OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: New season of plundering begins

[ChaosAgent]

Reynolds is in a terrible slump but the idea that he never gets clutch hits has no historical basis. It is based totally on a tiny sample size and deciding that the small sample size is more significant than years of results. Both of these things can be true at the same time.

Hopefully regression comes hard for Mr. Reynolds.

Would completely move him though. Burned out from being the best hitter on a shit team instead of the 4th-5th best hitter on a good team.

 

[sovietsanta87]

Lol people dunking on me about Bryan Reynolds' clutch gene. Pathetic people. And manager queens like Soviet.

Awww pumpkin. Need a tissue? Maybe we should tell BC’s mommy he did a horrible job.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Awww pumpkin. Need a tissue? Maybe we should tell BC’s mommy he did a horrible job.

Gosh if only Shelton hit one guy in the 7th hole instead of another it would meaningfully change the course of this franchise. Babysitter!

 

[BusinessGoose]

Ugh

 

[sovietsanta87]

Well can we get Andrew Friedman? No one good would possibly want to make a guaranteed $12M over 3 years because they would have to work for Bob Nutting.

There's no such things as upstarts apparently, and no assistant GMs anywhere. It has to be a retread failure.

my god you’re so close to figuring this out. You’re asking for the owner to invest serious money into baseball things outside of player payroll?

 

[sovietsanta87]

Someone find out what Neal Huntington is doing? I would think after turning around the pirates he would have become a big shot at an upper echelon franchise

 

[sovietsanta87]

Alright. Done being a dickhead. Here’s the thing. Players, coaches, scouts, up and coming GM’s do not want to come here. They see what we see.

Remember when Jorge de la Rosa turned down more money with us to go back to pitch for COLORADO?

I don’t disagree with Chaos that BC gets an F for his job here. I don’t disagree he should be fired if they have another losing season. I just acknowledge that the issues run deeper than the GM. And while we have plenty of ammo to point at BC’s failures, you can’t tell me someone that won 2013 executive of the year, built a World Series team from the ashes, then resigned two years before the core he helped develop won another World Series, wouldn’t be an attractive option to turn this franchise around.

In the end, it likely isn’t going to pan out. Well fire him and hire someone else. Hopefully they are significantly better but he’s still going to be limited in resources because, at the end of the day, this owner is a total piece of shit and he makes winning nearly impossible.

 

[since70]

...how about investing in reorganizing the entire Minor League development and on field staff, then maybe we can get competent people to get the Major League club on the right path. Nutting's business strategy seems to be keep the asset treading water, take as much money from those assets, then sell them before they collapse.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Someone find out what Neal Huntington is doing? I would think after turning around the pirates he would have become a big shot at an upper echelon franchise

If we're keeping score, he's now back with the 1st place Guardians as a special assistant in baseball operations.

I've never made any secret of my defense of Huntington, especially in light of the fact that we now know beyond doubt that the Archer trade and continued decisions to tread water were coming from elsewhere, including a mandate to win as many MLB games as possible. He had basically lived through the cycle of a GM at that point anyways, and there were some other problems with his front office, but it's kind of hard for me to drum up much more than admiration for the guy who probably helmed the best stretch of Pirates baseball I'll see in my lifetime. I have never found a smoking gun confirmation, but I am fully convinced that Coonelly effectively made the Archer trade.

All that said, there's no point in litigating a long-gone GM.

I do think that the central problem now is Cherington's front office. Nutting is a hard cap on what this team can be reasonably expect, so maybe we can say that the payroll should have gone up more this year, but even granting that, I'm not sure I would trust Cherington to spend the money anyways.

This past offseason was putrid, somehow topping the previous offseason which was almost as bad. Cherington has also basically never won during his time as an MLB GM, and now that some building blocks have finally arrived, there's no urgency at all to try and recover from catastrophic mistakes like running out Rowdy Tellez every day.

I think Cherington also needs to be blamed for the state of the Pirates development, and with him John Baker. These are the guys who came in to supposedly revamped the poor state it was in when Huntington was fired. All accounts do make the development in the Huntington era (particularly at the end) look bad, but Cherington got lots of money and personnel and the results are pretty transparent at this point.

Maybe they have their own one size fits all approach that isn't paying dividends? The hitting program sure seems to have a similar pattern all throughout the organization and isn't something that would really change if Haines were fired.

I also don't think this is purely a question of finances. Money has been spent in these areas, but the people who are in charge of them have not gotten any results. Maybe there are some positive results to point at with the pitching program, since even if we bracket Skenes as a phenom, Jones has kept growing every year and there are positive signs with multiple pitchers in the org.

In any case, this whole thing is not so much directly in response to you as it is a vent about the current state of things. I guess I side more with the camp that BC is the central problem at this point, which is all the more frustrating because there's no way he's getting fired mid-season, and I think things would have to be incredibly catastrophic for him to even be fired this offseason.

 

[sovietsanta87]

If we're keeping score, he's now back with the 1st place Guardians as a special assistant in baseball operations.

