The Goal for 2015: Win the Division

I am not going to spend a lot of time today analyzing all of the "If...then...." axioms of the 2014 Pirates season.  (Example: "If Jason Grilli didn't stink and blow all those saves early in the year, the the Pirates would have won the Central Division.")  There are a thousand and one such statements that could be made and analyzed, and, as has been pointed out by many, they all tend to even out over the course of a 162 game season.

But, and you knew there was a "but" here, didn't you, here is the most glaring overall problem that the Pirates had in 2014:

Vs. Reds  7-12
Vs. Brewers 7-12
Vs. Cardinals  8-11

That is a 22-35 record against your biggest division rivals, and even if you include a 14-5 slate against the awful Cubs, the Pirates still were only 36-40 in the Central Division.

We have just seen the perils of being a Wild Card team and having to play a one game crap shoot.  The Pirates, as evidenced by how they lined up their pitching rotation in that final series against the Reds, made it clear that they knew how important winning the division was.  So for 2015, the path to glory is obvious:  Don't stink against the Reds, Cardinals, and Brewers.  I'll leave it up to Huntington, Hurdle, and the players to figure out exactly how they go about accomplishing that goal.

Giants 8 - Pirates 0

Yes, the Pirates loss to the Giants in the Wild Card Game last night was a disappointment, but it was hardly a heart breaker.  (Now, the Oakland A's loss to Kansas City the night before? THAT was heart breaker if you're an Oakland fan.)  However, the loss does not detract from the excitement of seeing post-season baseball at PNC Park, 

of gathering with good friends before and during the game, 

and of being part of an absolutely electrifying atmosphere.

Well, the atmosphere was electric, that is, right up until the time when Brandon Crawford hit that grand slam home run.  That was kind of a surreal moment, by the way.  The swing of the bat, the flight of the ball, watching Travis Snider back up for it, and then seeing it land in the right field seats seemed to go in slow motion, and when the ball finally landed, I said to myself, "my God, he just hit a grand slam home run and we're now losing 4-0."  I thought it was just me until I met up with Len Martin after the game (we were sitting on opposite sides of the ball park), and he said that he had the exact same thoughts as I did.  Weird.

Well, we now wait 'til next year, but until then, THANK YOU, David Cicotello for scoring the tickets for the game on Stub Hub, and THANKS to the Pittsburgh Pirates for another exciting and electric season in 2014.

Can't wait until Opening Day, 2015. 

Pirates 2014 - Looking Back

As I sit at the keyboard on this Tuesday afternoon. the Pirates are about thirty hours away from taking the field against the San Francisco Giants in the National League Wild Card Playoff game.  I am excited in knowing that I will be attending this game tomorrow night, and I  am looking forward to the occasion with excitement and anticipation.

It was fabulous season for the Pirates, almost anyway you look at it.  The Playoff berth didn't come as easy as the one last year, it seemed, due to a bad start (10-18) in April, a bad seven game losing streak in August, injuries to key players, underachievement by key players (Jason Grilli, who got traded, Pedro Alvarez, who got benched), and a first base platoon that was, to be kind, very ordinary, it still took until the 162nd game of the season to be eliminated from the Central Division Championship.

I always like to look back on what I predicted each year to see just how smart or stupid I am.  So, here are some excerpts, in red, from The Grandstander of March 30, 2014.

Concerning the ultimate bottom line, I wrote the following:

OK, so how will they do?  Last year they won 94 games, which is a lot of wins for even really good teams.  To think that they will do this again is asking a lot.  Winning less than that in 2014 is not necessarily a step backwards. So, I am going to predict that we will raise this guy....

....89 times in 2014.  Eighty-nine wins will not be enough to overtake the Cardinals in the NL Central, but it will be enough to be in the race for a Wild Card spot, so what the the hell, I'll predict that Pirates will once again nail down one of the two wild card spots in the National League. 

The Record shows that the Pirates won 88 games, finished two games behind the Cardinals, and nailed down the first Wild Card spot.

