I can’t tell if the Pirates are tanking or actually suck this much
As Grandpa Simpson once said: A little from Column A, a little from Column B
Bob Walk said this in the top of the 11th on Sunday came after Kevin Newman made the most fundamental of errors you’ll see on a baseball diamond. He was the free runner on second base to lead off the inning and from some unknown reason took off for third even thought Jose Osuna’s ground ball was directly shortstop Javy Baez, who casually tossed to third to easily nab Newman. From about third or fourth grade you know not to break for third if you’re on second and not forced when the ball is hit in front of you to the left side of the infield. There was simply no explanation for it. Unless…
Now, of course, there’s no way Kevin Newman is thinking about purposefully losing the game. That was simply an incredibly, incredibly stupid play by someone who should know better. In the previous half of the inning, third baseman Jose Osuna charged an attempted bunt which meant that the Cubs free runner on second just trotted into third because it was vacant. Smacks forehead. This kind of cluelessness in the field plagued the Pirates during the end of Clint Hurdle’s tenure and nothing seems to have changed in the first couple weeks of Derek Shelton’s.
One argument in favor of “this team is tanking” is taking a look at this lineup that went out there Sunday.
Kevin Newman went deep as the second batter of the game and that was it for 11 innings, including the two in extras with the free runner on second base. The Pirates are now scoreless in four attempts with the free runner. You’ve gotta tip your cap to them on that because that is just hard to do.
Steven Brault started Sunday’s game and looked as good as he’s ever looked. He got ahead of hitters (not always a given with him) and had his entire repertoire working, retiring all 9 Cubs he faced with 4 strikeouts. He didn’t even have his usual 3-5 pitches per start that sail off incredibly high and away to righties. Brault pitched his 3 scoreless on an efficient 35 pitches, which was actually 2 fewer than it took him to get through 2 innings in his rain-shortened first start. So if the goal is to build up his workload, it makes sense to give him one more inning, right? Not if you’re Derek Shelton, apparently.
It’s not the worst decision -- the point of a piggyback game is to stick to the script, and clearly this script called for Brault to go 3 innings. But maybe if he’s unhittable and hasn’t reached his pitch count you give him one more? Just to see what happens? Just in case, you know, the guy who is due to follow him exits early with an injury like 25% of the staff over the last 24 hours? If the goal was to win the baseball game, Brault would have stayed in. That does not seem to be the Pirates primary goal in 2020.
Just how bad is this offense?
The Pirates somehow got 5.2 scoreless innings out of the collection of Geoff Hartlieb, Dovydas Neverauskas, Nik Turley, Richard Rodriguez and “Sam Howard” and lost Sunday’s game. That ain’t right. Colin Moran currently leads the majors in home runs with 5 and yet the Pirates still manage to sit 29th in the majors in OPS at .540. (What the hell is going on in Arizona?) Josh Bell, Bryan Reynolds, Adam Frazier and Kevin Newman -- theoretically the core of the offense, which is sad enough on a good day -- all have OPS under .519. They will obviously all improve at some point, but it just shows how there is absolutely no hope for this team if the majority of those guys aren’t hitting. Frazier and Newman put together a few good at bats over the weekend, Reynolds is still struggling and Bell is the worst of the bunch, despite his meaningless home run on Friday night.
That tweet was from Friday night, which ironically turned out to be a game in which the Pirates out-homered their opponent and still lost. Last year the Pirates actually led the NL in batting average yet finished 11th in runs scored, which tells you everything you need to know about batting average. In the first newsletter, I said there were really only a few important things about this fake/cursed season, and one of them was to find out if Bryan Reynolds was actually as good as he was last year (or perhaps even a little better), or if he was merely a 280/340/460 corner OF, which is a fine piece to have but nothing approaching a cornerstone. Lord it would be nice to have something even close to 280/340/460 right now. He was too consistent, both in approach and results last year to think it was a fluke but a little pop these days would be nice.
