset than he has in the past.

The power this kid has is incredible, but historically it hasn’t translated to a ton of homeruns, it’s very possible by the time he’s done developing he doesn’t look anything like that high average hitting kid who came up, he may turn into a slugger who never hits over .250 in his career.

The truth is, this team has to find out and work through it with him and he’s going to get every opportunity to do so.

If you take all of his MLB experience and pile it together it’s very close to a complete season of at bats. If he winds up hitting 22 homeruns with a .238 average and a .727 OPS, he’s a good player. But you’re lying to yourself if you sit here pretending you don’t want and expect more. Those numbers are ok to start a career, but they’re a far cry from transformative, and this team needs him to be a lot closer to that when he’s all the way cooked.

That won’t come without working through everything he’s working through. Derek Shelton mentioned his ankle was bugging him a bit the other day and then they used him as a pinch hitter. Hey, glad he’s ok enough to do it. But if the ankle is an issue, he needs to DH 2 or 3 times a week and see if the reduced defensive responsibilities help him focus on and use his energy toward the bat.

Hey, maybe that would help out with point number 1! Are we allowed to think of like multiple things they could do to help this offense aside from firing one figurehead?

3. Love Hurts…

As most of you know, I’ve never been on the extend David Bednar bandwagon. At best, I’ve suggested retaining him for an extra year of his free agency but I’d hate to be locked in beyond that.

The funny thing is, I’m not even saying this because of how he’s performing right now, in fact, I honestly think he’ll bounce right back and have a relatively strong season. Reason being, I’m not seeing a stuff issue, I’m seeing a command issue and David can work through that, and I believe he will.

I also believe at age 29 closers aren’t usually on the way up. So I maintain, if and when the Pirates want to extend David Bednar, it either needs to be really short, or his pay needs to reflect a relief pitcher more than an elite closer, I simply don’t believe he’ll be one past the age of 33 and they already have him locked up through arbitration for the next two seasons.

This year he agreed to a salary of 4.5 million avoiding arbitration and he has 2 more years. If he has a mediocre season in 2024, he’ll still get a probable raise in arbitration up to as much as 6, if he’s really good and rebounds fully, he could get as much as 7.

Trading David if he’s really rolling would be wholly unpopular, but you might actually get something worth having in return. Trading David when he isn’t playing well or after a poor season and you probably don’t get anything worth worrying about.

Then you have to start to ask yourself, how much do I want to pay for a guy who just delivered an underwhelming season? There is no great path here aside from David Bednar looking like a can’t miss closer.

Clearly, he’s not off to the start he’d need to be for that. If he’s clean from here on out, it’ll be July or August before some snide butt hole online can’t say “his ERA is over 4.00, he’s overrated and you protect him cause he’s a Yinzer”. After you avoid responding to that and and stitch your tongue back in your mouth after biting it off, you can go back to realizing they kinda aren’t wrong, because in arbitration believe me it’ll come up.

He could continue to struggle too and then the decision goes from Nutting was too cheap to keep him to Nutting values his community outreach more than what he does on the field.

David Bednar’s performance this year early on isn’t just eye opening for a team that no doubt had already engaged in extension talk but it should be for you too. Hometown players have expiration dates too, and almost all closers fail to pitch like top of the line closers for 7 year stretches.

Get ready to be uncomfortable, because it will be almost no matter what happens. It could be as simple as he pitches here on arbitration contracts for 2 more years then leaves in free agency. No matter what, some of you aren’t going to like it, but erase the IC Light chugging persona and look at the player, look at the history of the role and tell me you honestly can’t see this marriage ending long before he hangs up the spikes.

4. Henry Needs a Reset

Henry Davis is a good baseball player, but he’s to the point where hearing that or thinking that must almost dig at him. When that happens, it’s usually time to send them to a place where they can remember it by way of experiencing it again.

I’m not going to spend a lot of energy here fending off those who think he was a bad pick or a bust or whatever, suffice to say, I think it’s far too early in his career to pretend we know what he is yet. If you choose the Pirates Tank is perpetually just about on E side of the fence to land on, ok, that’s your right. You could obviously be right too, I just don’t feel the need to argue it out.

I think he’ll likely go back to AAA when Grandal is deemed healthy and recapture his timing, remember how to hit fastballs sans the weight of learning how to manage a Major League staff. Plenty of time to learn about that when he comes back up.

I truly feel like we saw this play out with Endy Rodriguez last year. The focus is so lasered on the defense these kids struggle to remember they have to face Major League pitching all of the sudden.

Remember, Henry didn’t even have to do this at the AAA level last year, and it’s to his credit he’s taken such a dramatic jump as a catcher in such a short time, but the way the bat is effecting him, isn’t healthy for a kid. Especially not one you’re depending on.

Regardless of how you think he’ll turn out in his career, it’s hard to deny this has to be the next step with him.

He won’t even be the first 1:1 sent down this year, it’s not the end of the world. He’ll be back and so will the fandom some of you abandoned already.

5. Accountability Never Comes Early

When an owner makes a decision to fire then hire a new GM. Well, I should say an owner who isn’t planning on seeing his investment level as the main issue anyway, if that guy makes the decision to change his regime, well, he or she isn’t going to imagine said hire or hires are going to work miracles.

If that owner is sold on a plan that gets them a relevant baseball team with a healthy system in half a decade or so, you know, one that gives you a shot at having your team at least playing competitive baseball for a nice stretch of years, and you finally get to the first potential stop on the line where some fruit might be showing itself, you probably aren’t considering a change.

Another GM could come in and work on top of what Ben Cherington has put together, but with that would come other changes, maybe even a different direction. No, when an owner like that hires a GM, they see it through, they let the entire dream cycle play out and at best pressure changes to be made beneath them.

Reality is though, as hot as you want Ben Cherington’s seat to be, it’s not even warm. And it won’t be if they fail to improve this year.

I could be completely guessing, I’m not, but I could be and even then you’d have the evidence of how the last regime was given from 2007 into the new decade. He was given two epic collapses that prevented killing that ugly streak of losing seasons. He was given 3 years with all the talent he managed to acquire and the closest equivalent to Bob Nutting’s top end budget and finally he was given 3 full seasons to try to pull his dangling team back from over the cliff. THEN, Bob Nutting finally paid money to fire his front office, manager and most of the staff.

Scream year 5 all you want, as frustrating as it is, you’re watching what was sold, agreed upon and set into motion.

The accountability you seek is going to have to come at the coaching level long before it touches this GM and I mean, we’re all that can ever hold Nutting accountable, and even then, he’ll maybe wear a different mask but still be the same person.

The bottom line, the On Field manager won’t be replaced because he has followed orders. The GM won’t be replaced because his boss isn’t a baseball guy and has no idea what he’s overseeing, and they haven’t reached a point where winning anything meaningful would have been expected.

Listen to Cherington himself as he discusses how he sees his team. On his 93.7 The Fan radio show he referenced “the majority” of players aren’t playing to those projections yet.

These projections, are exactly why they allowed 20-8 to become a distant memory, because they didn’t project that team to win. This one, they’ve specifically told you they expect and want to compete. With that comes projection and at 1 game under .500, well, trust me, they aren’t panicking, certainly not getting ready to move on and start over this November.

At best you’ll get some coaching changes this offseason, I’d have to see something insane to think Shelton or Marin would be included in that. For one thing, everyone hates a manager on a losing team, many of us didn’t like Clint Hurdle until they won and stopped when they did and he might be the nicest man in America. Kinda smart too.

Old school managers have either gotten with the program or they look like Tony LaRussa trying to coach a White Sox team that was supposed to be surging toward a championship into a quick turn rebuild.

You’ll attribute Shelton’s decisions to his “gut” being bad, and he’ll point to his list of “available arms” and splits for pinch hitters. His boss knows where the calls come from, and so do most of you, regardless of whether you want to accept it or not.

