Kevin Koch Award for today goes to this one (Cherington has a single winning season on his decade long GM resume):
I think for all his shortcomings, I can confidently say Ben Cherington is very smart. His family is well educated, he went to a top school, he has been more or less in charge of 3 organizations, and won a world series. This off season he needs to make a decision to tie himself to Shelton, or switch things up. This would be a very sought after job, especially if you're a hitting guru of sorts who thinks you can help the bats reach their potential with a ready made pitching staff. I think a new voice would be welcomed.
They just can’t lose this game today. Skenes gives them a 4-2 lead, they have to hold it. But with Holderman struggling there’s a huge gap in the pen.
There’s no way this team is going to get to 87 or 88 wins. But the core talent is there. This can be a 2012 repeat with a breakthrough in 2025, but it’s going to take some work. And the front office has not shown that they can make the requisite moves to get them over the hump.
Can they go 31-20 the rest of the way? That’s 87-75 and I think that will be close to enough. The good thing is they are close every game. They are not getting blown out and are figuring out different ways to win. They don’t give up and just need another 8-2 streak. If they can go 6-3 or 7-2 in these next 9 games they are back in it. But I’m not holding my breath.
31-20? Probably not given what we witnessed this week. For most of this season I thought they'd be in it till the final week because of arms we can bring up from Indy and getting Borucki back. And I still think they'll have a winning September. But I don't think they can play >.600 ball at this point.
I will also go way out on a limb and say that Nutting would be amenable to eating at lot of Hayes' contract in a deal. Hayes has $49M remaining. I'm of the opinion Nutting knows he's got a 3-4 year window and that 3b is an offensive black hole.
Nutting, I'm sure, wants to win. But he wants to win on his terms. His terms come before winning. If he did not believe the 2024 team needed the money he said was availabe, when would the money be available? When Hell freezes? When pigs fly? When the Hatfields dance with the Mcoys?
I didn't believe 2024vwould be the year the Pirates would contend. But the emergence of Skenes and Jones changed that. Just maybe....
But the bullpen has undermined the team so often. Endy has been on the IL all year. Hank failed to seize his opportunity. Hayes declined. The bullpen has sucked most of the year. And the organization's Achilles Heel, hitting, often neutralized strong starting rotation.
After watching these 6 games vs the Diamondbacks they are clearly the better team. We “might” have better starting pitching but their offense has no holes, good AB’s, don’t strike out, and power. Pirates are probably 4-5 deep, strikeout a lot and don’t have a lot of power. Bullpens favor the Diamondbacks but not by much.
It will be interesting to see how the Pirates match up with the Padres head to head
This is likely to be this team’s elegy. The Pirates needed hitting and bullpen help, and BC made just token moves on both. The Cards, by contrast, added Fedde and Pham. The Pirates aren’t quite good enough and BC didn’t make a real effort to change that.
Nutting lied. Cherrington did not have the "financial flexibility" -- read: money -- to do more than he did do. Nutting's budget would not expand to meet the needs of the moment. The buck always stops on the owners desk.
It seems like they're not even going to get that close to the wildcard to me. I'd guess they win 82. With this buffoon at the helm, they'll be lucky to win 82:
Skipped a Jones start, and he got injured shortly afterwards. Wait until they get knocked out of playoff contention before they skip a start for a healthy Skenes.
I think these last 3 losses are the end. Gonna be too much to overcome at this point. 3 games they had leads in and all blown. They have shown some fight but you can’t lose all 3 of those games. What a frustrating week.
If it preludes a run of strong to outright dominant play that followed 2012, sign me up for this being our 2012 (maybe with a slightly less steep and pained crash?).
It’s funny, I was thinking this same train of thought as you earlier today, but in a good way versus bad…. Like as in, I can see a lot of good in the making, it just isn’t quite all done brewing yet. This years pitchers out there next year with less workload limitations, and some of the next guys up filling out the rotation as they work their throttled seasons. Find some development from a few bats and bingo, here we go! 🙂
It's fine to say that, and he's not really wrong, but you'd have to imitate those Dodger teams from a couple decades ago that found phantom injuries in the pen most every day and cycled through a bunch of guys in order to make it work. Our pen is middle of the pack on the season, and was actually 6th best in MLB in July. Who would you on NMR have upgraded on at the deadline? Puk has kinda sucked for the DBags. Holderman has sucked in past 10 days or so. Stratton is iffy, but was there a clear upgrade? Spend big in $ and prospects for a name closer? I kinda can't fault the FO as much on the pen as not getting a better couple of bats.
