OT: Pirates Talk: Lets Play Ball

[Factorial]

The self-flagellation ITT in sad.

 

[MrBrightside]

Horwitz’s 6-8 week absence started 2 months ago today and still isn’t hitting live pitching or ready for rehab.

 

[WheresRamziAbid]

Well, I did say "on his way".

The problem with Davis is mental from reputable people in the know. Combine being a dick with a lack of willingness to adapt to coaching.

And I was, along with a lot of other folks, very happy when we took him as an under slot guy. It made sense, and his floor seemed fairly high. But that's baseball, and again, the Pirates inability to develop competent offensive talent is a glaring issue.

The problem is that he swings under fastballs

 

[Empoleon8771]

The failures to start this season feel much more on Cherington than they do on the coaching staff. He completely botched the off-season once again and put the team in an awful position coming into the season.

 

[cookthebooks]

yeah cherington has had enough time to expose himself as a total fraud

 

[Factorial]

I'm no fan of his, but Cherington has had his hands tied behind his back on spending money so his margin for error in tiny.

 

[cookthebooks]

I'm no fan of his, but Cherington has had his hands tied behind his back on spending money so his margin for error in tiny.

there are other franchises run exactly like the pirates that do much better in every facet. cherington sucks

 

[Empoleon8771]

The only saving grace of Cherington's off-season is that Ortiz has been horrendous for the Guardians (10.13 ERA in 6 spring training starts, 6.06 ERA in 3 regular season starts), so he looks smart for selling him when he did.

But that doesn't change the rest of his off-season was horrid and the only acquisitions he made were:

-Horwitz: injured
-Pham: dogshit
-Heaney: solid #4 depth starter
-Ferguson: okay reliever

And the decisions he made with guys like Bednar and Holderman in arbitration in addition to the lack of supporting offensive moves just shows how awful of a job he did.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Yeah, Cherington is not fit to run a small market team. I had higher hopes given he did have a good bit of success in drafting and building with Boston, but that's a significantly better spot to be in given the money and resources at a GM's disposal.

Bednar was a great add and for a few years was a legit AS caliber closer but from a resource management standpoint, we should have sold at his peak.

I'm generally happy enough with his pitching additions, both in FA and the draft, but the offense has been an utter disgrace, and I blame BC for not getting rid of Shelton at least 2 years ago.

 

[bigdaddyk88]

They didn’t even try to spend money on offense. They banked of Cruz making a jump. Fraizer Ikf and Trilo are bench guys and we are counting on them as starters. They had champen perez Taylor Tellez making 20 million should have bought an actual starter with that money

 

[ImporterExporter]

i think it's also important to remember that we don't know how many FA's turned us down. We may have tried to get better hitters to come in but the Tellez's of the world were the only ones low enough on the totem pole to agree to come here.

This is a disaster destination for someone with multiple options. Let's not lose sight of the fact that few players want to be here unless it's the only avenue to playing time in MLB.

 

[Booker T]

Nice hit Reynolds

 

[Booker T]

Canario is just f***ing brutal

 

[metalan2]

This is one of the worst, if not the worst Pirate offenses we've seen since 2000.

 

[TooManyHumans]

I'm no fan of his, but Cherington has had his hands tied behind his back on spending money so his margin for error in tiny.

No one forces him to spend on the dreck he spends money on. Instead of paying several bums like Pham, he could pay for one legit bat.

 

[TooManyHumans]

Bednar was a great add and for a few years was a legit AS caliber closer but from a resource management standpoint, we should have sold at his peak.

We should always be developing and dumping closers as soon as they have value.

 

[GilbertSeinfeld]

Bednar was a great add and for a few years was a legit AS caliber closer but from a resource management standpoint, we should have sold at his peak.

If Bednar was not a local product there would have been zero chance the Pirates kept him.

 

[ImporterExporter]

If Bednar was not a local product there would have been zero chance the Pirates kept him.

Keeping a player, simply because he's from the area is about as clueless as you can get from a GM'ing standpoint. This is why the team repeatedly fails.

The vast majority of relievers are volatile resources who fluctuate in production, sometimes year to year. If you develop an AS caliber closer, and aren't close to competing, you should deal them at their peak. And we've never been close to competing while DB has been in a Pirate uni.

And really, it doesn't matter. The biggest problem is MLB and Nutting. We can blow it all up again, and the next set of executives and coaches will just be more of the same.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Quoting myself here to keep track of these long posts (page 15), but we are basically on the path of mediocrity here. 3-3 to avoid total disaster as we somehow managed to scrape a win against the Yankees and also win the Cardinals series despite Skenes having an off game.

3 games vs the Reds to determine just where we are on the mediocrity/bad team scale for the time being. A series win gets us to that kind of shitty 7-9 start where at least the wheels haven't entirely come off, but flipping two winnable games vs the Marlins would make things look slightly different than they do right now.

The Reds essentially have had an identical season to us and are also coming off a series win, albeit against a better opponent than St. Louis in San Francisco (personally I think the Cardinals should be the worst team in this division, but they have the bungling franchises of Cincy and us to thank for not making it more apparent.... their pitching is absolute dog shit and their lineup is middling at best, but I'm on a tangent).

They have a clear advantage in my eyes on paper, as Singer has looked solid and they'll get Greene vs. Mlodzinski on Sunday. I still think this series is somewhat unpredictable with any outcome being in the cards, but I'd lean towards 1-2 which would make the record a slightly uglier 6-10. They are sweepable, but we are too, just as much, if not more given the pitching matchups and uncertainty about Cruz's hand. Still not sure the details matter at all, given the obvious.

Not really much else needs to be said. The vibes are off the charts horrible, the team on the field -- especially the lineup -- is worse, and it's hard to see much end in sight. The arbitrarily broken down records are now:

First stretch: 2-5
Second stretch: 3-6

Pretty clear pattern, even if the total sample is still small enough that under normal circumstances, you could brush it off a bit as some bad bounces, especially thinking back to that ugly Miami series.

But it's obviously not "normal circumstances", since this is the consequence of not investing at all in the team, doing very badly on trades, and overall just seemingly punting another prime opportunity, given Skenes + the division. One thing to add to this longstanding complaint list is that, even setting side the bad trades + never ever signing any free agent of substance, the depth on the team is just atrocious.

Looking ahead, I think the main question that I have is when will the panic moves start coming and what will they be? The only thing I can really see is somewhat more of the same, so to speak: we could call up Bubba, who by all accounts has looked insane to start the year, and then shift Mlod back to a bullpen role where he's pretty badly needed. If Bubba can stick to some extent (a big if for any rookie pitcher), that would help a little bit, but it doesn't seem to be much of an answer to the "rebuilding year 1" lineup that Shelton has to roll out on any given night.

And looking ahead at the actual schedule, I think a slightly longer stretch makes sense. We have a home stand vs Washington and Cleveland and then an LA trip vs the Dodgers and Angels, for a total of 12 games. It's really hard to even see 6-6 given that all these teams are better than us, and now even a 6-6 "hold ground" stretch would not do anything to get us out of the hole we're in.

An optimistic "that's baseball" take could maybe push for some kind of 8-4 miracle: win series, sweep the Angels (who look much more competent), and somehow take 1 from the gargantuan Dodgers. I can't see that at all, but I guess that would cull back a little bit of the horrible start. 6-6 would make for 11-17 while the miracle 8-4 would only get things to 13-15. A "bad but still not quite disaster" 4-8 would see 9-19, which I think would pretty definitively be the kind of hole that this team can't dig out of.

Edit: my numbers in the last paragraph are off. Much like the Pirates, I was sloppy and didn't do the bare minimum. The Nationals series is 4 games. We get the small grace of not seeing McKenzie Gore, so maybe the optimistic "that's baseball" (i.e., shit can change fast, even with little explanation) take could be 8-5: 3-1 vs WAS, 1-2 vs CLE, 2-1 vs LAA, 1-2 vs LAD. Things do line up so that Skenes will pitch vs. CLE and LAD if I am not making another sloppy mistake, so I suppose something like that is in theory possible and then it's 13-16 and not quite as horrendous.

It's probably still all downhill from here. My worst feeling: I think Cherington's job is probably still safe into the offseason.

 

[WheresRamziAbid]

This is one of the worst, if not the worst Pirate offenses we've seen since 2000.

I think it will end up better than the kai tom year but maybe not

 

[BusinessGoose]

 

[GilbertSeinfeld]

They should just use him to run drugs again.

 

[MrBrightside]

The Ben Cherington era in one tweet.

 

[Mr Jeff Jimerson]

The Ben Cherington era in one tweet.

 

[TimmyD]

The best part is at the end when they talk about the farm system. “Tell me they have a good farm system.” Funny enough… they don’t