I had an idea for a longer article detailing this agonizing week of baseball and the current state of the Pittsburgh Pirates, but I didn’t have the time to write it on Sunday. It was going to be called “The Head and the Heart.” Perhaps if the Pirates struggles continue through the coming week, I’ll have more time to sit down and bash out my thoughts, and this post will merely serve as a prologue for a longer article coming in the near future. But I’m hoping against hope that the Bucs will splash some cold water on their face and snap out of his lull they’ve been trapped in for the past week.
The concept behind the article would be the conflict between the objective baseball fan that lives in my head and the subjective Pirates fan that lives in my heart. The objective fan in my head would look back on the past week and acknowledge that the Bucs have played some atrocious baseball over the past seven days, but he would also point out that every team goes through bad stretches, that if the Pirates weren’t as good to open the season as their 9-2 record would suggest then they aren’t as bad as their current 6-game losing streak. He would mention that the Bucs probably benefitted from some good luck in the early going — they did get a lot of 2-out RBIs back then, which isn’t sustainable — and that the Pirates are going through a bit of bad luck now.
On Saturday, the Pirates out-hit the Reds Sox 9-7, and despite one of those hits being a homer the Bucs only mustered a 2 runs. On Sunday, the Bucs had 7 hits and a higher expected batting average, but Boston’s hits dropped in at the right time and the Pirates’ didn’t, which is why the Sox scored 6 runs while the Buccos were held to a lone run again. Over the past two days the Pirates are 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, and as bad as the hitters have been this year the objective fan in my head doubts they’ll hit .100 with RISP over the entire summer. The objective fan notes that the Pirates are currently .500 and that’s basically what was expected of the team; that Henry Davis is learning a new position and Oneil Cruz missed all of last year and that just because the Pirate kept pace with the Yankees and Dodgers for a couple of weeks doesn’t mean they’re as good as New York or Los Angeles. He would also point out that as bad as this week has been, it’s only been a week, and there are 24 weeks during the regular season and every team will have a bad week, if maybe not this bad.
But the Pirates fan in my heart would counter by saying: here we go again. This team got off to a hot start last year and squandered it, and despite the fact that the Bucs are supposed to be better than a year ago they’ve already squandered their hot start by April 21. It may have only been a week, but the issues that have plagued the Pirates over the last seven days have been lurking there all along. Remember how amazed we were that the Bucs continued to pile up wins in the early going despite sloppy defense and baserunning? Those issues are still there, only they hitting and pitching can no longer cover up for it. Remember how we mentioned that the offense was still rolling along despite minimal contributions from Cruz, Davis, and Jack Suwinski? The offense is no longer rolling, but one thing remains unchanged: Cruz, Davis and Suwinski aren’t hitting.
The Pirate fan in my heart wonders how a team can be so fundamentally bad. He wonders why every prospect who comes to the majors seems so unprepared to face big-league pitching, and while he would not shed tears over the dismissal of Andy Haines, he knows the issues with this offense go far beyond the hitting coach. He wonders if Andrew McCutchen was brought back not just for nostalgic reasons, but so the front office could say the DH spot was addressed while only spending $5 million. He wonders if any hitting coach could make Rowdy Tellez a good hitter. He wonders why that in Year Five of the Ben Cherington regime, why the Pirates are still capable of having weeks like the one they just had.
I’m stopping there because this has already gone on longer than I wanted it to — I’m not sure if I’ll be able to come up with enough material for a longer version of this post later in the week, should the circumstances warrant it. Both the baseball fan in my head and the Pirates fan in my heart have valid points, but it’s hard to ignore the past week when it effectively counts for almost a third of the season. I hope they turn it around soon, because I don’t know how many more posts like this I have in me.
Bucco Ball 