Wrapping It Up On Corey Dickerson

Shortly after the Pirates traded for Corey Dickerson back in March, I expressed a concern that while the numbers on the back of his 2017 Tampa Bay baseball card looked quite good, his production dropped off alarmingly that season after the All-Star Game.  So, from time to time during this season, I have been putting Dickerson's season with the Pirates under the microscope to see just exactly how he's been doing.  Today, I want to take a final look at Dickerson's initial season with the Buccos.  Here it is, on a month-by-month basis:

(Disclaimer: I realizes that there are probably better ways to segment any player's season, but month-by-month was readily available on the Pirates website, so that's what you get from The Grandstander!)

Corey Dickerson - 2018	AB	Hits	BA	Runs	HR	RBI	OPS
March	6	1	0.167	1	0	1	0.333
April	93	30	0.323	15	3	15	0.907
May	101	31	0.307	9	2	15	0.799
June	76	20	0.263	8	0	1	0.603
July	70	28	0.400	17	6	12	1.253
August	90	19	0.211	4	0	2	0.486
September	68	22	0.324	11	2	9	0.920
YTD	504	151	0.300	65	13	65	0.804
Rank on team	2nd	2nd	1st	4th	3rd	6th	4th

Compared to 2017, Dickerson's HR totals decreased (27 to 13), RBI stayed constant (62 to 65), BA went up (.282 to .300), and OPS went down slightly (.815 to .804).  When you look at the bottom line, Dickerson had a pretty solid, if unspectacular, season as a Pirate.  And in the interests of looking at both sides of the ball, Dickerson had 263 defensive chances in the outfield this year and was charged with only one (1) error.  He had seven (7) assists, third among Pirate outfielders. 

What really strikes you though, is the peaks and valleys that comprised his season.   He started great in April into mid-May, slumped in June, had a great July, slumped in August, which also included some time on the DL, and had a strong September.  This is interesting, but how meaningful is it?  Well, take a look at what the Pirates as a team did on a month-by-month basis:

Pirates by Month 2018	Wins	Losses	%
March	1	0	1.000
April	16	12	0.571
May	12	15	0.444
June	10	16	0.385
July	17	9	0.654
August	10	17	0.370
September	16	10	0.615
TOTAL	82	79	0.509

Great start in April to mid-May, lousy in late May and June, a great July, lousy again in August, and a strong September.

Coincidence?  Can you say "As Dickerson goes, so go the Pirates"?  Of course, that is way too simple an explanation of the Pirates overall performance this season, but it is still kind of eerie, don't you think?

I am still formulating my final analysis of the 2018 Pirates, so watch for that in the days ahead.

A Bet I Was Happy To Lose

Back in the first week of September, the Pirates' record sat at 69-71.  They had 22 games remaining, nine against bad teams (Marlins, Royals, Reds), thirteen against good teams (Cubs, Cardinals, Brewers).  They would have had to go 13-9 during that stretch to finish above .500.  I felt that they would not be able to do it, and I went on The Facebook and offered to bet $2 on it to the first five people who accepted the bet.  Only four people, Tim Baker, Andy Terrick, Ryan Frankhauser, and Len Martin took me up on it.

(Yes, I was only willing to put ten of my own dollars at risk here.  I'm not a complete idiot!)

Anyway, last night's win over the Reds was win #81. Combined with the cancellation of the now meaningless rained out game with the Marlins, the Pirates are assured of a winning, i.e., an above .500 season.  FYI, the Bucs went 6-7 against those "good" teams, and are 6-0 with two left to play against the "bad" teams.

I have to admit, I never saw this coming at the beginning of the season, so good for the team for this accomplishment.  I have many thoughts on the 2018 Pirates, and I will share those at length later  in the week when the season officially concludes.

Tim - Your Thomas Jefferson is in the mail.

Len - I will square away with you at our next breakfast.

Andy and Ryan - Thank you for how you have asked me to earmark your winnings.

Oh, and I had one other bet on the likelihood of an above .500 season, so, Jim Haller, your October breakfast is on me.

I will close with a pic of the guys who I deem to be the Co-MVP's for this year's squad.

Trevor Williams and Jameson Taillon

Like I said, it's a bet that I don't mind losing.

Monday, Monday.....

A lot of what I like to call the exigencies of real life have been taking place in The Grandstander's world of late, which has caused what is now a thirteen day hiatus from the keyboard.  Lots to catch up on, but let's confine it the the wide, wide world of sports, shall we.....