I structured that pre-season post by focusing on some "People to Watch" for the upcoming season:

Andrew McCutchen.  After a torrid spring training, and, yes, we know that spring training stats are meaningless, it is almost frightening to think that he might actually be better than he has been in the last two seasons. Not since the days of Barry Bonds, and perhaps even the days of Dave Parker, have the Pirates had a player who is in the legitimate discussion as to who is the best player in the game.

Despite a two week stint on the DL, McCutchen led the team in HR, RBI, was third in the NL in batting and led the league in OBP.  But for an other-worldly season being enjoyed by the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw, McCutchen would no doubt be the odds on choice for a second consecutive MVP award.

Travis Snider.  Yes, he has been the definition of mediocre since his arrival here, but if management is to be believed, injuries played a role in that underachieving performance, and he is now said to be healthy, and he did rip it up in Florida.  If that can continue, perhaps the Pirates don't have as big a problem in RF as is believed.

Snider continued to be overlooked and many thought he would be sent to the minors at one point. He wasn't, Jose Tabata was, and when rookie Gregory Polanco came to earth after a hot start when he was first called up, Snider pretty much took over the job in right field, and it will be Snider, not Polanco, who will have to be beaten out for the starting right field job come 2015.

Russell Martin.  Other than McCutchen, this is the position player the Pirates can least afford to lose to injury.

Do I really need to add anything to that?  Martin performed so well this year, that he will no doubt be the one free agent most in demand on the open market this season.  How the Pirates respond in attempting to retain him will be one of the big stories of the hot stove season.

Gerrit Cole.  I just think that this guy to be the best pitcher to come up through the Pirates farm system since Bob Friend.  He's big, he's mean, and in the last month of 2013 he was easily the team's best pitcher.  I just can't wait to watch him pitch every fifth day.

A couple of stints on the DL limited Cole's season long performance, but down the September stretch drive, Cole was dominant and everything that everyone hoped he would be.

Neal Huntington.  I am certain that no one is more aware of the Pirates most glaring weakness, the hole at first base, than is the GM.  How NH goes about addressing that as the season wears on will be interesting to watch.  I've long been critical of Huntington, and his ability to spread the b.s. in some of his statements to the public continue to drive me nuts, but he bought himself, and his "Plan", a lot of credibility last year, and his maneuverings at the trade deadlines were textbook.  How he does around July 31 and August 31 this year if the team is in the same position will be, again, critical to the success of the team.

As always, Huntington was the center of much discussion throughout the season.  As we all know by now, NH did NOTHING at either the July 31 or August 31 trade deadlines.  No trades, and his "in the end, the best deal was no deal" was a quote that was used to torch him, but in the end, it looks like he was right.  The Pirates are in the post-season, while other teams that made splashy deals are not.  

Okay, not bad as far as crystal ball gazing goes, but what about the other side of the ledger?  Here was another on my names to watch:

A.J. Burnett, or rather the absence of A.J. Burnett.  He was at worst the number two starter on the staff, and he is being replaced by a combination of Edinson Volquez, the coming-off-of-injury Wandy Rodriguez, Jeff Locke, and Jameson Taillon, who is now nursing a tender elbow of his own. How this plays out could be the key to the Pirates season.

Burnett was discussed so often by so many people that you would have thought he was still on the team, and there were people, including possibly Burnett himself, who thought that the Bucs should trade to Philadelphia to bring him back at the deadline.  Burnett ended up losing 18 games in Philly.  As for those other guys, Rodriguez failed utterly and was released.  Taillon underwent Tommy John surgery and maybe we'll see him in Pittsburgh in 2016.  Locke went back to the minors, was recalled midway in the season and had some good and bad moments.  The jury is still out on him, but there are more reasons to be optimistic about him than not. Volquez stunk with a capital "S" in spring training, had an ERA over 11.00, and Huntington was being excoriated for wasting $5 million on this bum.  He ended up leading the team in wins and will be getting the ball in the Wild Card game tomorrow night, and no one is complaining about it.

No mention was made of Tony Watson or Mark Melancon, and who even saw Vance Worley, let alone John Holdzcom, when gazing into the future back in March?

