The Pirates have just about a month of the season to go. Their playoffs hopes have been dashed by going 7-18 in the month of August. This will be their worse month of the season, no matter what they do in Cleveland the next two days. Even after scoring 23 runs in three games, the Pirate offense remains one of the worse in baseball. They are 21st in runs scored, 25th in on base percentage, and 27th in OPS+. This defines putrid. The pitching despite those horrific last 3 games, fares a little better. In fielding independent pitching, they are 12th in baseball. They are 21st in runs allowed and 18th in ERA+. Still in the bottom half of most things, but part of their problem is the Pirates bad defense. In Defensive Efficiency they are 24th in baseball. There was a lot of hype going into the season with talk of the Pirates contending for the division. The young Bucs were ready to play. What went wrong?
I will go into much more detail at the end of the season but here is a list in a nutshell with no expansion of details. I will take them in chronological order. A horrible offseason that included awful free agent signings, no significant trades. Ke’Bryan Hayes and Jared Triolo did not come close to the kind of production at the plate that they had during the last 2.5 months of 2023. With the exception of about 3 players the entire offense was way below league average. What looked like a good defensive team on paper, turned out to be one of the worst in baseball. An inconsistent and underperforming bullpen that plagued the Pirates all year. The bullpen was totally mismanaged, and many times players were put in positions where they would most likely fail. The Pirates did nothing to bolster this bullpen at the trade deadline despite their apparent deficiencies. In general, the Pirates do not make basebally plays. They throw to wrong bases, they do not run the bases well, and I believe have no idea what situational hitting means.
Now that the pressure is off, the Pirates may rally and finish close to .500. The other possibility is they may be tired of playing for a manager that is constantly throwing them under the bus to cover up his in game blunders. They may be tired of getting no help from a coaching staff that does not seem to know what they are doing. The latest example is Martin Perez. He has started 5 games for the Padres, and his ERA+ is 153 compared to 81 with the Pirates. The Padres have won all 5 games he has started. They noticed his best pitch is his curve ball and told him to throw it more. I guess the Pirates consider that rocket science. Better luck next year, maybe.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 