That’s not to say he’ll never meet his proverbial maker, he will, but it’ll be when the GM gives him a team he has “projected” as winning 90 games and Shelton pulls in the train with 84 and they miss the playoffs. Not a year where 500-ish is every bit where they think they’ll land.

When accountability comes, it’ll be too late, and you can see why.

Sure would be nice if we could stop murders instead of solving them I believe my hero Columbo once said to a “psychic” killer.

Where Has All The Offense Gone – And How Can We Get It Back?

4-29-24 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X

This team stinks! The “shutdown bullpen” can’t hold leads, the defense keeps making mistakes and worst of all, the team can’t hit! I understand the fan rage right now. For the most part, I feel it too. David Bednar and Aroldis Chapman have a combined 19 earned runs surrendered in 19 innings (a 9.00 ERA for reference) allowing 4 home runs and compiling a 1-4 record. Meanwhile, there are countless defensive metrics which put the Pirates at or near the bottom of baseball in multiple positions. Those both are areas in need of improvement but not what I want to discuss today as, if you can’t tell from the title, we have to talk about this team’s offense (again).

If you look at the first month of the Pirates 2024 season at face value, you’ll see two exact opposite ends of the spectrum from the offense. Through the team’s first 16 games, they averaged nearly 5.5 runs per game from their offense. Alika Williams was hitting for average, Michael A. Taylor had a surprisingly strong start with the bat and Joey Bart was proving to be a steal from the Giants as he had a .400/.538/1.100 slash line with 2 home runs in his first 3 games with the Bucs. While it’s great that some players were doing well, it wasn’t great that they were all externally developed and not in a position where the success looked to be sustained long-term. And, in GM Ben Cherington’s own words, some of these players have been performing better than even he expected.

Since the April 14th win over Philadelphia, the Pirates have lost 10 of 14 games and averaged a lowly 2 runs per game – by FAR the worst in MLB over that stretch. What is going wrong, why is it happening and how can the team fix it? Well, that’s a complicated answer. So, let’s start by looking at the obvious culprits and what is going wrong with them first:

Henry Davis

Davis has become a bit of a punching bag for fans this season as the former first overall pick was supposed to FINALLY solidify the catcher position for the team with a plus bat and at least serviceable defense. He looked excellent on both ends in Spring Training, posting a 1.067 OPS while clubbing 4 home runs in 42 at-bats. Since breaking camp, he hasn’t been able to replicate this level of success with just 11 hits over his first 79 plate appearances, a 34.2% strikeout rate and .497 OPS. He’s also had some hiccups defensively but he’s here for his bat and his bat, well…it’s not here.

This level of offensive deficiency has become even more pronounced during this team-wide cold streak as he is batting .136 over the past two weeks with zero extra base hits and a strikeout rate of 42.3%.

He’s been bumped to 9th in the batting order but his offense has been outright unplayable right now. The kid needs a mental boost to get himself right and it’s not happening in black and gold. Oneil Cruz talked last week about how his confidence was down and he needed to build it back up. That’s the case with Davis. He’s young. He’s talented. He’s going to bounce-back but, until he does, he’s actively hurting this team’s chances to log wins and play competitive ball.

Rowdy Tellez

If your favorite target for offensive scorn this year wasn’t directed at Davis, it likely is to Tellez. The biggest position player free agent signing this past offseason, Tellez and his $3M contract had a dark cloud over him entering the season. Many fans were clamoring for – and expecting to see – a reunion for Gold Glove finalist Carlos Santana, whom the Pirates traded at the deadline to division rival Milwaukee Brewers. Ironically, Santana replaced Tellez, whose injuries suffered during the year had led to a drop in production and, at the end of the season, led him to become expendable from the team’s plans.

Tellez received HEAPS of praise from the front office, who got him a promotional spring training video – where he appeared to not know who Termarr Johnson (aka “King Slime”) while countless examples of broadcasters proclaiming how close he is to breaking out can be heard regularly when watching or listening to the games.

I’ll be honest, Tellez isn’t great and he certainly shouldn’t be part of this team’s long-term plans. On the season, he has a triple-slash of .205/.292/.269, ranks at or near the bottom among all first basemen at nearly every hitting stat and until the final game of the Giants series, hadn’t managed an extra-base hit since the calendar turned to April.

Here’s some good news: Tellez isn’t doing as bad as he looks. Ok, I know that feels wrong or, at the very least, misleading, but it’s also probably true. For starters, his line drive rate of 22.4% ranks 10th best among qualified first basemen and is just above Guardians slugger, Josh Naylor (21.6%). He’s also making hard contact more than a third of the time at 34.5%, ahead of Naylor’s 33% and has an average exit velocity (89.9 MPH) on par with Phillies corner and 2-time MVP, Bryce Harper.

So what’s the problem? He’s had some bad luck. Like, REALLY bad luck. His expected batting average is a more respectable .243 with a .397 expected slugging percentage. Still not great but would put him in the middle of the pack among all first basemen. Right now, we have to hope that what he found this weekend in San Francisco – where he went 3-for-6 with 2 doubles and an average exit velocity of 102.9 – finally clicks him into gear and he can become closer to his 2022 self and further from the face of a flailing franchise.

Jack Suwinski

By this point, fans are used to the peaks and valleys that Suwinski brings to the table. Will he hit 3 home runs and drive in 6 runs today? Will he strike out looking multiple times? It could be either on any given day. Unfortunately, this season has seen far too much of the latter and exactly none of the former. Suwinski is in the midst of his third season with the Pirates and has never looked worse.

While strikeout rate dropped from a career-high 32.2% in 2023 to an above average 18% thus far this year, the rest of his numbers have fared much worse. He has a .180/.260/.292 slash line with just 2 home runs and 4 doubles over his first 100 plate appearances of the season. Jack has become less selective with pitches and is swinging early and more frequently. This has led to a significant drop in barrel rate (6.9% down from 15.7%) and hard hit rate (36.1% down from 43.4%) while increasing his ground ball numbers (41.7% up from 27.9%).

The key to Suwinski being successful is being more selective on pitches that he can make solid contact on and elevate. Like Tellez, his expected numbers indicate that he’s had some bad luck but the approach needs to improve for the base line stats to reciprocate.

What Else Can We Do?

While these three obviously have been weighing down the offense, some other members of the staff have been either wildly overperforming (see Michael Taylor’s .409 BABIP) or not finding the expected success with the bat (Cruz’s team-leading 36.2% K rate or Ke’s frustratingly low .091 ISO). I talked about these issues and more on my weekly podcast, discussing lineup restructuring or minor league call-ups as potential options to give the team a boost.

But the plain fact is that the main pieces, by and large, are all on this team now. Yes, we may see a Nick Gonzales or Liover Peguero back up at some point but they are supplemental parts in this machine. If the Pirates will push for the post-season in 2024, the 13 position players in the clubhouse today will have to be the ones to make it happen.

For better or worse, we’re in it for 162 games with this squad. And for all our sakes, let’s hope they can bring back that early season magic before the clock runs out.

#LetsGoBucs

Series Preview: Pirates (14-15) at A’s (12-17)

4-29-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

There’s no sugar coating it, this offense is not working. There are signs of some guys starting to find it a bit here and there, but it almost feels like when one does another who was taking a step falls back.

I’d love to tell you the A’s will be a cure all, but the A’s just finished splitting a series with the Yankees and winning one against the Orioles. They may not be a good team, but they don’t seem all that interested in playing patsy in 2024, at least not yet.

This will mark the last series the Pittsburgh Pirates will ever play in Oakland as next year the A’s will temporarily relocate to Sacramento and ultimately on to Las Vegas.