STEELERS

I never got around to writing a pre-season preview/prediction post for the Steelers (those exigencies I just mentioned), but if I had I probably would have said that (a) the Steelers would win the AFC North Division, (b) that they would be contenders to reach and win the Super Bowl, and (c) all this would be contingent upon Ben Roethlisberger staying healthy and not all of a sudden playing like a 36 year old guy who is reaching the end of the line.

The season has started and in two games they have blown a 14 point lead in the fourth quarter and were tied by the improved but still lousy Cleve Brownies, a game where Roethlisberger turned the ball over five times, and lost to the Kaycee Chiefs 42-37 in a game where it appeared that the North Allegheny High School defense lined up for the Steelers when the Chiefs had the ball.  On the bright side, Roethlisberger turned in terrific performance, so maybe he ain't done yet.  As for the rest of the team....

Only two games have been played, still lots of time, and blah blah blah, but the overwrought drama that seems to always surround this team looks like it MAY be too much to overcome.  The Le'Veon Bell holdout, the petulance (to use a mild term) of Antonio Brown, the mediocrity (to use another mild term) of the entire defensive corps, the Diva tendencies of Roethlisberger, what appears to be an undisciplined coaching staff.....

It's going to make for an interesting season.  Maybe not a good season, but certainly an interesting one.

PIRATES

A week ago, with the Pirates sitting at 69-71 with 22 games to play (against the lousy Reds, Royals, and Marlins; 13 against the good Cubs, Cardinals, and Brewers), I went on The Facebook and offered to bet $2 to the first five people who accepted the bet that they would finish below .500.  Four people took me up on it, and here is where that bet stands, eight games later.

The Pirates have gone 5-3 in that stretch (2-0 against the Lousy teams, 3-3 against the Good teams) and are now 74-74.  They have thirteen games remaining (I am guessing that that postponed game against the Marlins, rescheduled for Monday, October 1, will not be replayed) and need to go 7-6 to finish 81-80.  If they go 4-2 against the Lousies, they need only go 3-4 against the Goods to achieve it.

I figure that there is a good chance that I could be out eight bucks once all is said and done.  Tim, Len, Andy, and Ryan, you maybe shouldn't start making definite plans on how to spend your windfall just yet, but maybe you could think about it.

Oh, and I may also be buying Jim Haller's breakfast in October.

On the other hand, here we are sitting on the edge of our seats wondering if the Pirates can win a mere 81 games in a season.  Kind of pathetic, but you take your thrills as a sports fan where you can get 'em, I suppose.

PITT

Pitt now sits at 2-1 (1-0 in conference).  They defeated a Division II (or whatever the NCAA calls these schools these days) team in Albany, were positively pasted by Penn State 51-6, and held on to defeat Georgia Tech 24-19.

The Penn State debacle was disappointing, not only for the magnitude of the point spread, but for the behavior of Pat Narduzzi.  At the beginning of the game, he went apeshit on his captains for incorrectly calling the coin toss, incurred a personal foul penalty for running on to the field to argue with the zebras, and seemed to heap an inordinate amount of blame on his placekick holder and punter for botching a few snaps.  Yep, a missed extra point here, a botched punt there, pretty soon you lose by forty-five points.

Well, the Panthers did seem to shake it off against Georgia Tech, but they did take a 21-0 lead and had to sweat out a GT onside kick at the end of the game.  As guy in the men's room said to me between the third and fourth quarters, Pitt did everything in their power to make sure that Tech made a game out of it.

Also, Pitt has scored 0, 0, and 3 points in the second halves of each of their three games.  What is up with that?

PENN STATE

Penn State is a good team, maybe even a very good team that will probably contend for the Big Ten title and maybe even for a spot in the CFP.  James Franklin is also a good coach, maybe a very good coach, and perhaps a top echelon college football coach, but here is how I am always going to remember him.

In the final minute of the Pitt game, with a 51-6 lead in a driving rainstorm, Penn State fumbled, Pitt recovered, and Franklin challenged the ruling and had the refs review the play.  Again, there was less than a minute to play and PSU was leading by FORTY-FIVE POINTS.  The ruling was upheld, and Franklin put a sour look on his face.  It was move that totally and completely redefined the term "chickenshit".

As a group, there are few people more unlikable that big time college football coaches.  Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney....you know who they are.  You like them when they coach YOUR team, but, objectively speaking, they are hard people to like.

Group photo taken at  recent 

NCAA Football Coaches Convention.

Add James Franklin to the list.   To all my friends and family out there who are Penn State fans, I don't necessarily want to see the Lions lose, but I sure would love to see James Franklin get dealt a big heaping helping of humility somewhere along the line.

