Today the Pirates embark on the final 65 games of the season. They will be on the road against the Guardians and the Yankees, playing them 3 games each. It is always hard to evaluate how difficult a schedule will be because of how long the season is in baseball. A perfect example is if you had looked at the schedule about 6 weeks ago and saw that the Pirates had 6 games with the Tigers and 3 with the Red Sox after the All-Star break, you would have thought that the Pirates would have a chance to really make some hay. There would be a good possibility that the Tigers would not have Tarik Skubal and the Red Sox would not have Aroldis Chapman. Presently, they are both two of the hottest teams in baseball. The Red Sox are closer to the playoffs than the Pirates. That is not to say that you can’t look at the schedule and pretty much say when a critical part of the schedule is coming up. In my view, it is coming up soon. Beginning on July 30th, the Pirates will embark on a 14-game stretch that will have 11 games on the road. It will start with 4 games in Cincinnati and then 4 games in Milwaukee. They will come home for 3 games with the Mets before embarking on a 3-game road trip to Miami. Depending on how they do up to that point, I am not sure they can afford to go even 7-7 in this stretch of games. If the Pirates can hang in there, the good news is that 14 of the 23 games in September are at home.
The trade deadline is August 3rd at 6 PM. There is no way you can try to speculate what the Pirates will do, especially considering the way they think. A prime example is this recent acquisition from the Nationals of one of their first-round busts. I will be a passive onlooker and hope that I won’t be shaking my head at 6 PM on the 3rd. It is much more fun to just go ahead and write what I would do at the trade deadline and how I would move forward with this team. It is going to be very difficult to get bullpen help at the deadline because of the expanded playoffs and how awful the American League is this year. There are very few teams that are really totally out of the playoffs in both leagues. I would look for a mid-rotation starter and make one bold move to improve the bullpen. My main target would be Robbie Ray of the Giants. He is left-handed and having a very solid year with an ERA+ of 119. He is at the end of his big five-year deal and will be a free agent in 2027. He probably would come fairly cheap, with the Pirates only having to give up no more than two mid-level prospects. There are some other guys out there you could go after, but they are right-handed and would likely be more costly. To me, Ray is the perfect acquisition. Then I would make Jared Jones my closer; to me, he is the perfect option. He runs on adrenaline and seems like he likes the big moment. I would change Carmen Mlodzinski to be my main setup man. Gregory Soto would mostly work the seventh inning. You would have Mason Montgomery, Isaac Mattson, and Yohan Ramirez as your main fill-in guys, along with newcomer Brandon Eisert. You would part ways with Dennis Santana. If you wanted to ease Jones into the bullpen role, you could make Mlodzinski the closer and see what happens. Jones would be your eighth-inning man. Either way, the bullpen would look a lot better with those moves.
With the Pirates sweeping the Brewers before the All-Star break, it buoyed everyone’s spirits and put the Pirates in a better position than they deserved. They blew a lot of leads this season. It is always hard to predict what any team will do from this point on. One thing is for sure: the Pirates cannot afford to tread water any more this season. They have to have a solid run if they are going to make the playoffs. I think they will have to go a minimum of 37-28 for the rest of the season. That would put them at 87 wins. I would feel a lot better if they could win even one more game than that. Do I think they can do that? Frankly, no. I hope I am wrong, and they could surprise me at the trade deadline; that might change my mind. At the bare minimum, I would finally like to see meaningful games in September. I am not sure they can even do that.
The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer 