The Pirates at the 20% Pole

Regular readers know that I usually wait until thirty games have been played in a new baseball season before making any serious commentary on how our Pittsburgh Pirates are doing.  By that time, batters have accumulated enough AB's and pitchers enough IP's to make some reasoned judgement on "how they're doin'."

As in 2023, the Bucco started off hot and after eleven games, they were at 9-2 and in first place in the NL Central Division.  Twenty-one games later, things have balanced out, to say the least, and here are your NL Central standings as of this morning:

A 5-16 record after that hot start, and ensconced in last place of a division that appeared be eminently win-able coming out of spring training.

Surprisingly, the pitching, especially the starting pitching has been quite good, and the story of the season so far has been the performance of 22 year old rooking Jared Jones.

As he has been routinely serving up pitches at 100 mph and being among the league leaders in strike outs, Jones has indeed been fun to watch, even if his last start against the Giants this week didn't go so well.  He has given fans something to excited and optimistic about.

Then there are the Pirates bats.  Simply stated, the Pirates offensive output has been truly offensive in these thirty-two games.  In their last game against the Oakland A's on Wednesday, the Pirates started guys with BA's of .162, .168, .205, .212, and .217.  Ke'Bryan Hayes, Brian Reynolds, and Oneil Cruz, the guys who were to be the offensive core of the lineup, are batting .264, .248. and.239, respectively, and Cruz has been striking out a prodigious rate.

Andrew McCutchen, who appeared as a pinch hitter yesterday, and has been used as a DH all season is hitting .188.  Cutch, easily the best and most beloved Pirates player of this century, appears at age 37 to be finished.  The team will be needing to make a hard call on his future soon, it would seem.

Over the winter, my friend Dan made the frequent comment that went along these lines:  "If the Pirates are really serious about wanting to win and compete in the National League, they will need to sign a first basement who can still play, and can hit."  The name Rhys Hoskins was frequently batted around amongst our crotchety breakfast group.  But the Pirates didn't do that.  Instead, they signed Rowdy Tellez.

In 31 games and 83 at bats, Tellez has 1 home run, 7 RBI, and is batting .205 with an OPS of .552.  In other words, he stinks, and he becomes just another name in a long line of washed up players (Jeromy Burnitz, Derek Bell, Lonnie Chisenhall, and others that have long been forgotten, with good reason) whose biggest attribute was the one that the Pirates value the most:  They all came cheap.   It's nice that Tellez appears to be a decent guy, a team player, and good guy to have in the locker room, but that ain't winning any games for the Pirates these days.

And perhaps most infuriating of all is the case of pitcher Paul Skenes, chosen by the Bucs with the first pick in the first round of last years draft. 

Despite limited use last season and in spring training this year, Skenes looked to be the Pirates best pitcher, if not the best player in the entire organization.  In 23 innings pitched at Indianopolis, Skenes has struck out 41, while allowing one earned run (0.39 ERA), and WHIP of 0.87, while frequently exceeding 100 mph with his pitches.   Yet he remains in Indy as the Bucco Brain Trust continues yammering about checking boxes and "the plan" that they have for Skenes.   Skenes has shown that he has nothing to prove or learn at the Triple-A level, and the major league team is floundering, so there is no reason that Skenes should NOT be in Pittsburgh right now if, that is, you care about winning baseball games in 2024, and not just saving dollars by putting off Skenes arbitration and free agent eligibility an extra year or two.

But, regardless of who the manager of general manager may be, it has always been thus on Bob Nutting's Pirate Ship of Fools.

As I often say, it ain't easy being a Pirates fan.