Oh, and there was one name I never mentioned at all.  Josh Harrison, and he turned out to be the story of the year for the Pirates.  When he was thought of at all, it was as the "25th guy on the roster", and okay utility guy, but if he was starting for you, well, you were in a lot of trouble.  When the right field position wasn't producing, Harrison played there and hit, when Starling Marte was slumping or injured, Harrison played in left and hit, and when Pedro Alvarez' season completely unravelled, Harrison took over and became the everyday third baseman.  He made the All-Star team, challenged for the NL batting title up until the last game of the season, and he will get votes, deservedly so, for the MVP award.

So I never saw the J-Hay Express coming, but do you want to tell me that YOU did?

Now it's on to the Post-Season.  A one game playoff is a pure crap shoot, and anything can happen.  If the Pirates get past the Giants, I think they have a shot against the Nationals.  After that, well, we'll just see what happens.

However, any way you look at it, it was another terrific season.

All Games Count - Even the Ones in April

On this Labor Day, 2014, the Pirates sit at  71-65 in third place in the NL  Central, two games out of first place and two games out of the final wild Card spot.  By all accounts, it has been a pretty exciting season, and it looks like the Bucs are going to give us a nice ride over the final month of the season.  

Just for fun, I decided to do a little research to put to rest the old cliche that now that it's September and the weather gets chilly and the stadiums get packed, these are the games that "really count".  In point of fact, those games played in the chilly days of April before sparse crowds actually count too.  Here is how the team has fared, month-by-month:

April 10-18
May 16-12
June 17-10
July 15-11
August 13-14

So, had the Pirates been able to reverse that April record and gone 18-10, today they would 79-57, and would have far and away, the best record in the National League.  Even had they just scraped by in April at 14-14, their record today would be 75-61, which would still be the best record in the League.  And keep in mind that some of those additional April wins could possibly have been additional losses for the Brewers or Cardinals.

Moral of the Story:  All Games Count - Even the Ones in April.

The Bucs now have 26 games remaining.  I had predicted at the beginning of the season that they would win 89 games.  They will have to go 18-8 to achieve that, and that is really asking a lot, but if they do, then I'd say the NL Central championship would be theirs.   Playing .500, 13-13, would give then 84 wins and would probably not be good enough for a wild card spot. 16-10 would probably put them in the playoffs.  It's asking a lot, but the team is capable of doing it.  And as April and that stretch in mid-August showed, they ware also capable of going 11-15.  

Either way, it is going to be an exciting ride to the finish.

LET'S GO BUCS!!!!

Are We Back to Hoping for .500?

Nine days ago, I wrote the following in this space:

The Pirates now face ten games against three really good teams - the Tigers, Nationals, and Braves.  These ten games, I think, are going to tell us a lot about just how meaningful the following five weeks of the season will be for the Buccos.

Well, nine of those ten games have been played and the Pirates have a record of 2-7 to show for it.  At best (assuming that they will beat the Braves tonight), they will be only three games over .500 at the conclusion of this ten game stretch, and they could well be only one game over break even. They will then have only 35 games remaining in the season, and 21 of those games will be against the Brewers, Cardinals, and Reds, against whom the Bucs have complied a 13-26 record so far in 2014.

I am thinking that at this point, merely playing .500 for the season will be a severe challenge for this team.  There are a lot of reasons WHY this team is where they are right now.   If you have any interest in this subject at all, you're familiar with them and you've heard them a million times already, so I'll spare you.

Just saying that perhaps it's time we adjust our expectations for the '14 Buccos.

Some Pirates Thoughts

Before settling in to watch the Pirates-Nats game tonight (currently 3-0 Nats in the third inning), some thoughts and observations.

Observation #1

I do not usually go crazy over criticizing and savaging the Pirates front office over every little move they make, but I have to say that I got a little P.O.'d when listening to the game on, I believe, Wednesday night, and hearing Greg Brown and John Wehner  launch into a dialog about how it is going to be pretty much impossible for the team to re-sign Russell Martin for 2015 any beyond, because, gosh, you know Russell has indicated that he might want to test the market to see what his value might be, and, you just know that one of those crazy big market, cash-rich teams is going to make some crazy offer that the Pirates just will never be able to match, and it would be good business for them to do so anyway.   

