The Pirates deserve compensation for all these doubleheaders they'll have to play
Instead, I'm prepared for the league to steal the No. 1 draft pick from them
After starting the week with three unscheduled off days because one of their Central division rivals was fighting a virus outbreak, the Pirates end the week with two days off because a different Central division rival is fighting a potential virus outbreak. This is pretty much the price of doing business when you’re flying teams around the country every three or four days during a global pandemic. (Although I guess it’s kind of an American pandemic at this point, huh?) The Cardinals just played their eighth game of the season today, while other teams have completed as many as 22 games. It’s a total mess and, again, this is a fake/cursed season.
It’s no surprise that the Pirates haven’t had any outbreaks, as they would have been crowned World Series champions if the criteria was taking the virus seriously and not having good baseball players and winning baseball games.
(That tweet will never not be funny to me.)
So now the Pirates will be forced to play a handful of doubleheaders to make up the lost games. One of those doubleheaders was thought to be Monday, when at least the pitching staff would all be rested and available, but that won’t be the case anymore.
Yes, the Cardinals will have to play more doubleheaders but they were the ones cavorting at the casinos and flouting the guidelines set forth by MLB, so they deserve their situation to be difficult. (Note: There is no evidence of the Cardinals breaking any protocols, but it’s the Cardinals so we have no choice but to assume the worst.)
Playing this many doubleheaders, even with the newly-implemented rule that makes the games 7 innings each, is not ideal in a season that has already been treacherous for pitchers due to the short ramp-up time before the delayed season. Almost every team is dealing with this in some manner.
The Pirates have already seen two of their top starters (Joe Musgrove, Mitch Keller) and four of their top bullpen arms (Nick Burdi, Clay Holmes, Kyle Crick, Michael Feliz) go down with injuries, all but Keller’s being arm-related. MLB kinda-sorta knew this would be an issue, which is why it added the runner-on-second rule for extra innings, to specifically avoid marathon games that would deplete pitching staffs and put additional mileage on arms.
So if the goal was to have 10 innings be a worst-case scenario each day, the fact that teams will have to account for 14 innings with some regularity doesn’t seem too responsible. The Pirates current, compromised rotation includes one pitcher just returning from Tommy John surgery and two years off a major league mound (Chad Kuhl); a tweener who hasn’t gone past 3 innings in a start so far this season (Steven Brault); and a rookie who last year pitched just 21 AAA innings due to injury, and had been worked in as a reliever this season (JT Brubaker). To expect anything beyond 5 innings from any of these pitchers is pretty unreasonable.
Which is all to say — this is not a team at all equipped to handle larger than usual inning loads. This is why you end up signing players from the Milwaukee Milkmen roster. As the Pirates drift further from playoff contention there will be even less reason to risk the future health of any of their pitchers. Which is to say, if you thought they were being cautious and, as a result, uncompetitive so far, just wait until the rotation at the end of September includes Andrew Cashner and Jason Vargas.
The Peak Pirates part of all of this is that you could make a half-decent argument that the Pirates deserve some form of compensation if they make it through the season without an outbreak but are forced to play a lopsided schedule due to outbreaks on other teams. There is zero chance of that happening; what’s much more likely to happen is that the Pirates will finish with the worst record in baseball and this will be the year that Rob Manfred decides to institute some sort of draft lottery, which will end with the Boston Red Sox getting the first pick. (To be fair, the Red Sox might be pathetic enough this season to “earn” the No. 1 pick on their own.)
I am Officially Worried about Josh Bell
Josh Bell before the all-star break in 2019: .302/.376/.648 in 388 plate appearances
Josh Bell the rest of his MLB career: .253/.341/.429 in 1654 plate appearances
I’m not saying we need to call that first half of 2019 a fluke. But we can pretty clearly call it an outlier, right? Bell has always had monster power and he’s always had a tendency to look uncomfortable and downright awkward in the batter’s box at times. He lunges at pitches, he has happy feet, but when you get one in his hot zone it can go very far. But lately it’s been looking like this more often than not.
It’s hard to think of someone who so often has the worst at bats in the lineup (in a bad lineup!) as a true cornerstone piece of the franchise. Especially when he brings negative value with the rest of his game — on the field, on the bases, etc. There’s really no solution here besides hoping he makes the needed adjustments and finds some consistency because the Pirates desperately need his power.
This Is What It Looks Like When the Pirates Try to Win
Thursday was, I think, the first time this season the Pirates started their actual best lineup.
And what do you know, they scored 9 runs and won a ballgame. It was also one of the first games in which Derek Shelton deployed his best relievers at the proper times. Sam Howard (who might be good? Respectably mediocre?) replaced Trevor Williams to start the 6th and struck out Jesse Winker, who is the hottest hitter in baseball. In the 7th, the Reds sent up lefty-crusher Philip Ervin as a pinch-hitter and Shelton countered with righty Geoff Hartlieb. The 8th and 9th were left to his two best relievers, a revitalized Richard Rodriguez and a freshly-activated Keone Kela. It was maybe the first time all season you could have watched an entire Pirates game and not questioned something Shelton did.
Of course he ran back the same lineup the next day (save for Cole Tucker in there for Jarrod Dyson) and it was an 8-1 loss. What can you do? Poor Chris Stratton got victimized by one of the many Great American Smallpark home runs in the series, it seriously looked like a routine pop up off the bat.
Chad Kuhl Continues to Look Pretty Good
In his fourth outing of the year, Kuhl managed to get up to 5 innings and 78 pitches, which is right where you’d want him to be. His 14/2 K/BB rate in 10.1 innings looks great, and the stuff he’s been showing backs it up. If he can keep the walk rate down, he’ll be a better pitcher than he was before his Tommy John surgery.
He gave up two more home runs on Friday, but one of them was another Cincinnati cheapie. (The other certainly was not.)
Small sample size caveats apply (as they will all season) but the story on Kuhl so far is that people are swinging and missing at his pitches a lot but when they make contact, they are crushing the ball.
Watching Kuhl every fifth game will be one of the few interesting storylines to follow over the next 6 weeks. Which means he’ll probably tweak something in his next start, be shut down out of an abundance of caution and Edwin Jackson will be signed to take his spot in the rotation.