Oh, What A Night....Pirates 6 - Cardinals 5 in 14!

With all due respect for the win in the 2013 Wild Card Game against the Reds, the Pirates 14 inning win over the Cardinals last night surely must rank as perhaps the most strange, weird, exciting, and (perhaps, time will tell) important Pirate win in the fifteen year history of PNC Park.  I am pleased to say that I put an ass-groove in my sofa by staying with all fourteen innings and all five hours and four minutes of it.

If you care enough about this sort of thing, you already know what happened, so I'll give no play-by-play recap here, but I will say that this is the kind of game that makes baseball the best sport there is.  Consider.....

• Horrendous umpiring
• Second inning ejections of Francisco Cervelli and Clint Hurdle
• Some innings where the Pirates looked totally impotent at the plate with some god-awful at bats
• Key hits when it counted from unlikely sources (AJ Burnett and Chris Stewart)
• Great pitching from seven Pirates pitchers (same with the Cardinals)
• A triple and continued great defense from Jung Ho Kang
• Stewart picking Yadier Molina off of first base
• A key hit from Pedro Alvarez against a left hander
• The possibility of Gerrit Cole being used as a pinch hitter
• A key hit by Neil Walker to lead of the bottom of the fourteenth
• And, of course, that walk-off home run by McCutchen

What a game, and it gives the Bucs a chance to take three of four against the Cardinals with a win tonight.

Let me take detour from the game itself to talk about the Fox Network telecast of the game last night.  If you were watching this game with an eye on The Faceboook, it is apparent that most people take the knee-jerk reaction to dislike the national announcers before a pitch is even thrown.  However, I really enjoyed the Fox broadcast team of Matt Vasgersian and John Smoltz.  Vasgersian did a smooth job of play-by-play and Smoltz is really smart and offers great insight into the game.  He has taken all the smarts that led to a terrific career and a spot in Cooperstown right into the booth with him.

No, paranoid Pirates fans, I do NOT think that they favored the Cardinals, and, yes, I felt they were equal in their praise of the Pirates and their players.  (There's a reason that broadcasters "slobber" over Yadier Molina, folks - he really IS that good.)  I loved how the fact that Vasgersian has to be in Cincinnati this afternoon to broadcast the Futures Game became a comic thread of the broadcast as the game went on and on and on.  This is entertainment, folks, it ain't hearts and livers, as we used to say at Highmark.

I also liked how Vasgersian and Smoltz spoke of another subtext of the game, Andrew McCutchen's 17 game hitting streak.  Despite an 0-for-3 start followed by three bases on balls, how Cutch was STILL getting chances to continue the streak, which he ended up doing in a most spectacular fashion.  It should also be noted that as soon as Walker led off the fourteenth with that single, Smoltz immediately noted that you could "not underestimate the importance of that hit.  Now the Cardinals have to pitch to McCutchen."  That's pretty keen analysis, and, of course, McCutchen made him look like a prophet.

So, I say, I'll listen to a telecast from Vasgersian and Smoltz anytime!

One cool thing about the Internet is that this morning you were able to watch the replay of Cutch's home run in three different versions: Vasgersian's call on the Fox telecast, Greg Brown's and Steve Blass' call on the Pirate radio network, and the Cardinals call on their radio broadcast.  Fabulous stuff.

As the headline says, Oh, What A Night!

The Pirates - 31 Games In

I have been fairly quiet, at least on this Blog, about the State of the Pirates in 2015.  It was my intention all along to wait until about 30 games, or approximately 20% of the season was in the books.  The conclusion of a weekend series with the Cardinals allowed for the perfect demarcation point.  Thirty-one games, almost twenty percent of the season.  

So, here we go.

The team sits at 15-16, tied for third in the NL Central, and seven games behind the Cardinals.  Certainly not what we had hoped for, but not worth jumping off of the Fort Duquesne Bridge, either.  (In case you were wondering, the 2014 team was 12-19 and the 2013 team was 17-14 after thirty-one games).  Here is one thing about this first fifth of the season that does raise a red flag for me, though.  The combined record for the Pirates against the Cardinals, Reds, and Cubs stands at 6-13; they are 11-14 in the division overall,  thanks to a 5-1 record against Milwaukee.  Still early, still a small sample size, but it is a continuation of a disturbing trend from last year when the team went 22-35 against the Cardinals, Reds, and Brewers, and 36-40 in the Central Division.  Perhaps that two-of-three series win against St. Louis this weekend will signal an upward trend going forward.

As for individual performances, the starts of Andrew McCutchen, Josh Harrison, and Jordy Mercer have been disappointing.  Up until a week ago, all three carried batting averages below .200.  McCutchen seems to have righted the ship.  In the last seven days, he has batted .333 with an OPS of .885 to bring his numbers up to .223 and .658.  Harrison and Mercer remain at .173 / .491 and .194 / .481, and, if anything, their "last 7 days" numbers appear to the trending down.