ROBERT MORRIS

Yeah, I don't talk much about Robert Morris football on here, and with good reason these past few years.  The Colonials have a new head coach this year, Bernard Clark, who has to rebuild a program that has really been in the dumper these last few years.  They are 1-2, and on Saturday they were pasted by James Madison University, 73-7.  JMU is a powerhouse, but, still, it looks like a tough road ahead for Clark and his Colonials.  It should also be noted that this rout by JMU was led by the quarterback transfer-from-Pitt, Ben DiNucci.  So, good for DiNucci.

Sports Notes - Various Topics

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box, Wide, Wide World of Sports Division.....

The Pittsburgh Pirates had a spectacular month of July, sporting a record of 17-9 that shot them back into playoff contention.  August has not been so kind.  With three games remaining, the August ledger shows them at 8-16.  Fourth place in the Central, 14 games out of first place.  Eight and one-half games out of the Wild Card spot with nine (9!!) teams ahead of them.  With thirty games remaining, they have to go 18-12 just to finish over .500.

And here is some more good news.  On his weekly radio show on Sunday, Neal Huntington led off with this quote:

"As we look at next year's club, the core of it is this year's club."

How would you like to be a ticket sales rep for that Pirates with THAT as your marketing slogan this off-season?

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Le'Veon Bell has indicated that he will sign his franchise tag deal with the Steelers and report for practice on Monday, one week before the regular season opener.  All the Steelers players and coaches are saying the right things.  You know, "He's the best...it's just business....we're glad he's back...we need him to get where we want to go"...and blah blah blah.

When this season ends, and Bell goes and collects his pot of free agency gold in 2019, these same players, the ones who have been banging their heads at training camp and in exhibition games will no doubt tell us what they REALLY thought of Bell's hold outs these last two seasons.  You know, like they all told us about what kind of a teammate James Harrison was in his final year with the team after the Steelers canned him.

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Pitt opens its 2018 football season on Saturday against the mighty Great Danes of Albany University. I am looking forward to being at Heinz Field on Saturday to see Albany collect it's huge paycheck, and to spending another convivial season, my sixth, amongst the members of the ticket group I am in.  That's will always be fun.

As for how is Pitt going to fare this season, I can claim no insight or expertise to make a valid prediction.  However, I do know this: In the three seasons under Head Coach Pat Narduzzi (or HCPN, as he will be known for the remainder off this blogging season), Pitt has gone 8-5, 8-5, 5-7 (0-2 in bowl games; they failed to qualify for a bowl last year, and that's not easy to do in college football these days).  It's time for the Panthers to take that proverbial "next step" under Narduzzi.  Not sure what that means, but it would sure be nice to see Pitt in the race for a slot in the ACC Championship game in November.  HCPN has already predicted that they will be in that game. Can't say that he's shying away from putting himself on the spot.

Oh, and Pitt is relying heavily on sophomore quarterback Kenny Pickett, who as started all of one game in his career.  Granted, that game was a spectacular upset win over a 10-0 (or were they 11-0 at the time?) Miami, and Pickett sure was great in that one.  Still, Pitt is putting  a lot of eggs in the inexperienced Pickett's basket.  I hope it works out.

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On the national scene, you are all familiar with the sordid tale of Urban Meyer and the ridiculous slap on the wrist that Ohio State handed him last week.  This has been written about extensively by many, many talented national sportswriters and commentators,  so I won't restate the story here. Suffice to say, most people, at least most people outside of the state of Ohio, feel that Meyer should have been fired.  I especially like one columnist I read, and I regret that I can't remember who it was, who has renamed the Buckeyes coach "Urban Liar".

Well, at least we know who and what runs the show at THE Ohio State University, and considering their track record over the years with Woody Hayes and Jim Tressel, I guess we shouldn't really be surprised.

As for me, I have decided to effect any own form of protest.  I have decided that I will NOT watch any college football game this season involving Ohio State.  That could include several games of consequence, including games against Penn State and Michigan, and it could also include games in the College Football Playoffs in January.  Although  I would think - hope? - that that CFP Committee would bend over backwards to NOT include Ohio State in that four team set-up, no matter what their record.

Now, I know that little old me sitting in Pittsburgh, PA not watching a given football game or games on a given weekend or weekends will not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but it will make me feel better about myself.  So I have that going for me, which is nice.  (Two classic movie lines referenced in one paragraph!)