I won’t presume to speak for NMR of course. I’m actually more or less comfortable with our late innings guys and wouldn’t have tried to acquire a name-brand closer like Estevez, e.g.
I would have been happy with any one (or more than one — thanks!) of Yimi Garcia, Tanner Scott, Jason Adam, Mark Leiter, to name a few.
Now, you correctly note that nothing in life is free; it’s one thing to pluck goodies like a kid running wild through Willy Wonka’s candy factory, yet it’s quite another to pay up.
So, I’m not sure, bearing in mind the actual cost to the Pirates of acquiring those guys and the constraints this organization is operating within — some of them real, some of them artificial. I just agree(d) with NMR that this club needs relievers.
Whatever the Pirates bullpen has ranked this year, without Borucki especially things look a little ominous for a team thinking about the playoffs.
Santana has shown a little of why the Yankees were fine getting rid of him, amid some electric outings. Nicolas has alien stuff but his location is a work in progress. He’s improving though and I’d probably trust him the most at middle relief rn. Stratton is fine. Is Woodford a starter or a reliever? Maybe both. Regardless, eh. Beeks is a guy that I’ll admit I’m suspicious of before I look up his stats page because Rockies fans, who called him Jalen Cheeks, were elated to get rid of him. Shallow of me, I know.
Holderman has been bad for a while. Normally I dislike attributing sports wins or losses to one guy but you could plausibly lay several recent losses solely at his feet. Given the volatility of relievers I think BC needs to send him down or Shelton needs to hide him — the latter not being a great solution.
I don’t think it’s okay to take a guy who’s struggling, shove him out onto the mound in non-low leverage situations to repeatedly get shot to pieces and lose games, then throw him under the bus in the postgame. My opinion.
The idea behind acquiring better players is that you can then not continue throwing games down the drain when one of your few good players is clearly struggling.
We are talking about Shelton, right? He sticks with underperforming players way longer than other Managers.
If you expect he won’t call on Holderman with a 2-run lead in the 7th inning because he’s single-handedly cost the team three wins in the last week, you’re dreaming.
My answer would be given Bucs were looking for a LHR, sure, either of the two Tanners would've been better. White Sox didn't get much for Banks, but Pads way overpaid for Scott.
That said, Beeks is not someone I'd ever even consider a closer and I'd say misused this year. He's strictly situational and so far Shelton is using him correctly.
I’m not a fan of the 3-0 green light. I’ve seen far too many hitters take that as “I’m gonna swing at whatever slop this guy throws me and get myself out.” Hurdle loved that and it never freaking worked.
Kevin Koch Award for today goes to this one (Cherington has a single winning season on his decade long GM resume):
I think for all his shortcomings, I can confidently say Ben Cherington is very smart. His family is well educated, he went to a top school, he has been more or less in charge of 3 organizations, and won a world series. This off season he needs to make a decision to tie himself to Shelton, or switch things up. This would be a very sought after job, especially if you're a hitting guru of sorts who thinks you can help the bats reach their potential with a ready made pitching staff. I think a new voice would be welcomed.
DK likes Shelton a heck of a lot more than I do: https://www.dkpittsburghsports.com/2024/08/04/pirates-diamondbacks-paul-skenes-finale-mlb-dk
Thanks for posting.
On the bright side again
Cards lose
Mets lose
Braves lose
Brewers lose-this may mean more than the others, still think the Brewers are coming back to the pack again
They just can’t lose this game today. Skenes gives them a 4-2 lead, they have to hold it. But with Holderman struggling there’s a huge gap in the pen.
There’s no way this team is going to get to 87 or 88 wins. But the core talent is there. This can be a 2012 repeat with a breakthrough in 2025, but it’s going to take some work. And the front office has not shown that they can make the requisite moves to get them over the hump.
How's this for a lineup vs RHP:
1. IKF 3b
2. BRey LF
3. Cruz SS
4. Bart DH
5. Rowdy 1B
6. BDLC RF
7. Bae 2B
8. Grandal C
9. MAT CF
MAT should only play against LHP imo. It's a bummer Jack can't hit anymore. Bae is a scrub too.
Can they go 31-20 the rest of the way? That’s 87-75 and I think that will be close to enough. The good thing is they are close every game. They are not getting blown out and are figuring out different ways to win. They don’t give up and just need another 8-2 streak. If they can go 6-3 or 7-2 in these next 9 games they are back in it. But I’m not holding my breath.