I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing.  The whole thing just smacked of being orders from on high (Nutting and/or Coonelly and/or Huntington) telling the broadcasters to start spreading the word that "we ain't going to sign Martin and it's not our fault - it's Martin's fault and the fault of the Angels/Yankees/Red Sox/take-your-pick".  Hey, the announcers are paid by the Pirates, and who among us hasn't done things at our employers' behest that we didn't necessarily like, but that was really insulting to the audience's intelligence, and I can't believe that Brown and Wehner kept a straight face while doing it.  As one Pirate Chatter put it on Facebook, it was a line of b.s. akin to parents preparing their six year old for the fact that the family dog was about to be put to sleep.

Observation #2

Michael Martinez has been playing second base in place of an injured Neil Walker.  Martinez is hitting .135.  You read that right One-Three-Five.  He also made an error in the Tigers game that may  - and I emphasize may - have cost the Pirates a chance to go into extra innings in that game.  A Pirate Chatter made a statistical case that Martinez may be among the dozen or so worst players in all of baseball history!! All. Of. Baseball. History.

Now I realize that when you lose an all-star caliber player, which Walker has been this season, to injury, you are not going to replace him with a player of equal talent.  But really, in all of organized baseball, couldn't the Pirates have found somebody, anybody, better than Michael Martinez?  I mean...

Observation #3

The Pirates make a waiver deal and acquire relief pitcher John Axford.  Axford was once an All-Star (at least, I think he was), but like many older relief pitchers, he's not what he used to be.  At best, he is an improvement over guys like Pimental and Gomez, and he may take some of the strain off of Hughes and Watson and Wilson.  It's a deal that could be of marginal help to the team.  It's not worth celebrating with champagne and dancing in the streets, but it's not one that is cause for boiling up tar and feathers for the Front Office, either.

Pirates at the Crossroads

How do you explain the rather curious hex that the San Diego Padres, hardly one of baseball's elite, have had on the Pirates at PNC Park over the last fourteen seasons?  Oh, it was easy to explain when the Pirates mostly stunk for most of that time, but now, the Pirates are pretty good, and they still can't beat that outfit.  This past weekend's 1-2 showing against the Padres was just a continuation of a depressing trend.

I know that I am not alone in scratching my head over the Pirates rather curious decision not to put Andrew McCutchen and/or Neil Walker on the DL and play, essentially, with a 23 man roster for the past week, while sending such stiffs as Jason Nix, Michael Martinez, and Brent Morel (since shipped out) to face actual Major League competition.  It prompts the following thoughts and conjectures:

1. McCutchen and Walker aren't really hurt that bad.  However, nothing over the weekend gave any indication that this is the case.
2. The Pirates thought they could blow throughout the Marlins and Padres while playing shorthanded and without competent major league players in the lineup.  Guess what? The other teams get paid, too.
3. With the recall of Gregory Polanco earlier in the season, the Pirates have no one in the minor leagues who can play in the outfield or serve as a fourth or fifth outfielder in place of McCutchen.  That apparently includes Jose Tabata, who I am guessing will never wear a Pirate uniform again.
4. It might also include Andrew Lambo, who is tearing up the International League since he returned from injury.
5. After he sat out several games, why burn Walker as a pinch hitter on Saturday night? His 15 day DL clock states all over again now should the team decide he needs to go on the list.
6. Again, Jason Nix and Michael Martinez.  Really?  I didn't think it was possible to have anyone make me long for the return of Clint Barmes, but these guys have pulled it off.

The Pirates now face ten games against three really good teams - the Tigers, Nationals, and Braves.  These ten games, I think, are going to tell us a lot about just how meaningful the following five weeks of the season will be for the Buccos.

The Bucs at the Break

The All-Star Break, the figurative, if not the literal, half-way point of the season is upon us.

If someone asked you on Opening Day that the Pirates would be 3.5 games out of first place at the Break, you'd have probably said, "Not perfect, but okay, I'll take it."

However, if someone had said that there would be not one, not two, but three teams in front of them at that point, that would probably have given you some cause for concern.

The Pirates now sit at 49-46, a pace that will get them 84 wins on the season.  Not going to get you into the post-season.

Against every team except Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, the Pirates are 36-20, a pace that would get you 104 wins over a 162 game season.  Terrific!!!

Against the Brewers (3-10), Cardinals (6-7), and Reds (4-9), they are 13-26, a pace that would get you 108 losses over 162 games.  Terrible!!!!

The old baseball aphorism is "break even against the good teams, beat up on the bad teams".  The Pirates are doing half of that equation, but it seems that the three teams ahead of them in the Central are just better than them.  Maybe not by much, but a .333 winning percentage says a lot.

Does that mean it's over for the Pirates?  Certainly not, but it's not going to be easy.  Andrew McCutchen is going to need help, and the starting pitching needs to improve.  It's hard to be confident in them, the pitching staff, as a whole based on the first 95 games.  And what will the front office due to bolster the team come July 31?

I believe that there are 18 games left with the Brewers, Cards, and Reds.  Is it possible that they go 12-6 in those games?  They are pretty much going to have to do that, because I am not sure that they can maintain a 104 win pace against the rest of the schedule.

Just my quick & dirty thoughts.

The Pirates, One-Third Through

At the conclusion of the Pirates' 2-1 victory over the Dodgers on Friday, they had played their 54th game of the season.  They had, literally, completed one-third of the 2014 season with a record of 25-29.

So, where are they?

This has not been a continuation of the magical 2013 season.  Disappointments have been many - the starting pitching, with the exception of Gerrit Cole, has been lousy, the bullpen has been overloaded, Jordy Mercer can't hit, Pedro Alvarez continues to frustrate the fan base, losing Russell Martin to the DL really hurt, and no production from the right field spot.  And, oh yeah, the front office did NOTHING in the off-season to improve the team, and just when in the hell are they going to bring up Gregory Polanco?

On the other hand, there have been bright spots - MVP Andrew McCutchen is hitting over .300 and leading the league in walks, Neil Walker is having an All-Star caliber season, Cole, as noted above, has the makings of an honest-to-God staff ace, the likes of which the Pirates haven't seen since Doug Drabek, and with the trade for Ike Davis, the first base platoon of Davis and Gaby Sanchez is looking pretty good.  And who knew that Josh Harrison would turn into a potential season-saver?

Prior to the season, many people thought that the Pirates might be headed for a bit of a comedown after last year's 94 win season.  Such things have happened before in Pirates history when a promising season was followed by a disappointing one just before another excellent one (1958-59-60, and 1988-89-90/91/92;  you can look it up), so perhaps this isn't surprising, and maybe it shouldn't be too worrying either.

Many doomsayers may say "yeah, and looked what happened last night, a 12-2 blowout loss." That's the least thing to worry about.  There is still two-thirds of a season to be played.  At this  point, I am going to stand by my pre-season prediction of 89 wins.  I also said that would be good for one of the two NL wild card slots.  Not so sure about that one right now, but let's keep hoping.

And, hey, Gregory Polanco is on the way.  It will be good to do away with the wailing and gnashing of teeth over him NOT being here, but let's not put too much pressure on the kid who, after all, will be facing major league pitching for the first time.  In his first year, similarly heralded prospect Barry Bonds hit only .223 in 113 games in 1986 (although he did hit 16 HRs and scored 72 runs that year; he was pretty good).

And speaking of predictions, the exalted members of the famed Allegheny Sandwich Shoppe Breakfast Club went on record with some predictions for the Pirates going forward.  Here are my answers to the questions posed:

Total wins for the Pirates in 2014: 89
Total HR's for Pedro Alvarez: 29
Final BA for Andrew McCutchen: .311
Total wins for Francisco Liriano: 8

We'll see what happens.  

The Pirates One Month In

I had decided early on that I was not going to make any extensive commentary on the 2014 Pirates until a reasonable number of games had been played and a reasonable number of At Bats and Innings Pitched had been accumulated.  You know, don't want to be suckered in one way or another by the dreaded "small sample sizes".  Well, it has now been four weeks since Opening Day, twenty-six games have been played, the starting pitchers have 4-5 starts under their belts, and the everyday players are hovering around 100 AB's, so it's time to take stock.

