Tag: One month to go

The season is mercifully winding down. There is less than a month to go. There are only 24 games left. The Pirates’ record is 61-77. If by some miracle they go 12-12, they would not lose 90 games. When the season is over, it will mark the strangest 12 months in this century for this franchise. From the offseason to the regular season, the Pirates made poor decisions. They also made some of the worst moves at the trade deadline. When you go back to the start of the ’24 season, there was genuine hope for this team. It is all gone now. There is no use in trying to figure out what the Pirates are going to do. First of all, to do that, you start on the assumption that a team wants to win games. You would also think they want to put their players in the best position to succeed. You only have to go back to this weekend. It’s clear that this is all not true when it comes to the Pirates.

Three things happened this weekend that show the Pirates have no interest in improving their team and winning games. First, they put Isiah Kiner-Falefa on waivers. He was picked up by the Toronto Blue Jays. The cost to the Blue Jays: zero. The Pirates could have gotten something for IKF at the deadline, even if it was a low-end prospect. The second thing is they brought up Cam Devanney. During his minor league career, he has played over 400 games at shortstop. He has played 3rd and 2nd base, but not even half as many games. In his major league debut, where do the Pirates put him? At third base. Finally, Jack Suwinski and his 49 OPS+ go on the IL with an injured groin. Who do the Pirates bring up? The recently acquired Ryan Kreidler. Somehow, someway, the Pirates found a player worse than Suwinski. In 211 plate appearances, he has a slash line of .138/.208/.176 for an OPS+ of 10. He’s worse than 90% of the hitters that are playing the game right now. He is even worse than Henry Davis. The Pirates are going to get to expand the roster starting tomorrow. Maybe they can find someone over 35 years old to make McCutchen and Pham feel better. I can’t wait to see the new additions to the team. Do you think they need to clean house?

This team is 16 runs behind the 29th place Rockies, who have played 1 game less. They are 19 runs behind the Guardians, who have played 3 games less. The Pirates have had 13 players that have had a significant amount of at-bats. Only 3 have shown an improvement in their OPS+. One of them, Henry Davis, couldn’t really get any worse; in 2024, his OPS+ was 30. This year, so far, it is 48. The other two are Triolo and Pham. The other 10 players have gotten worse. Gonzales, McCutchen, and the departed Ke’Bryan Hayes are close to equaling their 2024 performance, so there is time for them to have a better OPS+. The other 7 have had significant drops: Joey Bart -36, Spencer Horwitz -22, IKF -15, Oneil Cruz -21, Bryan Reynolds -22, Alexander Canario -57, and Jack Suwinski -16. Hitting coach gone. Going into the ’23 season, Ben Cherrington has stated that the offense needs to improve. While we are not going to ignore trying to improve in other areas, the offense will be our main emphasis. He said the same thing going into the ’24 and ’25 seasons. The offense has gotten worse. GM gone. If Cherrington goes, that would mean Don Kelly would go. I think he has done an above-average job in managing these bums. A new GM would want to put his man in charge of the team. Kelly just has too much stink on him from this awful current regime. They have to go. A new philosophy for player development: at least one that says when you bring a player up, play him more than once every 5 games. For the fans, the good news is that there are only 24 games left. I am fairly confident I can get through them without getting physically ill. I have a feeling that this homestand may put that to the test. The announcement of players 27 and 28 today may cause some nausea. What an organization.

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.