Toggle sidebar

OT: Pirates Talk: Lets Play Ball

not a particularly efficient inning. probably done for the day and the unearned run means a no decision is extremely likely again womp womp
 
How has Hayes looked? I know that there was some hype about a new batting stance, but the results don't indicate any substantial changes (small sample size so far).
 
Fogel said:
How has Hayes looked? I know that there was some hype about a new batting stance, but the results don't indicate any substantial changes (small sample size so far).
Click to expand...
The swing was to prevent back injury. If anything, changing a swing at this level you would see worse results. So he's doing okay trying to change things. It wasn't for power or anything.
 
Last edited:
The stats haven't been updated fully, but the Pirates being 2nd worst in batting fWAR and top 10 in pitching fWAR seems to match the eye test especially with Harrington, Holderman and Bednar as the only negatives on the pitching side.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DJ Spinoza
DJ Spinoza said:
I share the same sentiments as everybody else and am not sure I'll have the energy/attention span to bother with these look aheads and recaps... nevertheless:

Where things stand:

Like all the non-Tokyo Series teams, the Pirates greet Opening Day with a 0-0 record and a chance to have things play out on the field rather than only on paper. Although if you press me, I will say that I think it's easy to forget that every amidst (justifiable) cynicism throughout last year from everybody (including me), this team still battled quite a lot and things could have went differently, it's also really hard to find anything to even hope brings about a spark that could push the win total over .500 enough to be in the WC race.

Spring training mostly looks like treading water. The Jones injury is massive but at least for now, not final. It did take what might charitably be described as the one strength of the roster and turn it into more of a question mark, but I suppose otherwise it's good that most everything else was normal, and also that Hayes seems to be healthy, for now.

This tweet kinda sums things up for me:

We're running everything back in a mildly shook up way. The only difference is obviously that the roster is now headlined with the NL Cy Young favorite rather than that player being a highly touted pitching prospect whose debut was TBD. But, as we have all pointed out ad nauseam all offseason, that should have driven the urgency to at least attempt to make more upgrades. Fittingly, the only upgrade is a massive question mark who is not well-suited for a position we are always comically weak at, and then got hurt.

As much as anything else, the Horowitz trade sums up where things stand.

Looking ahead:

I usually like to try and chop these into 10 game stretches or so, but the early schedule is a bit weird. I think I'll start simple here with just this opening road trip, and then it looks like it will work to take the longer run with slightly over 10 games after this stretch (if these are even worth continuing).

Last year, we started the year by beating the snot out of the Marlins. I have no confidence it will happen, but this Marlins team is very bad and we really should be doing the same this year. Alcantara is back, but their lineup is atrocious even when compared side-by-side with ours. This kind of sucks, because 4-game series are always subject to a bit of wonkiness, but I don't see how anything other than 3-1 would be a success here.

We then get Tampa, who will be an interesting matchup. Seemingly we will get Skenes back in one of those games, so you have to figure 4-3 as a baseline for these early series games, but despite poo pooing actual optimism, I want to say that I think the Pirates might need to find a way to eeek out some real momentum for themselves with 5-2.

Either sweep a basement Marlins team or find a way to take two from a better Tampa team. I say this not out of optimism that it will happen, but because I think it might need to in order to shelter what look like punted losses in the home opener series vs the Yankees given who lines up to pitch. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, but this opening stretch is opportunity knocking for at least a little air. Anything below 4-3 is just the start of the bad vibes that I think we are all expecting to loom all year.
Click to expand...

Quoting just for continuity - for probably obvious reasons, I am not sure these are worth doing at all given the state of this team.

I don't think I fully anticipated how bad the vibes could get so quickly, even though in retrospect it seems obvious. The team is basically the same one as last year and did nothing to address its weaknesses except add a player who might not do so and is currently hurt. It features below average (at best) defensive players at crucial positions, which undercuts some of the advantage that pitching forms for this team.

The baseline of what I thought was needed was 4-3 and I think you can tell a story in which that could have happened, but I'm not capable of getting there. The reason is mainly what I've already said here and repeated a bunch: this is the same damn team that collapsed last year. Even if you talk yourself into varying degrees of optimism for improvement from Cruz, Hayes, and even a guy like Suwinski, there's only so much there.

Now one of the few good offensive players is questionably injured, and a thin and shaky bullpen looks like it might be disastrous, which could pretty much singlehandedly delete several/almost all of the few wins we are able to deliver based solely on pitching.

I think that's the most positive spin that can be put on the early games, namely that the bullpen singlehandedly botched it, twice in an obviously shitty way and once in a more fluky way.

Looking ahead:
Since I am not sure I'll have the attention span to both with these after this, choosing a stretch of games here feels especially arbitrary, but I'll go ahead and make a somewhat dramatic claim: this team has to find a way to quell some of the bad vibes and denouncements or else the season is going to be well and truly over in an ugly fashion.

I think that the season is over now and that it's going to take quite a lot for me to change my mind on that. I said this before, but I really hate those kind of pronouncements so early in a season, since it's just the nature of baseball that fans can overreact to the small stuff that by default can even out over a longer period.

I see a difficult stretch of 9 games here: 3 vs. a Yankees team that seems like they are poised to kill us (though they are getting dominated by Zac Gallen as I type), 3 vs. a Cardinals team that is in nearly as bad of a state but always gives us trouble, and finally 3 vs. a Reds team that looks plainly better than us.

The bare minimum of treading water in this kind of situation is 5-4, but I don't see how we get to 5 wins. We should get 2 Skenes starts and 2 Keller starts here, so step 1 is probably converting 3 of those, if not 4. Step 2 is probably one or more batters going on a small hot streak, combined with catching teams at the right time. I am not certain, but I do think we'll miss Hunter Greene.

Gun to my head and I'd say 2-7 here is pretty much "you can put season's over in permanent ink", though I don't see any firings happening so early. I think they will be too cheap to do it, especially since firing Shelton in the offseason would give them more cover for still not giving whoever the next manager is some better players to run out there.

Simply put, 5-4 would make the record 7-9 and thus just kinda shitty. I still don't know where to draw any hope from, but at least that would smooth out the disastrous start.
 
  • Like
Reactions: WickedWrister
Oh i don't think anyone is on the hot seat, no matter how bad we fail this year

It's just a team with like three complimentary pieces and a bunch of dudes being asked to play out of their league

There's not much you can blame anyone for... I mean, i don't like our coaches or GM, but like... Does it even matter who is in those spots with this team?

Ownership isn't going to greenlight the changes needed for any other manager or coach to get results here.
 
BusinessGoose said:
Oh i don't think anyone is on the hot seat, no matter how bad we fail this year

It's just a team with like three complimentary pieces and a bunch of dudes being asked to play out of their league

There's not much you can blame anyone for... I mean, i don't like our coaches or GM, but like... Does it even matter who is in those spots with this team?

Ownership isn't going to greenlight the changes needed for any other manager or coach to get results here.
Click to expand...
Ownership is the worst, but that doesn't excuse Cherington for his awful drafting and developing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TooManyHumans
The draft in general is such a sad story for the Pirates. Using baseball-reference, the positive bWAR players the Pirates have drafted:

2014 - Joe 3.7 mostly not with Pirates, Keller 6.3, Luplow 2
2015 - Newman 4.9 about half with Pirates Hayes 13 Brubaker .3
2016 - Kranick .1
2017 - Baz 3 not with the Pirates, Gray .1 Stratton 1
2018 - none,
2019 - Triolo 3.2 Sabol .4 not with Pirates,
2020 - Gonzales .8 Mlod 1.4 Jones 1.7
2021 - none
2022 - none
2023 - Skenes 6.2
2024 - none

Cherington came in Nov 2019 so he is only part of the problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Ad

Ad

Top Bottom