4/29
A’s – Joe Boyle (R) – 1-4, 21.2 IP, 7.06 ERA, 24 Ks/16 walks, 1.80 WHIP
Pirates – Bailey Falter (L) – 2-1, 27 IP, 3.33 ERA, 18 Ks/7 walks, 0.89 WHIP

4/30
A’s – Alex Wood (L) – 1-2, 27.1 IP, 6.59 ERA, 25 Ks/13 walks, 1.98 WHIP
Pirates – Mitch Keller (R) – 2-2, 35 IP, 5.14 ERA, 32 Ks/13 walks, 1.49 WHIP

5/1
A’s – Ross Stripling (R) – 0-5, 34.1 IP, 4.98 ERA, 25 Ks/8 walks, 1.49 WHIP
Pirates – Quinn Priester (R) 0-1, 10.1 IP, 3.48 ERA, 8 Ks/2 walks, 1.16 WHIP

A’s:
Tyler Nevin has been on a tear. The outfielder in his last 15 ballgames has 2 homers, and is slashing .327/.375/.481. His expected batting average for the season is .239 while his actual average is .289, so he is the very definition of a hot player, his peripherals indicate this should come to a close before too long.

Pirates:
Alika Williams has really never stopped hitting this year. He’s slashing .314/.351/.457 with an OPS of .808 on the year, hardly the all glove no stick profile many of us expected to see this season. With how the Pirates have been hitting I wouldn’t be shocked to see him eat into Jared Triolo‘s second base time a bit, even if it’s just an effort to get a spark. Power isn’t his game, but let’s be real, trying to show power has been an issue for a ton of their hitting prospects and veterans alike, it’s kinda refreshing to watch a kid that just wants to make contact and run hard.

A’s:
Ryan Noda has been ice cold this season. He wasn’t spectacular in 2023, but he did hit for some power and got on base at a decent clip for the tanking A’s, but this year has been a different story all together. In his last 15 he’s slashing .105/.244/.237 and his OPS is .429 on the young season.
Ice Cold first basemen is going to be a theme.

Pirates:
Rowdy Tellez had a couple hits and a walk including his first two extra base hits (2B) since Easter Sunday in Miami where he hit a 3 run homerun, but one game does not a turnaround make. His last 15 games, .163/.229/.209 and his season long OPS is .561. The team will undoubtedly try to see if yesterday’s contest was the beginning of him breaking out, but Rowdy will only ever get so hot even if and when he does rebound.

Key Injuries

The A’s are missing J.D. Davis and Zach Gelof, it could be argued that Gelof was their best hitter so far in 2023 so obviously a bad development. Oblique strain, but it sounds like Davis could be back as early as this week, he’s rehabbing in AAA-Vegas as a DH.

We’re officially in Yasmani Grandal watch for the Pirates, the storms in the Midwest disrupted his rehab assignment, but a floundering Henry Davis and a need for just about any change to try to catch a spark would seem to have his reinstatement to the MLB roster imminent.

Ryan Borucki is expected to start a throwing program in the coming days, if everything goes well we could expect to see him back sometime close to mid May.

What To Watch

Local product Mason Miller is both an electric pitcher who regularly hits triple digits on the gun, he’s actually touched 104 this year with insane movement, but he’s also just an incredible story of a phenom coming out of nowhere. I put him under the what to watch section but if you’re a Pirates fan, and why would you be reading this otherwise, hope you don’t see him in this set, because if you do it’ll likely mean your team is about to lose.

Rookies and Young Players Rarely Take Off from the Jump

4-27-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Many of us are in awe watching Jared Jones do what he’s doing.

The 100 MPH fastballs are impressive, but we’ve seen those get hit, hell we just watched Aroldis Chapman have a 102 MPH fastball off the plate taken deep.

The secondary stuff is impressive, but we’ve seen guys with 3 or 4 developed pitches struggle like hell to make them work.

No, Jared is impressive because as a complete rookie he’s thrown with incredible velocity, insane spin, advanced tunnelling, a willingness to stay in the zone with his stuff even when getting a chase could work. Jared is a freak, and I don’t mean because of the fastball.

He’s a big deal because rookies, especially rookie pitchers don’t come along and do this all the time, in fact that’s my larger point today, rookies or young players take time, patience, development and opportunity.

Today, let’s talk through some youngsters, what they were expected to be, where they are, what’s holding them back, what the path forward might look like.

Honestly, there is no path to winning in this market without some of them panning out.

Some players will never become anything. That’s part of the deal, you can’t just pretend every prospect is going to pan out and you can’t pretend any who don’t are on the system. Some guys aren’t helped in the right way and find it elsewhere like Connor Joe, some guys they try everything they can think of and so does the player, only to wind up like Cole Tucker, struggling to break out of the minors and married to a super hottie.

Let’s go and let’s start out hot.

Henry Davis

Henry Davis has a lot going on. First, he had a ton of injury issues on his way up through the system and it cost him both at the plate and behind the dish.

Last year the Pirates needed offense, gee I can’t imagine why, but that’s a story for another day. He hadn’t caught much, but the bat was undeniably killing it. He hit everything, everywhere and not just results, I’m talking rockets all around the field, especially the fastball.

This year, his catching partner in crime is lost for the year and he went from getting back into catching straight into being the starting catcher with a broken safety net.

Much like Endy the year before, he dove into defense head first and the bat suffered. Endy struggled to keep both sides of his switch hitting working and succeeded at neither. Henry struggles to hit fastballs, something he’s never struggled with in his life.

Don’t discount learning the defensive side of the game for a catcher. It saps the legs of power and can take a while to start to build up enough strength to succeed. Both of these guys tried to do it in an offseason.

Now, two big things are going on with Henry at the plate.

1 He first was taking too many strikes on down and away breaking pitches or changeups and coming up late on fastballs up in the zone. At least he was drawing some walks.

2 His adjustment has taken him to speeding up the bat to catch the heat and he’s overcompensated to the pull side to the point he’s pulling fastballs foul and way out in front of just about everything offspeed. In fact the hit he had the other night against the Brewers was a slider off the plate away he was so out in front of he rolled it over and somehow hit hard enough to squeak through a hole on the left side.

Henry still has work to do behind the plate, and he has work to do at the dish. He’s so off kilter right now though, I don’t think it should be out of bounds to suggest he should go back to AAA for a while. I wouldn’t have it last too long personally, at some point he will have to learn MLB lessons in MLB. But there’s no denying, 2 of the 5 starters don’t care for throwing to him and he is driving himself nuts at the plate, visibly.

He is starting to have the look of a kid that kinda hopes he does get sent down. He knows he isn’t doing what he needs to do and this is a kid that cares about winning way more than his stats.

Next Step: Demotion and recall at first sign of rediscovering his swing, he’s still very important to this team

Jared Triolo

Triolo is a brilliant fielder, and I don’t just mean his athletic ability, he’s one of the more intelligent fielders I’ve seen. Ke’Bryan Hayes, Jack Wilson, like in his on field ability to diagnose a play, make the right call and have it happen fast enough to still execute the play. It’s special, and thus far it’s THE thing that makes him special. Therein lies the problems.

Jared Triolo has the frame to hit for power, but he’s never in his career really done it. The team tried to work with his stance a bit hoping to help him create more leverage and launch angle. So far, it’s really only resulted in fewer of the BABIP darling hits he had become known for in his cup of coffee in 2023. Adjustments like this aren’t usually given up on quickly, we’re only at about 2 months of working with it in a professional manor at this point and that’s if you count Spring Training.

Here’s the poop, they think a DJ LeMahieu might be hiding in there and they’re going to give him more time to show them right or wrong before they adjust. If they choose to adjust that very well may be still in the Bigs, that glove is just hard to let go of especially with the versatility he brings with it.

What we’re watching right here is a guy trying to figure out what type of hitter he’s going to be. Until he decides and goes all the way into it we won’t know.

Next Step: Just keep playing and working. I sincerely doubt a demotion is even a thought in their head. Calm down, that doesn’t mean a starting role is a guarantee either.

