Love Lee Lacy!! In fact, in that 1982 season I was at a game against the Reds in May where he hit a grand slam but unfortunately passed my man Omar on the bases, thus making it a 3 run single. Bucs won 8-7 😀😀
Lee Lacy/John Milner might be my favorite platoon ever. I might be wrong, but I don't think it was a lefty/righty split as much as who Tanner wanted in that game or situation. Lacy was the get a hit, steal a base guy. Milner had a little more power. (That's the way I remember it anyway.)
-Luis Arraez is currently a replacement level player. Although I think fWAR is the best measurement for wins above replacement, this is where it is flawed. Dude has k'd twice all year, he extends AB's and puts added pressure on the defense. He's the exact type of player I want on my team. I get it, empty BA, doesn't walk, doesn't hit for power, doesn't run, doesn't field and is a one tool player. But, that one tool is elite.
-Tatis getting smoked on the forearm and it immediately swelling up. I thought he broke his arm, really wore that. If that is someone like Adam Frazier, it's almost a guarantee that he breaks his arm.
-That SD BP is elite! Adrian Morejon is an animal.
The dude that caught my attention was Alek Jacob. Geez he looks like a 21 year old, he can't even hit 90, he looks like an ncaa pitcher, Division II. And yet some scout in Padres system saw his flailing arms and elbows and drafted him #490 overall. Really quite a scouting win.
You're right. They don't like firemen. They don't like high LOB%. They didn't like Jared Hughes because he didn't K dudes and had high LOB%. They consider that luck more than skill.
A team of Bryan Reynolds might beat a team of Luis Arraez most years and I think your different types of WARs might say this. However, when it comes to constructing a line-up, I think the WARs can be misleading. Could you imagine Arraez in the 2-hole batting behind Cruz.
Great points made in this thread. I can't look at Gorski's running error and blame the system. It's more about the overall performance of this team, not just one particular play. For the last several seasons, this team has not been fundamentally sound on the base paths and in the field, which is born out in the stats. There is accountability with professional players, who should be working hard to hone their craft. There's also accountability to the organization in the talent they acquire and how they develop their talent to be sound, focused baseball players. The bottom line is simple: they're not a good team and the lionshare of the responsibility for this debacle falls on leadership, the owner and his management team.
Imo, they should move on now from BC. They can find another GM now. They can have an interim GM run the draft if needed. They need to shake it up before the trade deadline and bring someone that will make the tough decisions needed to bring more offense to the organization and a stronger culture centered around work ethic. If you're going to have a low payroll, you better be one of the most fundamentally sound, hard working, hard-nosed teams in the game. This team is none of that.
Shoot, I’d keep the entire scouting staff - except for whoever pushed to acquire BDLC and Beeks last year - and hire Bligh Madris as interim GM (hat tip to Catch’s quote pull below). If he’s busy, give me Walk or the pirate-dressed lady on the rotunda.
My first call would be to Byrnes in LA to see if he is interested in leaving the Dodgers and taking another go at running the whole show. He may not be.
The Pirates may have difficulty getting the obvious, currently employed as senior people, candidates to bite. A little imagination and outside-the-box thinking would help a great deal here, but I doubt that Nutting could even identify what the box is, and Williams is an empty suit.
Byrnes is a good call, LA also has Gomes (would need a promotion to POBO). There's several people out there that would welcome a second chance or first opportunity.
Bob might want to go back to that same "consulting" group he used to find Cherington in 2019. Put some pressure on them, and of course cut a financial deal for less fees the second time around. Stress "they" get it right this time.
No "consulting groups" please. These guys are like lawyers. They exist to run up bills and get paid: not solve problems. Nutting needs to handle this personally.
I'll give you an example. The last (and only) corporate job that I had... we had a bunch of lawyers on contract to handle accounts receivable problems. I had 2 phone meetings with these guys, and the big boss asked me what I thought of the lawyers' approach. I said, "fire them all." I'll handle it and hire lawyers here and there individually on an ad hoc basis for individual actions.
Gomes is basically co-GM out there, and I don't think he is going anywhere. I think he has even said as much, since there were other teams interested in him as their GM.
Isn’t that the problem, huh? Williams is there to generate revenue for Bob, and it’s not by putting a winning team on the field. Williams can stay for all I care, but they need a real baseball man in the position of POBO and there is no one to steer Nutting to the correct choice?
They have a non-baseball guy over the GM; both working under an owner who probably calls this game “sportsball.”
The existence of Williams' and his position will impede their efforts to recruit senior people. No serious baseball guy wants an empty suit over him. You put the director of concession and ticket sales beneath the GM, who picks some fluffy person for that job. The fluffy person does not pick the guy who runs the baseball program. They have their priorities all backwards.