I've never made any secret of my defense of Huntington, especially in light of the fact that we now know beyond doubt that the Archer trade and continued decisions to tread water were coming from elsewhere, including a mandate to win as many MLB games as possible. He had basically lived through the cycle of a GM at that point anyways, and there were some other problems with his front office, but it's kind of hard for me to drum up much more than admiration for the guy who probably helmed the best stretch of Pirates baseball I'll see in my lifetime. I have never found a smoking gun confirmation, but I am fully convinced that Coonelly effectively made the Archer trade.

All that said, there's no point in litigating a long-gone GM.

I do think that the central problem now is Cherington's front office. Nutting is a hard cap on what this team can be reasonably expect, so maybe we can say that the payroll should have gone up more this year, but even granting that, I'm not sure I would trust Cherington to spend the money anyways.

This past offseason was putrid, somehow topping the previous offseason which was almost as bad. Cherington has also basically never won during his time as an MLB GM, and now that some building blocks have finally arrived, there's no urgency at all to try and recover from catastrophic mistakes like running out Rowdy Tellez every day.

I think Cherington also needs to be blamed for the state of the Pirates development, and with him John Baker. These are the guys who came in to supposedly revamped the poor state it was in when Huntington was fired. All accounts do make the development in the Huntington era (particularly at the end) look bad, but Cherington got lots of money and personnel and the results are pretty transparent at this point.

Maybe they have their own one size fits all approach that isn't paying dividends? The hitting program sure seems to have a similar pattern all throughout the organization and isn't something that would really change if Haines were fired.

I also don't think this is purely a question of finances. Money has been spent in these areas, but the people who are in charge of them have not gotten any results. Maybe there are some positive results to point at with the pitching program, since even if we bracket Skenes as a phenom, Jones has kept growing every year and there are positive signs with multiple pitchers in the org.

In any case, this whole thing is not so much directly in response to you as it is a vent about the current state of things. I guess I side more with the camp that BC is the central problem at this point, which is all the more frustrating because there's no way he's getting fired mid-season, and I think things would have to be incredibly catastrophic for him to even be fired this offseason.

Agreed on all points with cherington. In the end, he hired all these people. He set the philosophy for the organization. He signed the players and draft picks. My desire to have them fire the coaching staff stemmed from Shelton making dumb decisions from the start of his tenure and the entire lineup falling off a performance cliff from the moment Haines’s strategy started to take roots. I figured it would be easier to fire three coaches than flip and entire roster. But the fact that moves are seemingly only made to keep fans interested from a pr perspective has pushed me into the fire everyone camp.

But the pattern of pirate gm’s is pretty consistent. Underwhelming off-season acquisitions. Tight fisted grip on all prospects. Poor development. And that comes from the top and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Fire the front office and coaching staff this off-season and hoping you can find someone to catch lightning in a bottle. I just don’t see it ending any other way.

 

[sovietsanta87]

The Huntington point is the risk of coming to the pirates and blowing your career because everyone pins failure on you. Dave littlefield is a scout in Detroit now. Probably sleeping in his car. There’s only one franchise that’s a worse destination than Pittsburgh and their GM is viewed as an icon; soon to be rolling in Vegas money.

 

[sovietsanta87]

https://x.com/rotynick/status/1790075894838567274?s=46

I’m not even mad. I’m impressed

 

[The Great Mighty Poo]

https://x.com/rotynick/status/1790075894838567274?s=46

I’m not even mad. I’m impressed

Woof.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I do sympathize with Cherington on Tellez.

He's a fat lefty slugging 1B that hits homers. He hit a ton of them 2 years ago, many against us. If we even got last year's Tellez, who sucked but less than this year, it would be an additional 1-2 wins right now. And Cherington did insulate Tellez a little bit through the Taylor and Olivares acquisitions, ensuring that Connor Joe could face lefties as the 1B every single time.

Sometimes the player themselves just epically crashes and burns. I put Tellez hitting like Hedges mostly on Tellez.

He also massively stepped in it with the Bednar thing. I'll give Cherington credit a second time, when he had his best quote ever last year - being a Pirates fan is "being part of a collective trauma" or something to that effect. Every win feels tenuous and the implosion/collapse/misery lurks around the corner. For Tellez to tell Pirates fans how to feel was a massive misunderstanding, and the funniest part was the guy who he was defending (Bednar) KNEW EXACTLY that Tellez was stepping in it because he knows what being a Pirates fan is like. Bednar knows he had been killing the team up to that point.

So yeah, if the boos are part of Tellez's sucking, it's unfortunate but it is what it is. Let's get Jake Lamb up here and see if Rowdy finds it in Indy.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I think Cherington's bad offseason, bad coaching from Shelton and Haines and the players simply not doing their jobs are all factors here. Suwinski has been terrible to start the year, and his 40 game run of awfulness is even longer than his cold runs in 2022 (~25 games) and 2023 (~30 games). Even Tellez having a down year last year with an 81 OPS+ is nothing compares to his atrocious 49 OPS+ this year. That's not Haines for his coaching or Cherington for adding him, that's fully on Tellez.