This team gives me too much anxiety and stress.
31-20? Probably not given what we witnessed this week. For most of this season I thought they'd be in it till the final week because of arms we can bring up from Indy and getting Borucki back. And I still think they'll have a winning September. But I don't think they can play >.600 ball at this point.
I will also go way out on a limb and say that Nutting would be amenable to eating at lot of Hayes' contract in a deal. Hayes has $49M remaining. I'm of the opinion Nutting knows he's got a 3-4 year window and that 3b is an offensive black hole.
Nutting, I'm sure, wants to win. But he wants to win on his terms. His terms come before winning. If he did not believe the 2024 team needed the money he said was availabe, when would the money be available? When Hell freezes? When pigs fly? When the Hatfields dance with the Mcoys?
I didn't believe 2024vwould be the year the Pirates would contend. But the emergence of Skenes and Jones changed that. Just maybe....
But the bullpen has undermined the team so often. Endy has been on the IL all year. Hank failed to seize his opportunity. Hayes declined. The bullpen has sucked most of the year. And the organization's Achilles Heel, hitting, often neutralized strong starting rotation.
Look at the components:
Hitting -- a weakness
Pitching
Starting -- a strength
Bullpen -- a weakness
Defense -- a weakness
It wasn't meant to be.
Yeah I just don't see any team really going out of their way to pick up Ke Hayes even as a defensive sub utility man.
There's always at least 1-2 guys on the roster getting way too much leverage time and being complete dogshit.
we´re losing too many games that we should have won - can count at least seven or eight this year
Series too...I can think of three off the top that could've been sweeps that were lost like this one
Was at the game, plenty of chances to win and a good team wouldve made it happen. Bummer!
When the Pirates are at home in October, at least they'll be able to point to these Diamondbacks games and know who took their ticket.
After watching these 6 games vs the Diamondbacks they are clearly the better team. We “might” have better starting pitching but their offense has no holes, good AB’s, don’t strike out, and power. Pirates are probably 4-5 deep, strikeout a lot and don’t have a lot of power. Bullpens favor the Diamondbacks but not by much.
It will be interesting to see how the Pirates match up with the Padres head to head
The dropoff from the 6 and 7 teams in the NL to the 8, 9, and 10 teams is noticeable.
This is likely to be this team’s elegy. The Pirates needed hitting and bullpen help, and BC made just token moves on both. The Cards, by contrast, added Fedde and Pham. The Pirates aren’t quite good enough and BC didn’t make a real effort to change that.
Nutting lied. Cherrington did not have the "financial flexibility" -- read: money -- to do more than he did do. Nutting's budget would not expand to meet the needs of the moment. The buck always stops on the owners desk.
but what about those snazzy sheetz patches?
It seems like they're not even going to get that close to the wildcard to me. I'd guess they win 82. With this buffoon at the helm, they'll be lucky to win 82:
https://x.com/937theFan/status/1820208386933154094
Helderman has been trending downward for awhile now. Shelton did not notice that? It-s Shelton that has failed to execute.
He has a habit of sticking with guys in roles whether they're struggling or not and then throwing them under the bus when it doesn't go well.
It's nice to know that Sheltie doesn't believe all failures go to the top. Solid work throwing his man under the bus.
That's his move. He's driving that bus.
Shelton makes it very hard to respect him.
Never have at all so I know what you mean!
Methinks Skenes needs to skip a start and Holderman....well, I don't know what to do with Holderman.
The only silver lining to dropping out of the Wild Card race is the Pirates will be in Draft Lottery for 2025.
Skipped a Jones start, and he got injured shortly afterwards. Wait until they get knocked out of playoff contention before they skip a start for a healthy Skenes.
So, if Skenes skips a start, he'll suffer an injury?
Holderman is just your daily reminder that relief pitchers have the lifespans of gnats.
I think these last 3 losses are the end. Gonna be too much to overcome at this point. 3 games they had leads in and all blown. They have shown some fight but you can’t lose all 3 of those games. What a frustrating week.
Need to go 32-19 so yeah, pretty much.
This is gonna end in roughly the same place as 2012, albeit via a far less tortured path than that year. Just not there yet.
If it preludes a run of strong to outright dominant play that followed 2012, sign me up for this being our 2012 (maybe with a slightly less steep and pained crash?).
