This Post Is A Hodgepodge of Somethingness

Nope, I couldn't resist capitalizing on what was the buzz talk in Pittsburgh sports this week, BoSox announcer Dennis Eckersley's pronouncement that the Pirates lineup is a "hodgepodge of nothingness."  What I found out to be most entertainting about the whole affair was the reaction from Pirates officials over the whole thing.   The next afternoon I hear Bucco Chief Propaganda Minister Greg Brown with the afternoon guys on The Fan.  The tap dance Brownie was doing around it would have made Gene Kelly turn green with envy.  Then on Friday afternoon GM Ben Cherrington had a meeting with the local press to explain the progress that he has made with the overall organization since he and his team have been here.  That may be true from an organizational standpoint, but we sure haven't seen any results on the big league level as yet.  GMBC then went on to say that he wasn't going to comment on what Eckersley had to say, but if that were the case, then why hold a press briefing on some random Friday afternoon in August?

Anyway, on to other things.....

Here's the thing about baseball.  You know that your favorite team - the Pirates in my case - stink.  No need to go over all the reasons for that is there?  You know that they are going to lose 100 games  this season.  However, that doesn't mean that if you choose to go to one ball game on a nice summer's evening that the Pirates won't play well and win that particular game.  And even if they are playing a team that is only marginally better than they are, the Cincy Reds in this case, it doesn't mean that you won't see a well played and entertaining game.

And that is exactly what happened last night at PNC Park.  Very good starting pitching from Graham Ashcroft and Bryse Wilson, a couple of nifty defensive plays, and a couple of home runs which put the Reds in front 3-0 through five innings.  A run in the sixth and two in the seventh for the Pirates tied the game.  The Reds went ahead  4-3 in the eighth and the Pirates walked it off with two runs in the bottom of the ninth when Michael Chavis' bases loaded single scored the winning run.

Fun, exciting, a Pirates win, and it was all over in two hours and forty-eight minutes.   It can be done.

I haven't written about the Steelers 32-25 win over Seattle in last week's first exhibition game because, well, I just didn't get around to it.   Unless you've been living under a rock in Pittsburgh, or just really don't care about the Steelers, you know by now that the highlight of the game was the performance of the three quarterbacks.  Mitch Trubisky leading a 90 yard opening drive for a touchdown.  Mason Rudolph dropping a dime to rookie wideout George Pickens in the corner of the end zone.  And, of course, the second half, two TD pass performance of Kenny Pickett, including one that won the game with :03 left on the clock.

This all led to an interesting narrative on the talk shows and in the press.  For the first half of the week it was "Why are the Steelers continuing the charade with Mason Rudolph?  For his sake and the sake of the team, trade him now for whatever kind of low round draft pick you can get and turn things over to Pickett as the back-up to Trubisky."  By Thursday, however, the narrative changed, and the theme then became "Are the Steelers and the fans being unfair to Mason Rudolph?  Doesn't he deserve better?"

This is why I can only take sports talk radio in small doses.

Anyway, in a few more hours, the Steelers take on the Jax Jags in their second exhibition game of the season.  Trubisky will start, but by all accounts, Pickett will get the bulk of the QB playing time, including time with the first teamers, or "the varsity", as Mike Tomlin puts it.

For the first time in almost twenty years, the quarterback situation is making Steelers practice games interesting things to watch.

I am about 90 pages, or a little less than twenty percent, into this latest book by David Maraniss, "Path Lit By Lightning", a biography of Jim Thorpe.  Like Mariness' biographies of Vince Lombardi, Roberto Clemente, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, this book is meticulously researched and well written.  You learn a lot and are entertained while doing so.  I will most certainly be writing more about this book once I finish reading it.

Josh VanMeter and the State of the Pirates

 First off, let me state that I've got no beef with Pirates infielder Josh VanMeter.  He's a fringe ballplayer on a bad baseball team.  A utility player on a team filled with utility players.  He seems like a nice young man, and he certainly tries his best every time he is called upon by Derek Shelton and the front office stats geeks who make out the lineups every day.  Through no fault of his own, though, he - or, rather, what Sheltie has chosen to do with him - has come to symbolize what a goddamn disaster the Pirates are.  

Three times this year VanMeter has been called upon to pitch in mop up duty when the team is getting drubbed.  This culminated in his third - THIRD!!! - appearance last night when he was asked to pitch the ninth inning with the Yankees leading 10-0.  In that ninth, VanMeter gave up eight hits, two of them home runs, and six runs.  In three appearances and three innings pitched this year, Josh has accumulated an ERA of 39.00.

Now, if I am Josh VanMeter, I might be sorely tempted to go to Derek Shelton and say something along the lines of "I'm a team guy, and I'll do whatever I can to help you and the team out, but I've got some pride in my craft so please do not embarrass me any more by making me pitch.   Enough!"

Oh, and toss in the fact that infielder Diego Castillo has also been given the dubious "honor" of pitching in these kinds of games.  In two appearances and two innings pitched, his ERA is 36.00.  That makes five - FIVE!!! - times in half a season that the Pirates have used position players to pitch in games this year.  What used to be a rare maybe once a season occurrence that caused a few yuks among the players, has become, it seems, a part of the Pirates overall pitching strategy.  It's not funny, and it's an embarrassment.  Even Pirates Chief Propaganda Minister Greg Brown said "This is ridiculous" when VanMeter served up his second gopher last night.