Wasn’t trying to say a POBO would report to Williams no matter official “titles.” Only saying Nutting can keep Williams if he wants, they need a baseball man to handle the baseball.
You're not saying it, but the corporate hierarchy is what it is, and there are always interpersonal things. An experienced person is not going to want to have some ticket vendor and Pirate ship maintenance chief with a position that gives him the ear of the owner and sway over any decision. He wants that guy under him and answering to him.
Bligh Madris has faced some good arms over the first month of the minor-league season. Asked which of them has most impressed him, the Toledo Mud Hens first baseman/outfielder didn’t name an individual, but rather an entire pitching staff.
“Indianapolis had a great staff,” Madris said of Pittsburgh’s Triple-A affiliate, which hosted Detroit’s from April 15-20. “They had a great starting five that week. Every arm, including the bullpen, was above average. They were all around 18-plus inches of vert — a lot of ride, a lot of hop on their heaters. You really had to push them down in the zone.”
Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, Braxton Ashcraft, Mike Burrows, and Carson Fulmer made up Indianapolis’s rotation. The first of that group impressed Madris with more than just his high-octane heater.
“Bubba Chandler has the new changeup,” said the 29-year-old slugger, who has big-league time with the Tigers, Pirates, and Houston Astros. “They’re calling it a splinker, like [Paul] Skenes’s, and he was throwing it 93-94 [mph]. He’s impressive. I’d seen him when I was Pittsburgh and he was a younger two-way guy. His athleticism was incredible; you could tell that he could have been a quarterback at Clemson. He’s always had a lot of raw potential, and now he’s defining himself as one of the best prospects in baseball.”
Chandler has a 1.42 ERA and a 39.6% strikeout rate over 25-and-a-third Triple-A innings.
Problem is that’s either Cherrington and Williams admitting failure, which I don’t they can/will do. Or it has to be ordered from Nutting, which would say to Cherrington/Williams, “you’re dead men walking too”.
The only reason to not fire Travis Williams, Cherrington, and Shelton all three is the draft. You can’t really hire a long-term replacement mid-season. And if you clean house now, who runs the draft? One of their minions. Still and all, if I’m Nutting, I do it today.
It’s unlikely, but you could clean house and have an interim GM (Graves maybe?) run the draft while they look to hire a po’ boy who would then hire a GM. That’s too much change too quickly for Nutting, though. Trying to think of the last regime change of any team that started before August and I can’t think of one.
It's not common, but has happened. Preller, in San Diego, was hired mid-season after they fired Byrnes early in the season. The GM in Colorado right now (though probably for not much longer) took over very early in the season after the previous GM quit.
As you say, I doubt that Cherington (or most GMs) has a lot to do with the creation of the draft board, except to set priorities and designate responsibilities. A board is the basis for most of their picks. After the first couple rounds, they have 2 minutes to make a pick. They just pick the next guy on their board who hasn't been picked already. There is not much time to do anything else.
I would prefer they can Cherington before the draft, however, so the new GM can evaluate the process of how they produce the board. Producing a draft board is a scouting process that incorporates information from data analysts and live scouts (who have areas and assignments). It took Cherington years to make personnel changes in the scouting department (the same sense of urgency that he has displayed in every other aspect of his job). I would prefer that the new GM get started immediately evaluating how the personnel perform in preparing for a draft, rather than trusting to Cherington's people this year and then evaluating them next.
The drafting of arms and acquiring them in general has been impressive. But as impressive as the arms have been, the bats are the exact 180 opposite.
I think the root of the problem stems from how he went about doing his *build*.
He traded away the Bells, the Martes, the Musgroves, the taillons for a bunch of kids a million miles away from the show. The hit rate on kids like this is astronomically low. They call them lotto tickets for a reason. It's one thing trading a Tony Watson for Oneil Cruz, but to try and rebuild like this is just a bad strategy.
And this also from Noah Hiles (I'm glad the beat writers are picking up on things some of us have been asking for a while):
"One conversation Shelton was unwilling to entertain, however, was the notion that his team looked to be checked out Sunday afternoon. When asked if he felt the club had a noticeable lack of focus in their most recent loss, the manager disagreed, and instead pinned the defeat on another poor offensive effort."
Shelton conducts himself like a stoic captain of the Titanic. Understood there are times he has to keep his composure, but he does absolutely nothing to raise the level of play. I've said before, he is a fine color analyst after the game, he can point out all the examples of what happened......
but that's only one small part of his job he's supposed to be doing. Good for the new reporter to ask the hard questions.
This team checked out long ago. The lack of focus and effort has been a problem for years and it’s growing rapidly now. The players know Moe, Larry and Curley don’t care about winning. Attitudes filter down.
The irony of it all is that the only player who is demonstrating leadership and hustle and does not look like he checked out 2 weeks ago is Cruz: the guy everyone accuses of lacking hustle and leadership and not being heads up.