Jack Suwinski

This isn’t just about Rookies, it’s about young players. Jack is as we speak sitting right at 1000 plate appearances for his MLB career. that my friends is a decent sample. It’s not fair to pretend we don’t have a good idea of what Jack is, and that’s why his .181 average doesn’t have me freaking out. He had an ok rookie season, showed some power. Improved in his second season with a dramatic uptick in walks and strikeouts. That increase in those categories also came with an almost .100 point jump in his OPS.

This year, they’re trying to get him to cut down on strikeouts and he certainly has, in fact right now he has 10 walks and 16 K’s, pretty remarkable actually, but he’s sacrificing power swings to do it. It’s also helped him see and hit lefties like he never has in his career.

47 homeruns in 1000 plate appearances in the Bigs isn’t getting cut, benched, sat, DFA’d, waived, it’s getting played my friends.

Next Step: I’d suggest Jack take the approach he’s using and apply it to when he faces left handed pitching. And, revert to his normal approach against right handed pitching. If he can meld these two worlds, he may not be the platoon player many decided he was 2 years ago.

The Coaching

Did you hear anything about an overriding philosophy when talking through any of what the team is doing with any of these players?

Right.

Every player has something they’re working on. Ke’Bryan Hayes needs to feel really good, meaning his back, to get the bat head out and pull the baseball. Watch him swing on the first day after an off day, then after 3-4 days in a row. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

Bryan Reynolds is absolutely locked in from the right side of the plate and inconsistent from the left. When you’re a switch hitter, you’re almost always off on something.

Now where the coaching really hurts is that some players can’t handle the deep counts. You see some guys don’t do it as much, like Connor Joe, he likes jumping on the first pitch, especially off the bench, Polanco did that too, Cutch has done it in the leadoff spot, you know, the spot you expect a guy to take a bunch of pitches.

They all have the same coach and the same overriding ethos.

See pitches, don’t swing at borderline early, wait for your pitch. That quite literally is what many have made out to be the equivalent of Mein Kampf. The ethos is fine, almost everyone does it almost just the same all over the league.

The difference as always with this team and this hitting coach has been the application of it. The unwillingness to accept that some guys can’t thrive looking at pitches or even having it in their heads.

Take Bryan Reynolds, for Bryan, this structure is fine, he probably would gravitate to this anyway, he’s a balanced hitter with an eye he probably trusts a bit too much and despite last night’s performance, he’s not afraid to see 2 strikes.

A guy like Oneil Cruz, well, like many Dominican players, he came up a bad ball hitter, umpires can’t seem to figure out what his strike zone should be game to game so half the time he’s having his knees chopped out from under him in an at bat.

The reason Andy Haines in my mind isn’t a good hitting coach is because he needs to adapt to the talent he has. Oneil Cruz is a guy you want to help learn not to chase trash of course, help him understand he’s probably going to see a ton of trash because nobody wants to face that bat if they don’t have to, and more than anything, you want him feeling as long as it’s a good swing it’s a good thing. You don’t want him trying to suck an extra 2 pitches out of a starter, you want him seeing a rare fastball and putting his best swing on it.

I’m not pompous enough to believe Haines hasn’t mentioned this to him, or even that another coach hasn’t told him to be more aggressive, but it’s hard to lose habits in baseball, in fact, almost as hard as it is to install them.

After all, Haines has been his hitting coach for his entire MLB career.

Look, I want this guy terminated. I can’t be more clear than that. But not for his organizational approach, just for it’s rigid application.

This system and the way they run it helps some guys, it just doesn’t help them enough to make them really transformative players and early on at least it has kept transformative players from reaching their potential. In my opinion anyway.

For the thousandth time, I’d bring in another hitting coach or two who can more directly work with players to help come out of slumps or maintain hot streaks more efficiently.

Be patient with the kids, you have no choice for one, and there is no path to winning that doesn’t roll through this system providing. More than that, it’s going to happen with Priester, and Chandler and Solometo and Gonzales and Peguero and Johnson and on and on for years and years. Thing is, it gets harder to square when you’re supposed to be trying to win. Psst, that’s why most of us only picked them to finish around .500. You simply have no choice but to do it though. Well, unless you want to be the Padres, they just trade all their prospects for MLB players, I think Bob Nutting might object.

So deal with it, understand it and above all, be patient. If you’re ready to flush Henry Davis or Quinn Priester, well, thank god you aren’t a GM, you certainly wouldn’t be one for long.

The Pirates Can’t Waste the Opportunity they Have

4-26-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

All through this process, meaning back in 2019 when the Ben Cherington era began it was always going to come down to how much would be needed to fill out the holes, and how much Bob Nutting would be willing to provide.

At it’s core, those things have taken this entire time to start to matter.

For Ben Cherington’s plan to work, he had to build pitching and pitching depth to the point the team would have a base to win with. Pitching is risky, expensive and for a notoriously cheap team, it’s not something you can have on your shopping list a whole lot.

They locked up Mitch Keller, promoted Jared Jones, and are soon to move on Paul Skenes.

People, I’m here to tell you, this team should be a contending team every single year those three are healthy together. Big if on the health scene to be sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that whatever this team is going to consider “trying” to be is going to happen now.

They’ll have others come in and up and they’ll sign pitchers here and there, but those three are a really strong core of starters to build off of, and the Pirates owe themselves to not miss the chance to win every single time they can with them.

I can’t imagine they believed Jared Jones would be here doing what he’s doing. For perspective, it would have been like saying last week that Bubba Chandler will make the opening day roster in 2025. Hey, maybe he will and then we’re talking about 4 guys like this, or maybe he just makes the argument even stronger that you have to push in whatever chips you have because he mitigates the injury fear to a degree.

Either way, the shocking arrival of Jones and Skenes being as advertised, man, for me it’s a brick on the accelerator. How could it not be?

You can be excited about any number of guys still coming, but at some point you have to look at what is actually here or very close and say, now.

This isn’t a right this second conversation. Most teams aren’t going to want to talk about trades this early, at least not involving MLB players. Any free agents still not signed are not worth pretending are upgrades.

It’s a deadline conversation, because if this team manages to somehow be near .500 they’ll owe it to themselves to augment it. I don’t even think it’ll be a frightening investment this year, but they need to seriously consider being a player on something they don’t have, and it’d be nice if it addressed a position for a couple years.

This offseason they shouldn’t have to feel the need to sign 3-5 starting pitchers, so the investment is clearly needed in a hitter or two. A real answer at 1B, or CF. Real decisions on projects like Jack in CF, Cruz at SS.

This year could have them reach higher than they thought but what it needs to do more is shove right in their faces exactly why they can’t waste what they’ve put together.

The last time we had a right to feel even close to this with our Starting Rotation was maybe when Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon were in the system together, and injury ensured we only saw them together for rare cameos.

There is no guarantee Skenes and Jones will pitch one month together, those are just the breaks, but as you watch them together as an executive, if you don’t feel a mandate to do everything in your power to capitalize on it, I’m not sure what the goal ever was.

There can be no better outcome as a rebuilding team than to start crawling onto the beach from the primordial ooze of prospects and development with two fully formed ace level pitchers and a steady, signed middle of the rotation arm. You can’t win without that, and you won’t buy it.

Don’t fumble on trying to create a first baseman. Don’t get lockjaw thinking you have enough pitching to overcome not hitting. Don’t stop pushing youngsters to perform by providing professional hurdles for them to jump.

All those questions we had way back in 2019 are about to be answered. I’ve never been convinced Bob Nutting would do more than he ever has. I’ve also never seen an internally developed pipeline of arms like this. Seems to me that might be the only way to do this without a big change of willingness to spend.

In other words, well, remember Ocean’s Eleven where Brad Pitt’s character says to George Clooney’s character they needed 2 miracles then called them out as they came up in their plan?

What I’m saying is the pitching drafting and development has delivered miracle number 1, miracle number 2 is to fill this thing out and win before miracle 1 can’t stay together.