Before I do, though, let's think back on that Opening Day game.  It was a beautiful day, excitement was in the air, and the Pirates won.  It was a ten inning 1-0 win with a walk-off home run by Neil Walker.  Euphoric!  What was not much commented upon was the fact that the Pirates that day were unable to scratch out any kind of offense, much less any runs, for the first nine innings.  We didn't know it then, but that was a portent of things to come.

As of this morning, the team is 10-16, in fourth place in the NL Central and 8.5 games out of first place.  Offensively, the Bucs rank 28th among MLB teams in batting, 26th in OPS, and 21st in runs scored.  Interestingly enough, they are 8th on home runs.  

As for individual players, MVP Andrew McCutchen is doing his part after a slow start with 4 HR, 14 RBI and a .908 OPS.  He has also drawn 21 walks.  Neil Walker has 6 HR and 12 RBI, but is only batting .235.  After that, there isn't much good news.

• Pedro Alvarez does have 6 HR and 14 RBI, but is currently mired in one of his monumental fallow periods and is batting .172 with an OPS of .667, and has struck out 25 times.  I like the guy, and I love his power, but it is getting harder and harder to defend him when he can't hit over .200, much less .250 or so.
• And speaking of strike outs, Starling Marte leads the team with 37 of them and has only 9 walks to go with them.  He is batting only .229 with an OBP barely over .300.  Not acceptable for a lead-off hitter.
• And the short stop position is a huge black hole.  After batting over .280 last year, Jordy Mercer was, justifiably, given the starting job at short where he is now batting only .167 (2 HR, 3 RBI) with a pathetic .404 OPS.  The alternative is Clint Barmes, and his numbers are even worse (albeit with only 26 at bats).

As for the pitching staff, three of the starters, Francisco Liriano, Charlie Morton, and Wandy Rodriguez sport a combined record of 0-8.  Gerrit Cole is 2-2 with a 3.18 ERA and has delivered pretty much as expected.  And perhaps it tells you all you need to know that a case can be made that in the first month, anyway, the team's best starter was the Whipping Boy of Spring Training, Edinson Volquez.  He is now 1-2 with a 3.21 ERA, and that ERA was below 2.00 until his outing against St. Louis yesterday, his only poor outing of the season.  The bullpen, with the exception of Jason Grilli and his three blown saves, has been more than adequate.  The staff ERA of 3.65 is twelfth in MLB, so you can't complain too much about the pitching, but you can't expect them to win when the offense is producing two runs or fewer in most games.

So what can we look forward to?  The Front Office showed that they will move to shore up holes when they traded for first baseman Ike Davis from the Mets, although, after hitting a grand slam in his second game as a Pirate, he has cooled off, and is now hitting only .206.  Will they continue to make such moves?  The biggest elephant in the room is, of course, outfielder Gregory Polanco, currently playing in Indianapolis and batting .400 with 4 HR, 24 RBI, and an other-worldly OPS of 1.104.  On a team that is producing nothing in the way of offense, do you think it might be worth a shot to bring him up NOW?

This gets into the whole Years-of-Control and Pirates-Pinching-Pennies issues that we have talked about endlessly over the years, and that I just don't want to rehash here.  I will however point out that two weeks ago, the awful Houston Astros, who, unlike the Pirates, have no hope for post-season play this year, brought up their hot-shot number one prospect, George Springer, to the big club.  It doesn't seem like that Astros are all that concerned about years-of-control issues with Springer if they feel he can help the team now.  I should note, though, that Springer, in only 47 AB's, is hitting .170 with no home runs and only 2 RBI, so maybe this would only serve to bolster the Pirates' case if they choose not to promote Polanco.

Interestingly enough, on Neal Huntington's weekly radio show yesterday, the subject of Gregory Polanco was not raised.  In fact, his name was not mentioned even once.  My guess is that the content of that show is controlled by Neal like Joe Stalin controlled what Pravda used to print back in the day.

Well, we can only hope that the bats start to come alive, and soon.  One month's worth of games are not a fluke, and Pirates fans can only hope that it is a trend that can be reversed.