Post Script.  I decided to call the Pirates office today and ask for Ben Cherrington to express the sentiments I just wrote of.  My hope was that I would get to his voice mail and leave a message.  When I got to an operator I was told "We are not allowed to put calls like that through."    Like Claude Rains, I was shocked, SHOCKED to be stonewalled like that.

Pirates Fever.  Catch it!!

the 2022 Pirates, 40 Games In

Well, actually, the Pirates are only 37 games into the season, but a round number like 40 looks better in the headline, so, close enough for government work, as the saying goes.

The Pirates are not quite a quarter of the way into the season (23%), and they sit at 16-21, five games under .500, in third place in the NL Central, and on pace for a recored of 68-94.  That is a marginal improvement over last year's terrible club, but still nothing to celebrate.  Consider the following team stats:

.224 BA - 24th in MLB

.641 OPS - 26th in MLB

4.68 ERA - 27th in MLB

$66.2 million payroll - 28th in MLB

That last figure speaks volumes, but I'm not an economist, so I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.  Besides, the rankings in the three previous categories are depressing enough.

On any given night, you can count on getting reasonably major league quality offense from only three players:  Ke'Bryan Hayes (.286, 9 RBI), Ben Gamel (.270, 3 HR, 15 RBI), and Daniel Vogelbach (.252, 6 HR, 14 RBI).  Brian Reynolds, the best player on the team last year and a guy who received MVP votes in 2021, is off to a miserable start at the plate, hitting .214 with 4 HR and 6 RBI., but you have to assume (hope?) that he will snap out of that.  After those four guys, though, the lineup is filled with guys hitting in the low .200's, and even below that.  Why, for example, is Yoshi Tsutsugo and his .167 BA still starting regularly, or, for that matter, why is he still on the team?

As for pitching, well, super prospect Mitch Keller, who seemed to be facing a shit-or-get-off-the-pot season is currently 1-5 with a 6.37 ERA, and he has been bumped to the bullpen.  He seems to be another super big pitching prospect for the Bucs who is just not going to pan out.  The best starting pitcher - and the Pirates did not have a starter win a game until the season was well over a month old - is journeyman Jose Quintana, 1-1, 2.94, and .194 BAA.  Given his status as an experienced veteran, if he keeps this up, he will surely be flipped at the trade deadline for, you guessed it, "prospects".  

There has been one element of this Pirate team that has proven to be both exciting and good - the back end of the bullpen, which consists of Chris Stratton (2-1, 5.40), Will Crowe (2-2, 2.74), and, especially, David Bednar (below).  Bednar is 0-0 with an ERA of 0.90, 27 K's in 20 IP, opponents are batting .132 against him, and he has eight saves in eight opportunities.  If the Bucs manage to have a lead after seven or eight innings, these guys, and Bednar especially, will hold it for them.  He is a sure fire All-Star at this point in the season.

I can only hope that as the season progresses, Ben Cherrington will begin to sprinkle in some of these young prospects that we have been hearing so much about for the last few years in real games on the major league level and start weeding out the guys who are placeholders.   I mean,  let us see Oneil Cruz and Roansy Contreras soon.  Throw us a bone to gnaw on as the team marches on, struggling to avoid another 100 loss season.

And In Pirates News....

The 2022 major league baseball season begins one week from today, and here has been the biggest news items regarding our Pittsburgh Pirates this spring training.

• They are projected to have an Opening Day payroll of approximately $35 million, which puts them in 29th place among all MLB teams.
• They have no players - zero, none! - signed beyond 2022.
• They have opted to take their best player, Brian Reynolds, to salary arbitration over the measly difference of $650,000.  Yes, 650K is a lot of money to you and me, but it's couch cushion money to Bob Nutting and all other MLB owners.  Look for Reynolds to be dealt at the trade deadline this year or next before he becomes eligible for free agency when the Pirates would then have to pay him real money.
• There were also reports that the team tried to sign Reynolds to a long term extension, but he wouldn't accept it.  Would you were you in his position?
• Some of Mitch Keller's pitches hit 100 MPH on the radar gun, but based on what we have seen from Keller over the last several seasons, does that news actually excite you?

And in the big news out of Bradenton yesterday, the team has indicated that Oneil Cruz will be sent to Triple-A to start the season in Indianapolis. Yeah, I know that Cruz' defensive talents are "unpolished", that he's only played a handful of games above the Double-A level, and that the team doesn't want to hinder his "development."  Cruz has also been hitting the cover off the ball in Spring Training (and, yes, I know that that is not always a good indicator) and he has shown jaw-dropping power this spring, too.  He is also 23 years old, so he's not exactly a baby anymore, either.  He is perhaps the best prospect to come out of the Pirates organization since Andrew McCutchen.

In short, Oneil Cruz would be a player to get excited about and make you want to see in action at PNC Park.  Can't this penny-pinching outfit throw us a damned bone every once in awhile?  Apparently not.  Let's keep him under "contractual control" an extra year so we can wait an extra year to low ball him in arbitration when the time comes.

Baseball Fever - It's hard to catch it if you're a Pirates Fan!