I have no concerns, none, that McCutchen will be the MVP caliber player that we have seen over the course of his career.  We have also seen this before with Mercer.  In 2014, he was awful at the plate through mid-May, but was solid from that point forward.  The team can only hope that that happens again. As for Harrison, many people had to wonder about the breakout season he had in 2014.  Was it real, or was he a One Hit Wonder who would regress to being the utility guy he had been throughout his career?  The jury is still out on that, and I am sure that the people who made the decision to give him that big contract are rolling their rosary beads over the outcome on how this one will play out.

As for others, Starling Marte looks like he will have a big breakout season, Gregory Polonco is still learning, and Neal Walker is having a solid year at .287 with a .767 OPS (and his "last 7" numbers, .389 and 1.059, are off the charts)

And then there is Pedro Alvarez.  He seems to be handling the move to first base reasonably well, defensively.  His offensive numbers, however, sit at .217 with 5 HR, 14 RBI, and a.753 OPS.  Oh, and 27 K's in 92 at bats.  Alvarez has now accumulated over 2,100 at bats in the major leagues.  We can probably draw some conclusions.  He's going to hit 25-30 HR's in a season, drive in about 90 runs, hit about .235, and strike out 180 or so times.  He will make our jaws drop with some of the blasts that he will hit, and he will drive us totally nuts when he looks completely impotent at the plate swinging and missing while striking out in key situations.  Love him or hate him, what we have seen is what he is.

As far as the pitching is concerned, I will only say this: if the starting pitching continues to perform as it has over the first 31 games, I will sign up for that right now and take my chances with how the team will fare in the standings when 162 games are in the books.  Gerrit Cole has been a real ace, A.J Burnett has been a revelation, Liriano has been solid, and even the back end of the rotation, Worley and Locke have been serviceable.  The back end of the bullpen, Hughes, Watson, and Melancon (after a shaky start) are getting the job done, and there are a couple of other guys in the pen who are intriguing, particularly Arqueimedes Caminero.  I want to see more of him as the season rolls on.

And how about that guy pictured at the top of this post?  The decision to bring Jung Ho Kang north with the team caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth among some Pirates followers.  Heck, even the decision to sign him in the first place out of the Korean Baseball Organization was questioned.  Not so much today.  Granted, questions remain, but as of this morning, Kang is hitting .333 with 2 HR, 9 RBI, and .898 OPS in only 48 at bats.  He is arguably the hottest hitter on the team.  Clint Hurdle has done a great job in finding playing time for him, and he must absolutely, one would think, continue to somehow keep him in the lineup while his bat remains hot.  He has also looked quite good in the field at both 2B and 3B.

In conclusion, yeah, you wish they were doing better, but it is early.  A well placed hit in any of those three games in St. Louis last week would have meant a three game sweep for the Pirates against  the Cards, and a record of 18-13 today, and talk of ordering playoff tickets for October.  It didn't happen that way, and we will all just see how it will even out, or if it will even out, over the course of 162 games.

There is no definitive answer as to when "Hey, it's still early" turns into "Hey, these guys better start moving here" which turns into "Hey, this season is a goner".  We just have to sit back, enjoy the action day by day, and, dare I say it, take it one game at a time.

The Kang Konundrum

It is a measure as to how far the Pirates have come in the last three seasons that the biggest story out of what has been a pretty bland Spring Training has been the fact that Andrew McCutchen has cut his trademark dreadlocks.

However, the second biggest story has involved the guy pictured to the left, Korean Baseball Organization superstar Jung Ho Kang, in whom the Pirates have invested about eleven million dollars.

Kang started great getting two hits, including a home run, it the Bucs first exhibition game.  Since then, however, not much good has happened.  In thirteen games, Kang has all of four hits in 31 at bats (.129) and has struck out twelve times.  So, what are the Pirates to do?  By all indications, Kang is coming north with the team as part of the twenty-five man roster.  Many critics feel that Kang should start in Triple-A in Indianapolis (not In The Annapolis, by the way) to accustom himself to American pitching. The fact that this will not happen, the critics say, is the Pirates Front Office making a roster move to strictly avoid embarrassing themselves over what is CLEARLY a dumbass signing (sarcasm intended) on their part.

