Don't think it can't get any worse, because it can
Oh thank god this team doesn't play for three days
Those words in the title were said almost 10 years ago by the late Flip Saunders, during his tenure as coach of the Washington Wizards. (Yes, I’m a Pirates and Wizards fan, it’s great, highly recommended.) I can’t even remember exactly what he was referring to — some combination of injuries, poor play, criminal activity, who knows? — but it’s one of those quotes that has stuck with me ever since it really can apply to… [gestures at the world].
And we’ve reached that point with the 2020 Pittsburgh Pirates. Starting the season 3-10, seeing Nick Burdi and (likely) Mitch Keller go down for the year? We can go lower than that. On Friday night they allowed 17 runs in losing to the Tigers, who just last year went 47-114, which made them the 16th worst team of the last 120 years. Could that be the bottom? Laughable. The next afternoon, Derek Holland took the mound and allowed FOUR HOME RUNS IN HIS FIRST 11 PITCHES! Even he had to kind of laugh about it.
Then, more seriously, Phillip Evans — one of the very few “good stories” on the Pirates this season — got absolutely clobbered by Gregory Polanco in an outfield collision and had to be immobilized, carted off the field and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He’s out for the year with a broken jaw and a concussion, which is honestly the best-case scenario all things considered. This all happened on the first batter Nick Mears faced in his major league career, too. Poor guy thinks he’s going to have a story for the ages, making his debut against one of the all-time greats in Miguel Cabrera and instead he has to stand on the mound for 15 minutes and watch one of his teammates get strapped onto a gurney. That is the 2020 Pirates experience in a nutshell.
Sunday was a pretty standard, unremarkable and lifeless 2-1 loss, but! Did the winning run score on a single after the runner got into scoring position thanks to the single worst pitch thrown in the majors this year and yes I’m counting Fauci’s opening day disaster? You bet.
The Pirates, and just as importantly all the people who watch the Pirates, now get 3 days off thanks to the Cardinals and their continued virus woes. It’s amazing how you could miss baseball so much for so many months and then be so glad it’s gone for a few days, but this Pirates team will do that to you.
Checking in on the other dregs of MLB
Coming into the season, there were a handful of teams that were seen as the clear basement-dwellers of the league. But with the 60-game season, a 16-team playoff and all the uncertainties from injuries/virus delays/general 2020-ness, there were likely to be some surprises. As I’ve said in basically every newsletter so far I think, this was part of the fun of the short season — even a shitty team could catch lightning in a bottle. Well the Pirates did indeed catch lightning in a bottle, but then the bottle exploded and shards of glass got lodged in their neck, eyeballs and groin.
The consensus worst team in the league, the Orioles are sitting at 7-7 and would probably be 8-7 and coming off a sweep of the defending World Series champs if the grounds crew at Nationals Park didn’t put on one of the most embarrassing yet absolutely hilarious tarp displays ever.
The Marlins are 7-3 and atop the NL East despite running out a team of nobodies even by Marlins standards. The Giants and Royals are both 7-10, which is not great but puts both of them one sweep from playoff contention. The Mariners are 6-11, which is bad but it ain’t 3-13. But this range of results shows why there was at least some optimism in all corners a few weeks ago — you just never know. Of course that was when we were working under the silly assumption that the Pirates would actually be trying to win baseball games, which is clearly not their primary goal.
JT Riddle started in right field Sunday, yikes
It’s generally accepted that right field and first base are the two positions where you most want and need a premium hitter. Here’s who has started out there for the Pirates so far this season:
Gregory Polanco (6 games) — has struck out 15 times in 32 plate appearances
Guillermo Heredia (3) — signed to a major league contract in the offseason and already sent to the foreboding sounding “alternate training facility”
Cole Tucker (3) — third lowest exit velocity in all of MLB for players with 20+ batted ball events
Jose Osuna (2) — like Heredia, also sent to (and recalled from) the Guantanamo Bay dark site
Phillip Evans (1) — unable to eat solid food for the next 4-6 weeks
JT Riddle (1) — he’s JT Riddle, no further explanation needed
The sudden Cole Tucker in the outfield experiment has seemed very odd and is reminiscent of the Huntington regime and it’s “let’s make everyone a utility player” philosophy. Granted, some of that was out of necessity when it became clear that none of these players would hit well enough to be solid starters at any position.
I’m extremely pessimistic on Tucker’s ability to ever be even a league-average hitter, but if this season is about evaluation first and foremost, and you are confident you know his abilities at shortstop and need more info on how he can hit and whether he can play anywhere else in the field, that’s the only way this current usage makes any sense.
Can we (should we?) trade this guy for anything?
The St. Louis Cardinals have played 5 games and the trade deadline is in 3 weeks. Totally normal season, definitely should be playing it. In an era when prospects are more highly valued than they’ve ever been, it’s hard to see any team giving up anything of value when the possibility exists of getting bounced from the playoffs if you lose two straight games to a team that finished 26-31. What’s the point in sacrificing anything about the future for this fake/cursed/crapshoot season?
I imagine if there’s any market, it will be for functional arms to provide depth over the last month of the season, with an added bonus if it’s someone you wouldn’t freak out if you had to pitch them in a game with your season on the line. Do the Pirates have… any of those pitchers? Here’s one…
That’s Chris Stratton. Any team would like a guy with that stuff above. Richard Rodriguez? Potentially. Keone Kela if he comes back strong? Almost definitely. The rest of the bullpen? Good god, no. So that leaves Stratton, who has been consistent with both his stuff and results this year, firing another impressive 3 innings on Sunday. He’s been hitting 95 and his breaking stuff has bite.
Will he fetch back anything besides a Grade C prospect? Unlikely. He has 3 years of team control left, although he’s already 29. His situation could be the only real chance Ben Cherington has to pull off an in-season deal in his first year.
The rotation is bolstered by an addition from Milwaukee
Not the Brewers, though.
Henderson Alvarez is a one-time all-star (he made it in 2014, the year after Jeff Locke made it, just to remind everyone what it means to be an all-star) and has worked hard to get his stuff back to major league levels. The reports say he’s been hitting 98mph on the Milkmen radar guns and we can all agree he’s a better use of a roster spot than Miguel Del Pozo. (I like this screengrab of the mercifully-banished MDP seemingly looking, sadly, at his own historically bad stats.)
That said, Alvarez has 302 Ks in 577 career innings, so it’s not like he’s ever been a strikeout guy. But the team is beset by injuries and may as well try out some lottery tickets. What’s he going to do, give up five home runs on 11 pitches?
The most intriguing potential rotation member is the resurgent Chad Kuhl. His outing Friday was sparkling — 7 Ks in 4 innings, with 1 run allowed on a solo HR that was a PNC Park cheapo special. He’s always been a hard thrower, and his velocity followed him back after TJ surgery. He’s pitched 7 innings 4 times in 61 starts pre-surgery, so it’s hard to think he’ll ever be a true workhorse. But it’s easier to picture him as a strong twice-through-the-order guy, where he can throw hard and not worry about leaving extra in the tank for a long outing. I might like to see the Pirates try the piggyback approach with Kuhl and JT Brubaker this season; 4 innings from each of them and you might be onto something.
We have to take a moment to acknowledge
That Erik Gonzalez hit a 463-foot home run.
It’s still nothing more than a solid week at the plate for Gonzalez, but the simple fact that he’s not hitting so many grounders is enough reason to hold slight optimism.
I think we can be fairly sure we just saw the best hit of his career, but we’re going to have to see him in the lineup more often than not for the rest of this cursed season.
I still stand by this.