In terms of players who actually matter (so no Tellez, Taylor or anyone like that), I think the conclusions we can make so far about the hitters are:

1. Hayes is more of a #6 hitter in a lineup and he's likely too injury prone to maintain his super hot end to last year. I think he'll be a roughly league average hitter, but that's about it. He's a #6 or #7 hitter on a good team.
2. Reynolds is going to stick around a 110 to 120 OPS+ going forward, which we kinda already knew but he's still hovering around that this year as well. I think he'd be a #2 or #5 hitter on a good team and I personally have him as the Pirates #2 hitter.
3. Cruz looks like he'll be a better hitter for average than expected, and I'm more inclined to make him the Pirates #3 hitter with that average improving. He still strikes out a bunch and he doesn't walk, but he destroys the ball whenever he makes contact and he's doing a better job at making contact this year. As long as he's making contact, you want him hitting around #3 overall.
4. Suwinski is simply not viable as a starter, even as a platoon guy, due to his insane hot and cold runs. Frankly I'd be looking to trade him to a team that would believe in his power as a lefty platoon guy, he's not going to be that here.
5. Davis is too inside of his own head at this point, and if he can't fix that, he won't be an effective MLB player. It's all mental issues with him, it's not an issue of his ability, technique or anything like that. He simply gets in his head too much and won't be successful unless he can manage that. The Pirates hitter development has been terrible but I actually blame them a bit less with him.
6. Triolo is purely a bench piece, regardless of what his WAR says. Last year and this year are the two extremes, where he was getting great BABIP luck last year and terrible BABIP luck this year, but he simply will not be an effective enough hitter to justify him as a full time regular.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I think Cherington's bad offseason, bad coaching from Shelton and Haines and the players simply not doing their jobs are all factors here. Suwinski has been terrible to start the year, and his 40 game run of awfulness is even longer than his cold runs in 2022 (~25 games) and 2023 (~30 games). Even Tellez having a down year last year with an 81 OPS+ is nothing compares to his atrocious 49 OPS+ this year. That's not Haines for his coaching or Cherington for adding him, that's fully on Tellez.

In terms of players who actually matter (so no Tellez, Taylor or anyone like that), I think the conclusions we can make so far about the hitters are:

1. Hayes is more of a #6 hitter in a lineup and he's likely too injury prone to maintain his super hot end to last year. I think he'll be a roughly league average hitter, but that's about it. He's a #6 or #7 hitter on a good team.
2. Reynolds is going to stick around a 110 to 120 OPS+ going forward, which we kinda already knew but he's still hovering around that this year as well. I think he'd be a #2 or #5 hitter on a good team and I personally have him as the Pirates #2 hitter.
3. Cruz looks like he'll be a better hitter for average than expected, and I'm more inclined to make him the Pirates #3 hitter with that average improving. He still strikes out a bunch and he doesn't walk, but he destroys the ball whenever he makes contact and he's doing a better job at making contact this year. As long as he's making contact, you want him hitting around #3 overall.
4. Suwinski is simply not viable as a starter, even as a platoon guy, due to his insane hot and cold runs. Frankly I'd be looking to trade him to a team that would believe in his power as a lefty platoon guy, he's not going to be that here.
5. Davis is too inside of his own head at this point, and if he can't fix that, he won't be an effective MLB player. It's all mental issues with him, it's not an issue of his ability, technique or anything like that. He simply gets in his head too much and won't be successful unless he can manage that. The Pirates hitter development has been terrible but I actually blame them a bit less with him.
6. Triolo is purely a bench piece, regardless of what his WAR says. Last year and this year are the two extremes, where he was getting great BABIP luck last year and terrible BABIP luck this year, but he simply will not be an effective enough hitter to justify him as a full time regular.

This is a quality post. The thing that drives me bat shit about both Suwinski and Davis is the whiffing on dead red fastballs. I hate Haines but swinging and whiffing or fouling off total meatballs is on the players. David's stupid crouch batting stance also stops him from getting to fastballs up

 

[sovietsanta87]

Tellez in the lineup over Joe today is beyond infuriating.

Tellez not playing on a softball field today is also beyond infuriating.

 

[WickedWrister]

Boom! Suwinski. Nice to see some long balls of late.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Watch Suwinski go on his standard 1.200 OPS run just to make me look stupid for saying he's not a viable starter

 

[WickedWrister]

Good shit Mitch. Just need the bullpen to not implode

 

[Empoleon8771]

I really like Reynolds and Cruz hitting #2 and #3 respectively. Cruz has been on fire since he was put in that role and I really like the combination of skillsets with those two in those spots.

They just need a guy like Bae to solidify himself as the leadoff guy.

 

[Rossi Rat]

PSU man Rowdy Destin shown on camera and the bats come alive! Coincidence? I think not!

 

[WickedWrister]

Holy shit Grandal just pimped that

 

[Factorial]

Sigh...

 

[WickedWrister]

Welp