At this point, Kang will be the twenty-fifth guy on the roster, and as I have stated on many occasions over the years, getting in an uproar over who will be the last man on the roster is a colossal waste of energy.  At this point, the guy is going to be used as pinch hitter and may play one day a week when Mercer or Walker need a rest.  And what was the alternative?  Steve Lombardozzi (who has already been sent down and will start the season at Indy)? After four years in the majors, Lombardozzi is pretty much a known quantity - a .250-ish hitting utility infielder, a perfect 25th man.  Kang, on the other hand, has, to use a Neal Huntington expression, does have a much greater upside, so I say that keeping Kang is not only the right decision from a business standpoint (that $11 million dollars!), but from a baseball standpoint as well.  And unlike the perceptions that many of us, including me, have had over the twenty year losing streak, I am confident that if it becomes obvious that Kang is not going to work - and you don't make that decision based on 31 at bats - the team will do what is necessary in the pursuit of a pennant  to assure that the best twenty-five guys are on the team.

By the way, if you place any stock in Spring Training statistics, and if you think that at least part of the Kang signing was going to send a message to Jordy Mercer, it seems to have worked.  In forty-two at bats, Mercer is hitting .333 with two home runs and an .878 OPS.

The Pirates Are On TV Today!

It has occurred to me that The Grandstander has been somewhat silent on the subject of the Pirates this off season, an off season in which the Pirates, I believe, did fairly well for themselves.  Well, as the headline mentions, the Bucs' opening Grapefruit League game this afternoon against the Blue Jays will be televised on the MLB Network today, so I suppose it's time to throw out the first (blog) pitch of the season.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing to watch this spring training will be the development and deployment of this guy, Korean League hot shot Jung Ho Kang.

You know the story.  The Pirates posted $5 million dollars to the Korean Baseball League just to have the rights to try to sign Kang, and then signed him to a multi-year contract that will pay him another $5 million.  (The very idea of the Pirates doing a deal such as this would have been positively unimaginable four or five years ago.  Kang may or may not work out for the Pirates, but the team should be applauded for this outside-the-box approach in securing talent for the major league team.)  Kang was short stop in Korea and that is where he will begin as a Pirate, but the team also indicated that they will try him out at first, second, and third base during the spring.

This raises the following questions:

• What happens to Jordy Mercer?  I can't imagine Mercer losing the SS job, but if he starts out in 2015 like he did in 2014, when he was hitting below .200 one month into the season....
• Was the 2014 performance of Josh Harrison an aberration or the real deal?  That is one of the big questions going into this season in my mind, and it seems, the team's as well.  If Harrison continues this year as he did last year, great, but if not, the team needs a Plan B, and it obviously isn't Pedro Alvarez at third.  Which leads us to perhaps the biggest question of the 2015 season....
• Pedro Alvarez at first base.  Can he adapt to the new position?  I don't think that that will be the issue.  I'm not saying that playing first base in the major leagues is easy, but let's face it, we've all seen a lot of butchers playing the position over the years.  The question is, will Pedro return to hitting 30+ home runs and driving in 100+ runs this season.  If he can do that, you won't be seeing Jung Ho Kang or any one else with a first baseman's mitt any time soon.
• The signing of Kang also makes it clear that the Pirates do not expect to have Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez after they reach free agent eligibility.  That is a topic that deserves an entirely separate Grandstander post some other day.
• And, of course, the biggest question of all:  Will the ability that Kang showed in the Korean League (40 HR power, which the Pirates are not expecting) translate to being a solid Major League ball player? As I said, it will be one of the more intriguing stories of spring training and on into the season.

Gone from the team this year are Ike Davis, Gaby Sanchez, and Travis Snyder.  New to the team are free agent signees Corey Hart and Sean Rodriguez.  Hart will be called upon to spell Alvarez at 1B, and Rodriguez will be an spare infielder and pinch hitter.  I believe that these are solid additions to the team.  Remember, these guys are being signed as bench players.  Five years ago, they would have been signed as starters.  How far this team has come.

I believe that Snyder will be missed as the fourth outfielder and a pinch hitter.  The outfield of Marte-McCutchen-Polanco is set and could be one of the best in all of MLB, so crying about who will be the fourth outfielder is yet another sign of how far the team has come.  That role will be up for grabs and among those competing for it will be Jose Tabata and Andrew Lambo.  It could be the last time around for each of these guys as far as being Pirates is concerned.

Also missing this year is catcher Russell Martin, and no doubt about it, this is a loss that will be difficult to fill.  The team is banking on newly acquired Francisco Cervelli staying healthy for 130-140 games this years, something that Cervelli has never been able to do in his career.  There are few questions about the Pirates everyday line-up, but there is no denying that there is a Big Question behind the dish for them.

The biggest question about the Pirates pitching is which one of the six starters -  Cole, Liriano, Burnett, Morton, Locke, and Worley - will not make the five man rotation.  Nice problem to have.

Lots of reasons to be optimistic about the 2015 Pirates, and it all begins this afternoon against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Let's Go Bucs!