It’s funny, I was thinking this same train of thought as you earlier today, but in a good way versus bad…. Like as in, I can see a lot of good in the making, it just isn’t quite all done brewing yet. This years pitchers out there next year with less workload limitations, and some of the next guys up filling out the rotation as they work their throttled seasons. Find some development from a few bats and bingo, here we go! 🙂
Worst part? It doesn’t/didn’t have to.
As I said yesterday our bullpen needs to get a whole lot better or we have no chance.
Mindful right now of NMR’s comment leading up to the deadline that the Pirates needed relievers as much as bats.
It's fine to say that, and he's not really wrong, but you'd have to imitate those Dodger teams from a couple decades ago that found phantom injuries in the pen most every day and cycled through a bunch of guys in order to make it work. Our pen is middle of the pack on the season, and was actually 6th best in MLB in July. Who would you on NMR have upgraded on at the deadline? Puk has kinda sucked for the DBags. Holderman has sucked in past 10 days or so. Stratton is iffy, but was there a clear upgrade? Spend big in $ and prospects for a name closer? I kinda can't fault the FO as much on the pen as not getting a better couple of bats.
I won’t presume to speak for NMR of course. I’m actually more or less comfortable with our late innings guys and wouldn’t have tried to acquire a name-brand closer like Estevez, e.g.
I would have been happy with any one (or more than one — thanks!) of Yimi Garcia, Tanner Scott, Jason Adam, Mark Leiter, to name a few.
Now, you correctly note that nothing in life is free; it’s one thing to pluck goodies like a kid running wild through Willy Wonka’s candy factory, yet it’s quite another to pay up.
So, I’m not sure, bearing in mind the actual cost to the Pirates of acquiring those guys and the constraints this organization is operating within — some of them real, some of them artificial. I just agree(d) with NMR that this club needs relievers.
Whatever the Pirates bullpen has ranked this year, without Borucki especially things look a little ominous for a team thinking about the playoffs.
Santana has shown a little of why the Yankees were fine getting rid of him, amid some electric outings. Nicolas has alien stuff but his location is a work in progress. He’s improving though and I’d probably trust him the most at middle relief rn. Stratton is fine. Is Woodford a starter or a reliever? Maybe both. Regardless, eh. Beeks is a guy that I’ll admit I’m suspicious of before I look up his stats page because Rockies fans, who called him Jalen Cheeks, were elated to get rid of him. Shallow of me, I know.
Holderman has been bad for a while. Normally I dislike attributing sports wins or losses to one guy but you could plausibly lay several recent losses solely at his feet. Given the volatility of relievers I think BC needs to send him down or Shelton needs to hide him — the latter not being a great solution.
I don’t think it’s okay to take a guy who’s struggling, shove him out onto the mound in non-low leverage situations to repeatedly get shot to pieces and lose games, then throw him under the bus in the postgame. My opinion.
Not to be a dick but is it really that difficult to imagine someone better than Jalen Beeks?
Erceg would have been a nice get and he went for two 40+s and a 35.
Not to be a dick, but does it matter if we had acquired someone better than Beeks with Holderman giving up runs as he has since the deadline?
The idea behind acquiring better players is that you can then not continue throwing games down the drain when one of your few good players is clearly struggling.
We are talking about Shelton, right? He sticks with underperforming players way longer than other Managers.
If you expect he won’t call on Holderman with a 2-run lead in the 7th inning because he’s single-handedly cost the team three wins in the last week, you’re dreaming.
My answer would be given Bucs were looking for a LHR, sure, either of the two Tanners would've been better. White Sox didn't get much for Banks, but Pads way overpaid for Scott.
That said, Beeks is not someone I'd ever even consider a closer and I'd say misused this year. He's strictly situational and so far Shelton is using him correctly.
And I'll let you know when you're a dick ;-)
Keep me honest!
The injury to Mlod is big.
Nice guts in B9, just short though.
Too many moral victories, not enough standings ones unfortunately 🤷♂️
This team isn’t good enough to make mistakes anywhere on the field or in the dugout.
dammit. another defeat taken from jaws of victory
Decent AB, but wish he'd taken ball 4 two pitches earlier
Or green lighted 3-0.
I’m not a fan of the 3-0 green light. I’ve seen far too many hitters take that as “I’m gonna swing at whatever slop this guy throws me and get myself out.” Hurdle loved that and it never freaking worked.
I understand that, but in that situation where any contact could’ve tied the game I think he should had.
The Pirates? No way. Sit back and wait for the next guy to do it. This team needs new leadership.