We had two tootblans, but guess who gets called out (and yet in his own lack of awareness it doesn't seem to occur to Shelton that he's essentially doing after the game what he credits himself for not doing during the game):
“He made a young player mistake,” Shelton said of Gorski after the game. “ … He's got to learn. Pulling him off the field and embarrassing him there, no, but talk to him, yeah. It wasn't a lack of effort play, it was a lack of awareness play. We have to talk to him.”
In fairness to Shelton, it was in response to a particular question by DK, who is the one who singled out Gorski. I wish DK would have picked a different example of the half dozen or so egregious errors that the Pirates made yesterday (or any day for that matter). Hayes was obviously eating sunflower seeds most of the game yesterday and picking any one of his assortment of half ass plays would have been better.
Walk said when the third baseman is playing back and the ball is hit to third, you are taught to break home. He also noted that the ball almost hit him when he was breaking home so he broke stride.
Two problems though:
1) I'm not sure Machado was playing back that far
2) Machado has a cannon for an arm so I'm not sure that rule applies.
Whether I agree with that answer or not, Walk gave it some thought....unlike Shelton.
I've seen Gorski enough in Indy to know he is one of the better and smarter baserunners in the organization. For Shelton to say it was a young person's mistake was a lazy answer throwing Gorski under the bus for making the same type of mistake we have been seeing the Pirates make for six years. Very insulting to those of us that actually watch the Pirates.
Not a lot of opportunity to practice being on 3rd with less than 2 outs in the Pirates system. I imagine they work on things they see more in game situations. How to run off the field from 2nd as part of the GIDP that sort thing.
And of course, Gorski is not a "young player" and has been in the system the entire six years that Cherington has overseen development. Guess they never found time to teach him what to do in that situation.
That particular play crossed me as a “you can get away with it in AAA, but not in the bigs” type of scenario. No AAA third baseman is the level of defender Manny Machado is. Gorski is athletic enough of a guy where even if he doesn’t get a great jump, it’s probably a pretty close play at the plate in the minors. No such luck here.
There’s been a lot of boneheaded plays worthy of sitting guys down lately, that wasn’t one of them in my opinion. Plus, he’s one of the few players that are actually hitting the ball with some authority.
As a basketball coach if there was a fundamental error, I seldom said "I need to talk to him and explain it to him". It was my job to teach them fundamentals before I put them on the court. When they did make one in a game situation, they knew why. I didn't have to explain it, I just had to hold them accountable. Then figure out in practice how to keep from seeing repeated mistakes. Telling them something they already know never worked. :) I guess those standards don't apply to a major league baseball team.
we dont appreciate Lee Lacy enough
1980 .335 average over 278 at bats
1982 .312 average over 359 and 40 stolen bases that year
I had a Lee Lacy 1B glove.
He was really good for a bit.
Love Lee Lacy!! In fact, in that 1982 season I was at a game against the Reds in May where he hit a grand slam but unfortunately passed my man Omar on the bases, thus making it a 3 run single. Bucs won 8-7 😀😀
I remember that! Pirating before pirating was cool!
100%. The 1980 team was actually hanging in there as late as August and then collapsed down the stretch.
Lee Lacy/John Milner might be my favorite platoon ever. I might be wrong, but I don't think it was a lefty/righty split as much as who Tanner wanted in that game or situation. Lacy was the get a hit, steal a base guy. Milner had a little more power. (That's the way I remember it anyway.)
traded twice for Willie Montañez
Cardinals just played DH yesterday, their pen may be taxed. Of course they'll probably get healthy real fast from our tepid offense.
Boy this is bleak.
This is as low as I’ve felt about them in a good while. We all thought BC & DS needed to go last year. Nutting should’ve listened to us.
Few things that stood out to me...
-Luis Arraez is currently a replacement level player. Although I think fWAR is the best measurement for wins above replacement, this is where it is flawed. Dude has k'd twice all year, he extends AB's and puts added pressure on the defense. He's the exact type of player I want on my team. I get it, empty BA, doesn't walk, doesn't hit for power, doesn't run, doesn't field and is a one tool player. But, that one tool is elite.
-Tatis getting smoked on the forearm and it immediately swelling up. I thought he broke his arm, really wore that. If that is someone like Adam Frazier, it's almost a guarantee that he breaks his arm.
-That SD BP is elite! Adrian Morejon is an animal.
The dude that caught my attention was Alek Jacob. Geez he looks like a 21 year old, he can't even hit 90, he looks like an ncaa pitcher, Division II. And yet some scout in Padres system saw his flailing arms and elbows and drafted him #490 overall. Really quite a scouting win.
Not to be pedantic but that's not what WAR is made to measure. I don't know how that can be considered a "flaw".