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The other big announcement in recent days was confirmation that Tiger Woods will meet Phil Mickelson, head to head, in a $9 million televised golf match over Thanksgiving weekend.  Of course the Nine Large will be coming from someone else's pockets - yours!  Yep, this made for TV event will be available only on a Pay-Per-View basis, probably cost you twenty-five to thirty bucks to watch this event.  

Now I love Tiger and Phil, and they are arguably the two greatest and most important golfers (and in the case of Woods, one of the most important athletes) in this century, but this is pure money grab, worthy only of fading boxers, MMA fighters, and Vince McMahon.  Also, between them, Woods and Mickelson have won exactly one tournament in the last five years.  I don't begrudge anyone making a buck, but guys of their stature should really be above this.  

Now, if they were going to play a skins game for $1,000 a hole OF THEIR OWN MONEY....that I might be willing to watch.

Pirates Circling the Drain

On Wednesday morning of this week, I made the following post on Facebook:

Since the unbelievable run that the Pirates had in July, which included an eleven game winning streak, and since the Archer and Kela acquisitions on July 31, they have gone 1-1 against the Cubs, 1-2 against the Cardinals, 2-1 against the Rockies, 2-2 against the Giants, and 0-1 against the Twins, a total of 6-7. Not good enough to feed the bulldog or overcome five teams for the last WC slot. I think that the performance over the last 13 games is a kind of self-correction and that this is a case of water seeking its own level, or "regression to the mean" to use the overused SABRmetric term. In truth, the team was never very good, playoff-contender-wise, and would struggle just to play .500 in 2018. I said at the outset of the season that if they finished over .500, Hurdle should be manager of the year. The fact that they are over the .500 mark today is remarkable to me. Maybe they can sustain this for the 41 games they have remaining, but I'm not sure that that's the way to bet at this point.

Since that post, the Pirates lost another game to the Twins, and have lost back-to-back 1-0 games to the Cubs.  They are now one game under .500 at 61-62.  They are 6-10 since July 31 and are currently riding a five game losing streak.  They are 6.5 games out of the second wild card spot, and, more damning, thay would need to overcome five other teams to get to that slot.  They are in fourth place in the NL Central, eleven games behind the Cubs.

At the point, the Pirates will be simply playing out the string in 2018.  The big challenge will be: Can they finish the season over .500?   They will need to go 21-18 the rest of the way to win 82 games.  They have shown that they can play at such a level, but, as I said in the Facebook post above, at this point, it's not the smart way to bet.

The interesting things to see from this point forward all be....

• Will the players continue to battle it out, or just go through the motions?
• Will Neal Huntington have a version of the fire sale he so wanted to have on July 31 at the August 31 waiver deal deadline instead? (I would think that there would be a spot for David Freese on some contending team's roster.)
• Will the team start giving significant playing time to future players like Kevin Newman?  At this juncture, what would be the point in NOT playing a guy like this?

I will stand by my pre-season prediction of 73 wins.

Watch the games and enjoy them as individual contests, and think of the money you're going to save by NOT having to purchase Pirates Post-Season 2018 gear.

As Dickerson Goes, So Go The Pirates?

Following up on my July 20 post about Pirate left fielder Corey Dickerson....

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2018/07/on-corey-dickerson.html

....let's take another snapshot of Dickerson's month-by-month performance, through the games of August 15.

Corey Dickerson - 2018	AB	Hits	BA	Runs	HR	RBI	OPS
March	6	1	0.167	1	0	1	0.333
April	93	30	0.323	15	3	15	0.907
May	101	31	0.307	9	2	15	0.799
June	76	20	0.263	8	0	1	0.603
July	70	28	0.400	17	6	12	1.253
August	40	7	0.175	2	0	2	0.386
YTD	386	117	0.303	52	11	56	0.819
Rank on team	2	1st	1st	4th	T-3rd	5	3

This is what we know:

• The Pirates were incredibly hot from Opening Day up until mid-May or so.  So was Dickerson.
• Dickerson cooled off considerably from that point through the end of June.  So did the Pirates.
• Dickerson had an absolutely torrid month of July, hitting .400.  The Pirates also had a torrid month of July that featured an eleven game winning streak and put the team back into playoff contention.
• Everyone knew that neither the pace set by Dickerson nor the pace set by the team in July was sustainable.  It wasn't.  Halfway through the month of August, Dickerson has been, well, awful at the plate, and the team as a whole hasn't been much better (5-7 in the month).

So I once again ask the question posed in the headline, as Corey Dickerson goes, so go the Pirates?

Is Dickerson the cause of the Pirates playing well or lousy, or vice versa?

Discuss.