Miracle number 3 is having a few more come along as you go so the fall off is never near as bad again. That is a dream I won’t dare to even discuss until I’ve seen 2 at once for the first time in my life.

Don’t waste it Pirates. Look at other teams who thought they’d have their dominant rotations for years. You can’t waste one opportunity.

Series Preview: Pirates (13-13) at Giants (12-14)

4-26-24 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X

Following a series split against division-leading Brewers, the Pirates head west and will try to break over .500 against the underperforming San Francisco Giants. Both teams entered the 2024 season with post-season expectations but are each sitting 4th in their respective divisions.

Both of these teams have struggled to score runs with the Pirates ranked 16th (109) and Giants just behind them at 17th (107) in all of baseball. A main dividing point between the teams is on defense as the Giants rank as the best defensive team in the National League with fDEF of +9 while the Pirates sit at the other end of the spectrum at -9.9.

4/26
Pirates – Quinn Priester (R) – 0-1, 4.1 IP, 8.31 ERA, 2 Ks/1 walk, 1.85 WHIP
Giants – Kyle Harrison (L) – 2-1, 27 IP, 5.00 ERA, 24 Ks/5 walks, 1.33 WHIP

4/27
Pirates – Martín Pérez (L) – 1-1, 28.2 IP, 3.45 ERA, 23 Ks/11 walks, 1.43 WHIP
Giants – Jordan Hicks (R) – 2-0, 28 IP, 1.61 ERA, 18 Ks/10 walks, 0.93 WHIP

4/28
Pirates – Jared Jones (R) – 2-2, 29 IP, 2.79 ERA, 39 Ks/4 walks, 0.83 WHIP
Giants – Keaton Winn (R) – 2-3, 28 IP, 3.54 ERA, 23 Ks/9 walks, 1.04 WHIP

Pirates:
Bryan Reynolds – Reynolds has had some defensive miscues but the bat is starting to heat back up. In his last 7 games, he has a .304/.448/.435 slash line with 6 walks to 5 strikeouts. If he can keep that up, maybe boost the power and hit more in the clutch (batting .143 in high leverage with 42.9% K rate), he can be the cog that gets this offense moving.

Giants:
Lamonte Wade Jr – I was hoping that the Pirates would trade for Wade this past offseason as he continues to perform at the dish, batting .368 and posting a .963 OPS. This has been helped by a wholly unsustainable .513 BABIP but he’s become a lynchpin in the Giants lackluster offense.

Pirates:
Rowdy Tellez – Things have gone from bad to worse for Rowdy. He hasn’t hit for power (only extra-base hit was a home run on March 31) and isn’t doing anything else particularly well as his batting average is down to .183 and his recent defensive miscues only amplify how poor his overall performance has become.

Giants:
Mike Yastrzemski – Blake Snell is too easy of a target and just hit the injured list anyway so we’ll talk about the grandson of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski. Mike has seen his numbers drop across the board so far this year with his OPS (.567) fading more than 200 points under his career average (.783).

Key Injuries

Giants:
Thairo Estrada was removed from the game on Wednesday due to a reported left hamstring tightness. It may have been precautionary but a prolonged IL visit could push the Giants to call up one of their top prospects in Marco Luciano.

Pirates:
No one of note.

Who To Watch

Rookie sensation Jared Jones is poised to make history, becoming just the 4th pitcher to strike out at least seven in his first 5 career appearances. If he Ks 7+ in his game on Sunday, he will be the only pitcher to do it in his first 6 games.

Joey Bart returns to San Francisco for the first time since leaving the team who drafted him 2nd overall in 2018. He’s been excellent with the Pirates in a small sample size of 7 games, posting a 1.168 OPS with 3 home runs but it will be interesting to see how he reacts being back in the Bay Area a few weeks after being shipped out.

Let’s Go Bucs!

Protecting Pitchers – One Topic to Fool them All

4-24-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Want to know the absolute facts about protecting pitchers from injuring their arms in baseball?

We know there are more reported and treated than ever before.

There’s your fact. The only one that’s not at least got a ways to go to prove itself out.

So everyone of course is an expert. That’s what we, meaning humans, do. We of course know the answer and how to stop it. Ranging from “Walk it Off Sissy!” to the pseudo anatomy majors who pretend biometrics should be discussed in the public forum with any degree of wisdom attached.

People with access to Google and thereby Statcast diagnose pitchers on a pitch by pitch basis, from the spin to the angle to the shape the velocity, it gets even crazier than this, truly. Well, these guys want to make money and know what pays? Yeah, all those crazy numbers. Chasing targets because analytics departments are now embedded in scouting departments, and those numbers get their attention the same way ol’ Buck used to sneer over his cigar and crack a smile about a power hitter slugging a curveball.

Kids that have that dream start chasing it in grade school. Travel teams, All Star tours, Individual training coaches, then you get to High School you’re throwing, and playing in the field every day you aren’t and it’s let go in some places, and in some prep schools there is more structure. You get scouted, go to college, or the draft, and either get more potential overuse in school or coddling in the draft.

Both paths produce the injuries.

Hard throwers and high spin guys seem to be the hardest hit, but like we just kinda walked through, that’s what is at least in part being scouted.

Like, Jared Jones is 100% the type of kid being looked for. High School kid, huge spin, plenty big arm, good handle on mechanics, a little wild. Now he’s here, doing what he’s doing and it’s awesome.

So why does it wind up being an episode of M.A.S.H. instead of a celebration that he’s doing this incredible stuff?

Well, the conventional wisdom on protecting arms is so in your face how the hell could you not think about him getting injured? All game long they talk about pitch counts, the Pirates epically failing offensive approach is all about creating high pitch counts. We’re warned every inning past the 5th, Will We See Him Again Today??

We hear about their rest, their side sessions, their game planning, and it’s always of course mentioned, how long he was going to go, or how many pitches he could give. Just last night a huge deal was made that David Bednar was used 3 straight days. You as a fan best not dare he go a 4th! Don’t you care about him!?!

What’s sad is, nobody really knows if it’s helping. I mean, the injury numbers say it isn’t but it’s a moving target. What they did 10 years ago was old and dumb by 5 years ago, and now that we’re here, well 5 years ago we might as well have been using leaches.

How can you possibly know what is or isn’t working when there are 30 different organizations, all doing different things, with slight variations and similar results. Even if the answer is stop throwing hard and stop spinning the ball so much, how the hell could you stop it? Regulate it? If players are willing to accept the risk, don’t you kinda have to just let them do the best of what they’re capable of doing?

I’ll tell you one thing this is, no friggin’ fun for fans.

I don’t want to plan on whoever the hell pitches for my team probably missing like 18 months once or twice in the 6 years they’re guaranteed to be here.

In fact, I don’t want to have to think about it at all. I mean players can get hurt in all the other sports I watch too, but in no other sport is it routine to just accept 25% of people who play this position are going to have a year and a half long injury, oh and by the way, if it’s at the wrong time they’re probably a bullpen pitcher if anyone gives them another chance. They were broken toys now mind you.

Know what’s effected injuries at least from hitting the timeline in the right place? Eliminating sticky stuff. It’s caused guys to grip the ball tighter and there is some early study that may hold some key. It may put additional stress on the forearm to tighten the grip. Again, more theories and conjecture.

That’s probably for 5 years from now when we finally have the next “right” way to protect those arms.

I don’t believe that team executives, trainers, coaches, players have bad intentions. I truly believe they are all following the best science they have at their disposal. I really mean that, but what they’re doing is not working, and it’s hurting the game, none more than young players who both are being hurt, and being robbed of an opportunity to be exceptional because we’re treating all arms as though they’re made exactly the same by in large.

God I wish I had an answer.

I’ve been blessed to have a chance to talk to a bunch of pitchers through the years, I’m sure a lot of you have too, most of them take it in stride, it’s almost a toll they pay for a career. The older guys don’t understand why it’s so much worse, they swear they were throwing just as hard, and there’s some radar advancements through the years that support that being at least more true than most think.

The younger guys have grown up in it, they can probably tell you roughly how many pitches they were allowed to throw in High A at the end of the season. They buy in on the modern voodoo largely, at least by my unofficial poll. Just the other day I heard Jared Jones on with the Pitching Ninja and he quoted the exact vertical break metric of his slider with the perfect tunnel off his fastball and the slight differences in his grip and arm slot to achieve it. These guys know they could get hurt, and they know down to the smallest detail exactly what they’re asking their arm to do.

It’s maddening. We’re taking a game that takes being special to play at the highest level, then intentionally not allowing the exceptional to shine because it might help.

The Pirates will be a contender every season that Jared Jones, Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller are healthy together is not a stretch to say. Saying they’ll be healthy together more than one or two seasons sure feels like it though. In what other sport do you have to think like that? In what other sport would you get a Skenes and Jones and feel good because there’s a good shot one will always be healthy, but both is asking for a lot.

I want to watch baseball, and I don’t want to need an anatomy book next to me while I do it. I’d like to get back to seeing a guy get gassed and that’s why he got pulled. I want to see players do the best they can do, and the team to try to win every game as hard as they can.

I’m just afraid the genie is very very out of the bottle, a lot of people make a lot of money for “knowing” what will help, and a league and union desperate for an answer they probably already have but don’t want to admit.

Fans have always had the fear of injury taking a player off the field, it just didn’t used to be as commonplace as an umpire losing his sight.

Amidst offensive struggles, Oneil Cruz is the most notable

4-22-24 – By Ethan Smith – @mvp_EtHaN on X

Heading into 2024, the Pittsburgh Pirates – and their expectations – were at heights we haven’t seen in some time.

On paper, this is a team that has talent – from the extended Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes and Mitch Keller, to the more youthful Jared Jones, Paul Skenes and Jared Triolo, among others.

For a team like the Pirates though, they cannot take the next step in being a competitive baseball team until some of those young guys also take the next step, and Oneil Cruz, a player many have penned with superstar potential, is the most notable.

Cruz has become a nationally recognized player in his young career, from his electric exit velocities to being an enigma at shortstop as a 6-foot-7 power hitting beast. When Cruz is on, it is special to watch, but so far in 2024, we have only gotten the crumbs of what Cruz can be and what he can do.

Losing 2023 was HUGE for Cruz and the Pirates, especially when it comes to his development, as 2024 is slated to be his first full campaign as a member of the big league roster. So far, it hasn’t been what Cruz has wanted.

In 90 ABs, Cruz is slashing .233/.281/.356/.637 with 3 homers, so not the start Cruz or the Pirates were hoping for and what is more alarming is the advanced metrics for Cruz.

Cruz is sitting at a 38.5 percent strikeout rate, which is in the first percentile in all of baseball, and a ton of that can be attributed to his 33.8 percent chase rate and 30.7 percent whiff rate. Cruz is missing the ball a ton, and it doesn’t help that he isn’t registering many walks either, pacing at a 6.3 percent rate.

When Cruz does connect though, his average exit velocity of 91.6mph and hard hit percentage of 49.1 percent suggest good things, but he has to make contact more often than not, and we just aren’t seeing that so far.

These aren’t new issues for Cruz either, who also ranked in the bottom five percentile in his 361 plate appearances in 2022 in whiff and strikeout rate, but in that season, he was getting on base via walks almost eight percent of the time, a 1.5 percent increase from his production thus far.

Cruz’s defensive struggles haven’t helped his confidence much either, sitting at a -3 OAA with five errors and a .935 fielding percentage, raising more questions about his longterm development at the shortstop position, questions fans and staff alike wished to answer last year.

His struggles in specific areas will also likely be things he struggles with throughout his career – those being the chase rate, whiff rate and strikeouts, but if he can find ways to get on-base more often and improve contact, good things will come, because he is just that special.

The importance of his development cannot be understated either when it comes to overall team success, seeing as the team is banking on Cruz to be the leader of the young players they want to see take those next steps.

In a way, this kind of slump could workout for Cruz, as he’s learning what offerings he’ll see from opposing pitchers and what it looks like at his lowest point of performance, because at this point, the only way the arrow can go for Cruz’s performance is up, and once it goes up, wins will more likely follow from the team itself.

Cruz is learning right now, and that’s ok, and he’ll continue to get every look he can because the team needs him to, and although the sample size is small, his struggles are well documented. If he can fix some things, which he fully capable of doing, the Pirates will be better off, if not, then that’s a completely different conversation for another day.

He’ll continue to be in the spotlight as the season progresses, but keep watching Cruz and what adjustments he makes along the way, because at the end of the day, he’s a young player with a ton to learn, but you can expect that his talent will eventually take over.

Five Pirates Thoughts at Five – Bookended in Brooms

4-22-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

The season started off with a sweep and it only feels right that they plummet back to .500 taking back to back sweeps on the chin on the cusp of their first NL Central matchup of the season.

Ahh baseball, you can go from walking around in flip flops drinking an Iron City with a little strut about your baseball team and the next week it’s hailing and you’re having a hard time peeking at the score.

If you love the game, you love the ride. The ups are everything and the downs are crushing. Can’t do or fix anything, can’t make a mistake. Win a bunch, the coach is pushing all the right buttons, lose a bunch the coach needs to flip over tables and hasn’t made a good call since the 6th grade picnic.

We’ve all been here before, you’re right when you say that, but to compare it directly to last year like it’s the exact same situation is also disingenuous.

Hey, let’s hit the hard ones today, someone has to!

1. Without Cruz…

There’s no getting around it, Oneil Cruz has looked awful at the plate. I could pretend to be a hitting coach and show you how he’s being pitched and how he could combat it, but 2 things prevent it. 1. I don’t trust that his hitting coach is doing the same. 2. He’s so out of whack you could not identify where to start. Cruz at the plate right now is like a game of pop the weasel.

A week ago, I might have suggested he start lowering his gaze, because everything he was seeing was down in the zone, but that’s not true anymore. He’s done the league a favor and shown them he also can’t catch up to heat up and in. He’s made sure they know he can’t lay off the breaking pitches. They now know even that up and away fastball he could on occasion poke out to left is even getting past him.

In other words, we’ve got a full blown all systems failure going on here and that requires a little break most of the time.

I mean a couple days on the bench, here in MLB not a demotion.

Here’s why. There are certain realities on a baseball team. One of those for this team is, they won’t win anything if Oneil Cruz doesn’t hit. Think about it.

If Oneil Cruz isn’t a guy who pops 25-30 homeruns and drives in 75+ runs, would you have this team in the conversation for anything? Even .500?

There isn’t a real replacement for that. Alika Williams certainly isn’t providing that, Liover Peguero or Nick Gonzales aren’t either. All three of those players could and will provide something of value as this year plays out, but none of them are equipped with what it would take to replace the production this team, and many of us, planned on getting from Cruz. Even if you think they could, they aren’t meant to replace his production, just augment it.

That’s point number 1 as to why Cruz for now stays right where he is.

The second, well, that’s probably the hardest thing to swallow the way he looks right now, but, he’ll wind up being ok. I know, I know, it doesn’t look like that at all, but listen, I didn’t just start watching Oneil Cruz play in 2022. Cruz has looked just like this in the minors from time to time, it’s part of why his journey to the Bigs wasn’t exactly quick. What is typically quick with him is when he snaps out of it, he snaps out of it and largely stays snapped.

Offensively speaking, if Cruz isn’t a dynamic offensive threat, this team isn’t going anywhere in 2024. I know it, you know it, the team knows it and it’s the main reason there is no purpose in doing anything other than try to get him going right here in MLB.