But the fact is the Pirates built an offense (if you want to call it that) based on high-floor contact hitters in an age where it’s all about power. Looking at their top prospects, there’s very little hope on the horizon as only Oneil Cruz -- a potential 40-HR hitter who is a high variance prospect the Pirates have had zero luck developing -- projects to be an impact power hitter. The rest of their top-rated position players in the minors -- Kebryan Hayes, Travis Swaggerty, Jared Oliva, Liver Pegeuro -- look like 15-20 HR guys at their most optimistic projections. It’s a hard way to win in the current MLB and can only be done if you have dominant pitching and hopefully a homegrown ace or two. Speaking of…
Say goodbye to Mitch Keller for 2020
We can’t be sure we’ve seen the last of the Pirates prized (once prized?) young starter, but if he’s got an oblique injury and there are only 50 games left, combined with how brutal he looked in his two outings this year… just shut him down. Keller had more pop on his fastball Saturday but his command was still atrocious, getting ahead in counts only to, say, hang a curveball to Ian Happ and watch him hit it very, very far.
Keller may have put up an ERA over 7 in 2019, but the secondary stats were encouraging enough to except good progress in 2020. He ranked 4th all-time behind Kerry Wood, Stephen Strasburg and Dwight Gooden in K/9 for rookies. Not bad company.
But that guy did not take the mound this year. Again, this is a fake/cursed season and if he never got into game shape, he has a perfectly good excuse. But since the most interesting thing to watch for on this year’s Pirates was Keller’s development, it’s Extremely Pirates for this to be the outcome.
That’s not the only pitching injury
Michael Feliz also left Saturday’s game injured (forearm, never good) and then Chad Kuhl left Sunday’s game with a hopefully minor finger issue. That means 9 games into the season the team is already down 3 relievers they were counting on (for better or worse) in late innings -- Feliz, Clay Holmes and Kyle Crick. By my count the bullpen now has a whopping 7 pitchers that I wouldn’t want to see on the mound in anything resembling a close game: Dovydas Neverauskas, Geoff Hartlieb, Miguel del Pozo, Nik Turley, Cody Ponce, Sam Howard and Tyler Bashlor, the latter of whom they acquired in a deal this morning from the Mets. I write a newsletter about the Pirates by choice and I cannot bring myself to care about that transaction.
Gotta shoutout Sam Howard for his two scoreless innings on Sunday, though, including getting out of a serious jam in the 10th inning. That one outing makes him the 4th best option in the pen, I think.
Jacob Stallings, defensive god
Okay, if he doesn’t drop a throw at home in the 5th inning on Sunday then maybe the Pirates miraculously win that game 1-0. (Maybe he … did it on purpose because they are tanking. Thinking emoji…) But look at these Fangraphs defensive numbers coming into Sunday’s game.
That’s a small sample size for sure but it’s still damn impressive. I pointed out that Stallings was one of the few potential bright spots on this team in the first newsletter but I didn’t think he would be legit Gold Glove territory already. That said he should maybe work on the 118/167/178 slash line.
JT Brubaker, rare bright spot
The 26-year-old rookie looked good again in his second appearance, now with 5 scoreless innings under his belt. His slider has looked particularly nasty, and combining it with mid-90s heat and a playable curve has left hitters guessing.
With Keller gone, it stands to reason that Brubaker would take his rotation spot, especially since he was exclusively a starter in the minors. I’m not sure I’d go that route, though. It’s a meaningless season, the tank is on, why take any risks? Let Brubaker continue to work as a middle reliever, building up his pitch counts. Leave him in a position to succeed and have him compete for a starting spot in spring training next year. If the goal was to win baseball games then maybe you slot him in for Keller. But as we’ve demonstrated, that’s clearly not the goal. So maybe get Bob Walk out of the booth to eat some innings and help keep the Bucs on track for getting that No. 1 pick.