It’ll suck to watch, already has, but he’ll turn it around and when he does everything else will look better. I’m not going to list off his wall of excuses, you know them all, I’m just going to say be patient with him, because if he doesn’t produce for this team whether that be from demotion or utter failure, the result for this team will be the same.

There is no plan B for Cruz.

2. Fundamentals

When the Pirates were playing well at the beginning of the season racing out to that 9-2 start, some of us “negative nellies” were of course excited about the record, but we kept sounding the alarm about the baserunning issues and their defensive decision making.

It didn’t matter because again, they were 9-2. Shut up! Many of you exclaimed. They’ll be fine, they’ll clean it up, look they’re winning anyway!

Well, when things aren’t falling for you and the record starts slipping, I guess I’ll open the door and let you back on the boat for recognizing these things matter.

This stuff is all coaching. I’ll stop you right there before you utter your infantile “they teach this in Little League” crap, because no, they don’t. You can’t watch the MLB product all around this league and believe Little League is the answer, it’s just a lazy and dismissive thing to say primarily by people who never played beyond the level they call back on.

Derek Shelton on 4 occasions already on this young season has uttered the words “We have to tighten it up”. I’d simply say, yes Derek, YOU do need to tighten it up. You need to no longer accept the mental lapses, the poor running decisions, the wrong throw decisions, and you need to either coach them into being minimized or hire people to help you coach them up.

This team doesn’t have the type of talent gap you have to have to get away with playing poor fundamentally.

The reason this stuff is seen as fundamental or foundational is because when everything else is going poorly, you’re supposed to be able to fall back on these and build back up on that standing. If you do those things right, it’s only going to look so wrong feel me?

Instead, we have frustrated players like Hayes and Suwinski trying to get an extra base on a rare hit and running themselves into even more frustration. We have one bad play in the outfield turn into 2 or 3 more bad plays in the same inning as they panic to try to do something special to erase a routine mistake.

Everyone is pressing, everyone is out of sorts and largely it looks like they have nothing to fall back on.

This is on coaching. If you want the outfield communication to improve, maybe play the same three guys for a minute, let them develop a bit of a relationship out there. Then add in alternates. It may not give you the matchups you want in the lineup, but geez you have to do something to give this team some things that seem familiar, second nature.

They scored a run in the first inning of yesterday’s game. A Connor Joe double, a groundout to the right side and a sac fly, I honestly couldn’t believe it. Where was the walk to put runners at 1st and 2nd? Then the strikeout and double play to end the inning. Where was the 3rd walk to load the bases sandwiched around 3 strikeouts?

That first run, that type of run should be routine on this team, instead, it takes a role player hitting the double and two core players to finally do the little things and knock the run home.

Coaching.

Derek Shelton has lived in the shadows of not having talent on his team, and now he has it. You can pretend they don’t have any because they’ve played awful baseball, but a stretch of 10 games is never going to shake me off of where I think they are, where I think they’ll go or the types of players I think they have. I still believe there are capable hitters here.

I don’t however feel they are coached to do the little things, instead I just think they like to mention it as opposed to coach it.

3. They Aren’t This Bad…

Well, right now they are, you can’t deny what is actually playing out, but like I told you when they started hot, they weren’t that good either.

They’ll get more offensive production and it’ll come from many of the guys you thought it would come from. The trick is not having a 20 game drop in the middle.

If they come out and beat the hell out of Joe Ross (who Andy Haines system actually should match up against rather well by the way) you won’t feel better. If they do it again tomorrow, you might start to think it’s maybe trending up. A week, some of you will be right back to sending me the Vegas odds of making the playoffs.

I’m here to tell you there will be weeks like that. Maybe even this one. There will be weeks like last week too, maybe even this one.

This is a .500-ish team. And some of you struggle to wrap your head around how bad that sounds next to say 90 wins.

90 wins is 9 more than .500. It’s one fewer bad week, or one more hot one. It’s one blown save you wind up pulling out in extras, a come from 5 runs down victory and a couple lucky bounces away from happening.

That’s why this season is worthy of excitement, more than it is expectation.

We should expect them to be .500. That makes sense based on the roster we saw on paper and the expected performances from guys with track records. The excitement for me is that once you feel you have that kind of team, it really isn’t moving heaven and Earth to reach higher. Could stumble too of course, but when you have a .500 team you are going to feel all year like they’re way better than people thought or way worse than people thought, and you could experience both in one calendar week. Now, keep in mind, I’m talking expectation based on the roster they put together. You’re of course free to have expected them to have brought in more. I’d just ask, are you not still going to have to deal with Cruz? Davis? Jack? I kinda think you are.

By it’s very definition, they aren’t great, and they aren’t awful. If your team right now is sitting on a ton of expiring contracts a bankrupt minor league system and you think you have this type of team, you as a fan should probably expect a sell off at the deadline, a window closing, another chance missed or never realized.

Instead, your team has pitching coming in spades. In fact a couple of them look like trump cards. This core is all going to be here, and they’ll hold for a few more years while the youngsters find their way and they improve as an internally developed team. If anything, it’s time to start looking at that minor league system differently. Now you start looking for what it’s not poised to provide. Where is the power hitting? Plenty of pitching, some interesting bats, nothing transformative, yet. May have to look to deal something to get something you can’t fix on your own.

That’s all going to happen, and work without a single further investment from Bob Nutting, and that’s why I’m able to remain positive, in general, the arrow remains firmly pointed up. I do think they’ll add next year from outside, if only because when you get Jared Jones and Paul Skenes with a locked up Keller all stretched out, hopefully healthy and ready to be the three best heads of your rotation in 2025, you have a mandate to not waste it. It’d be like having someone buy you an Aston Martin and you refuse to take it because you don’t want to buy tires. Even for this owner, I don’t see it, especially since this GM has gotten them here with very little, point being, there’s room, even to still be cheap AF and still get what he’s left needed.

This year matters. No matter how it goes, it matters. Important players are going to learn how to be MLB players this year, and at times, it’s going to suck to watch. Sometimes it’s going to look like Jones and Skenes. Some guys we’re going to ultimately learn simply aren’t going to help, at least not here.

Yin and Yang, push and pull, a .500 team is frustrating, but only because you’re starting to see the pieces fall into place and fan expectation rises faster than a thermometer at the equator.

The truth is, the guys who should rightfully be expected to perform, need to perform. 20 games don’t even get GMs sitting up straight, the farther up you go on the corporate ladder the longer the section of calendar you look at and measure your performance by.

4. Rowdy Tellez hmm

I don’t know what to do about Rowdy Tellez. Lets talk this out, I really don’t know where I’ll land.

Defensively, he’s been better than I observably could have expected. He’s simply better than he’s been, that’s ok, they’re allowed to improve at things, that’s good, at least he’s not a liability in the field. I even like some of the leadership stuff he’s done out there with Cruz. Since he made a playful but educational situation out of Cruz’ erratic throws in a game, Cruz has really reeled it in. Making much more comfortable throws, looking more in rhythm and still using the velocity when it is warranted. That’s all been positive.

At the plate though, man, it’s not working.

Nothing Rowdy does is good enough to get away with a .548 OPS and a .258 SLG.

Look, if it’s early for all the guys I expected to deliver, it’s early for a guy I didn’t too, and to be clear, this is much less than I expected from him, this is alarming.

Rowdy has a very typical damage zone for a power hitting lefty, the problem for him is everyone knows it’s about all he does. He’s seen a total of 3 pitches all year in his perceived damage zone. That’s on him, in this league you either learn how to add a trick or you never get an opportunity to perform the one you’re good at.

Like I said, it’s early and when Rowdy had it going in 2022 he had a much wider damage zone, actually got to balls down and away as long as they were on the plate, with that kind of coverage they’d have to start trying to pitch in more and that would increase the number of pitches he sees in there. That’s the hope if you want to have one.

At some point, they may need to consider giving Connor Joe more starts over there. It sure would be nice if someone like Olivares or Suwinski would step up and force the Pirates to find a way to get Joe’s bat worked back in.

Going to have to watch this position play out, I’m not sure I see Joe as a solution there either really. All I do know is, Rowdy isn’t making the kind of money that means he has a job regardless, he makes lots less than Yoshi did for perspective.

Need something from first base production wise, it’s too valuable an offensive position to just not get anything. And as of yet, you can’t say it doesn’t matter because you’re getting it from a freak at short stop.

5. Where Are We With Roansy?

Roansy Contreras has been pitching out of the Pirates bullpen since the season began. Make no mistake, he’s in the bullpen because he has no options, and the team couldn’t afford to let him try to figure things out in the rotation, especially since they had another guy like that in Bailey Falter, and hey, kudos, it looks like they chose correctly at least early on.

OK, that’s how he got there and where he is.

He’s seen action in 7 games totaling 8 innings of work. He’s faced 35 batters. In that time he’s put together an ERA at 5.63 an FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) of 5.96 with a couple dingers helping to fill out the frame.

He’s not been good.

I’m not here to tell you they must pull the trigger and DFA him, I mean, again, the bullpen is hardly the problem until this team starts losing games 6-5 instead of 6-1. The team rightfully wants to be entirely sure the pitcher they thought they had is completely dead and buried before they make a call, and I get it.

But I’d tell you to officially start thinking about it.

There comes a time with everyone, MLB’s system is set up to give players every chance to find a new situation and get the help they need or at least a different set of eyes.

I’m going to be completely transparent here, if this fails, I won’t entirely blame the Pirates. They’ve thrown the kitchen sink at figuring out what happened to him, both from a health and instruction/training standpoint. I don’t really blame Roansy, I know he’s tried hard. I watched him on a side field in Bradenton this year visibly struggling to get a pitch to do what he wanted. We’ve seen him on the field look like a beaten puppy.

What can I say? Some people only get a moment in the sun, remember James McDonald? In 2011 and 2012 when he threw 342 innings with a 4.21 ERA and won 21 ballgames did you think for one minute he’d get 6 starts in 2013 and that’d be that?

I mean let’s not act like Roansy has a track record that touches that.

If at some point they make the call, it’ll be sad because he was off to such a promising start, but it’ll hardly be something we’ve never seen before, and him ever figuring it out anywhere is anything but a guarantee. James never did.

Anyway, I’m probably jumping the gun, but at some point it might be nice to not have guys we’re looking to avoid in the pen, especially guys we’re only allowing one inning at a time. That’s the price of an improving roster, you don’t have time for projects anymore. Not when you have so many other options.

I’m not rooting for it, I like the kid, and I’ve rarely seen the confused emotion on a player’s face I saw in his last year, I can’t help but feel for him. Just sayin’, there will come a time….

6. Bonus: The Cavalry is Here

This is the poop. Paul Skenes will come up, he will help, but he can’t hit. They have more pitchers who also could come up and help.

Offensively, we have Ji Hwan Bae, Liover Peguero, Nick Gonzales, maybe you can count Palacios if you like, and Yasmani Grandal.

Someone could always decide to take off and get a look, but it would catch me off guard.

Just calling it like I see it. Not trying to be dooms day, it’s not like that, it’s just a fact, most of the Pirates top prospects, especially those close to MLB are pitchers. Hey, we should be so lucky, if you’re going to be short one, I’ll take it this way 10 times out of 10.

I’m not even telling you those names I mentioned won’t help, or can’t, I’m just saying, it’s a light group ranging from over the hill to inexperienced and untested.

This bonus section is sure to have people screaming trade Gonzales for Zach Wheeler, I get it, but my real point here is for the most part, the players that are here have to hit. There simply isn’t a changing of the guard coming in mass.

They have “tinker with things” depth offensively they don’t have “bring up the secret weapon” depth offensively. They might next year have a couple shots at that, but short of a late bloomer like Matt Gorski or Matt Fraiser taking off and forcing the issue by in large until the trade deadline these are the parts your working with.

We’ll see them shuffle the deck if it stays this cold, but they only have a couple cards to play. Especially if Triolo and Williams aren’t being directly replaced. If they both stay, it limits who gets called up.

This team is also very right handed as we sit here, so don’t be shocked if Bae might get a call before the hot hitting Gonzales. Again, don’t shoot the messenger here, it’s just what I think you have to consider. There just aren’t any offensive saviors coming this year.

The Pirates offense needs consistency, and it starts by playing the right guys

4-22-24 – By Ethan Smith – @mvp_EtHaN on X

After a 9-2 start, the Pittsburgh Pirates have gone 2-9 since, a complete flip from what we were watching to begin the season.

Eyes will be directed at the offense, which has had a multitude of issues over the past 11 games, and they should be, seeing as the starting pitching staff is actually performing above expectations through the first 22 games.

The issues are apparent as well for the offense: They take way too many pitches, they are constantly searching for walks and the two-out magic has fizzled out – against some starters, it works; against others, it flat out doesn’t.

Consistency is the word many who watch the Pirates daily are looking to achieve. Through 22 games, the Pirates have been two polar opposite teams. It is difficult to build consistency over a 162 game season, but the best teams in baseball find ways to be more consistent than not – and the Pirates, if they want to be competitive, have to find a way to accomplish it, and that starts with the lineup featuring the same guys more often.

For manager Derek Shelton, the mainstays have to be there day-in and day-out – those being Ke’Bryan Hayes, Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz (even amidst his struggles), among others. The rest should be determined by performance on the field and allowing that performance on the field to thrive, if it can, for longer than a game or two.

For instance, Connor Joe has been one of the more consistent bats the Pirates have had this season, but he has only appeared in 18 of the 22 games, not all of those starts. Joe isn’t your typical everyday player, but if he continues to perform, which he has, backed by his .860 OPS, then put him in the lineup everyday until that performance isn’t up to par.

The same can be said for other players the Pirates and Shelton love to mix and match, for example, Alika Williams, who is batting .348 off the bench and helps the Pirates defensively in the middle infield, and you might not want to hear it, but he’s been more valuable than Oneil Cruz, who has struggled a ton out of the gate but is arguably the Pirates most important player.

When you consider the entire offense is batting .239 at the time of writing, something has to change. If that change works, be it leaving guys in the lineup more consistently, which is what they should be doing by the way, or another way, then great, but you cannot continue to change the lineup on a daily basis and expect guys to build any consistency when there is no consistency in the lineup itself.

Lately, Joe, Reynolds, Hayes and even Jack Suwinski have seen the ball quite well, so leave those guys in no matter what for say a week’s time and see the results. If you like the results, leave it be; if you don’t, at least the thought of trying is there, but at this moment, it doesn’t seem like the Pirates are TRYING to change anything.

It is also important to remember that we are only 22 games in and the conversation could be completely different by next week, but with the offensive system in place, and having seen the very high highs and the very, very low lows, it doesn’t appear to be a system that is sustainable across 162 games, and changing a lineup daily, and I mean every single day, isn’t going to create sustainability either.

This is a team full of talent, but even teams full of talent like the 13-11 LA Dodgers who have all the talent in the world, have their low points in seasons. The Pirates have talent all over the roster, especially the lineup, but baseball is about rolling with the hot hand and creating winning streaks, something the Pirates were doing early on but has since departed, and if the losing continues, so does their hopes of competing.

Consistency is the key here, and if the Pirates find that consistency, they need to stick with it, specifically with the lineup, and consistency with the lineup has been a talking point ever since Shelton took over as manager.

if they can find that consistency, be it with whatever players work, then I think you’ll like the results much more than what we’ve seen over the past week and change, but until they just leave things alone that are working and stop creating problems or issues that don’t need to exist, then those problems, and you know what they are with the offense, will just continue to derail what could be a competitive 2024 for the Pittsburgh Pirates.