A great groundball pitcher is extremely useful with a great infield defense, but only if that defense is good and not anything inherent to himself.
You're right. They don't like firemen. They don't like high LOB%. They didn't like Jared Hughes because he didn't K dudes and had high LOB%. They consider that luck more than skill.
If he weren't such a butcher in the field he'd be back up around 3 WAR. Love that guy, good on you for pumping him up.
Me pumping him up and saying fWAR is flawed, then this...
"I get it, empty BA, doesn't walk, doesn't hit for power, doesn't run, doesn't field and is a one tool player."
explaining why he's replacement.
And Tatis played the next game (and won it for SD)!
A team of Bryan Reynolds might beat a team of Luis Arraez most years and I think your different types of WARs might say this. However, when it comes to constructing a line-up, I think the WARs can be misleading. Could you imagine Arraez in the 2-hole batting behind Cruz.
Correct, you can't have 9 Luis Arraez's. But, as you mention, he would slot in perfectly behind Cruz.
However, I do think 100 Luis Arraez's beat 1 gorilla. There may only be 6 or 7 Arraez's left, but they would be smart enough to defeat the ape.
Great points made in this thread. I can't look at Gorski's running error and blame the system. It's more about the overall performance of this team, not just one particular play. For the last several seasons, this team has not been fundamentally sound on the base paths and in the field, which is born out in the stats. There is accountability with professional players, who should be working hard to hone their craft. There's also accountability to the organization in the talent they acquire and how they develop their talent to be sound, focused baseball players. The bottom line is simple: they're not a good team and the lionshare of the responsibility for this debacle falls on leadership, the owner and his management team.
Imo, they should move on now from BC. They can find another GM now. They can have an interim GM run the draft if needed. They need to shake it up before the trade deadline and bring someone that will make the tough decisions needed to bring more offense to the organization and a stronger culture centered around work ethic. If you're going to have a low payroll, you better be one of the most fundamentally sound, hard working, hard-nosed teams in the game. This team is none of that.
Shoot, I’d keep the entire scouting staff - except for whoever pushed to acquire BDLC and Beeks last year - and hire Bligh Madris as interim GM (hat tip to Catch’s quote pull below). If he’s busy, give me Walk or the pirate-dressed lady on the rotunda.
My first call would be to Byrnes in LA to see if he is interested in leaving the Dodgers and taking another go at running the whole show. He may not be.
The Pirates may have difficulty getting the obvious, currently employed as senior people, candidates to bite. A little imagination and outside-the-box thinking would help a great deal here, but I doubt that Nutting could even identify what the box is, and Williams is an empty suit.
Byrnes is a good call, LA also has Gomes (would need a promotion to POBO). There's several people out there that would welcome a second chance or first opportunity.
Bob might want to go back to that same "consulting" group he used to find Cherington in 2019. Put some pressure on them, and of course cut a financial deal for less fees the second time around. Stress "they" get it right this time.
No "consulting groups" please. These guys are like lawyers. They exist to run up bills and get paid: not solve problems. Nutting needs to handle this personally.
I'll give you an example. The last (and only) corporate job that I had... we had a bunch of lawyers on contract to handle accounts receivable problems. I had 2 phone meetings with these guys, and the big boss asked me what I thought of the lawyers' approach. I said, "fire them all." I'll handle it and hire lawyers here and there individually on an ad hoc basis for individual actions.
Normally I agree with you 99.9% of the time. But I just can't trust Bob with this hire.
Gomes is basically co-GM out there, and I don't think he is going anywhere. I think he has even said as much, since there were other teams interested in him as their GM.
Isn’t that the problem, huh? Williams is there to generate revenue for Bob, and it’s not by putting a winning team on the field. Williams can stay for all I care, but they need a real baseball man in the position of POBO and there is no one to steer Nutting to the correct choice?
They have a non-baseball guy over the GM; both working under an owner who probably calls this game “sportsball.”
The existence of Williams' and his position will impede their efforts to recruit senior people. No serious baseball guy wants an empty suit over him. You put the director of concession and ticket sales beneath the GM, who picks some fluffy person for that job. The fluffy person does not pick the guy who runs the baseball program. They have their priorities all backwards.
Wasn’t trying to say a POBO would report to Williams no matter official “titles.” Only saying Nutting can keep Williams if he wants, they need a baseball man to handle the baseball.
You're not saying it, but the corporate hierarchy is what it is, and there are always interpersonal things. An experienced person is not going to want to have some ticket vendor and Pirate ship maintenance chief with a position that gives him the ear of the owner and sway over any decision. He wants that guy under him and answering to him.
Pete Putila! Western PA! Jest aside, wasn’t he a candidate (although not a finalist) last time around?
great name and better memory
Bligh Madris has faced some good arms over the first month of the minor-league season. Asked which of them has most impressed him, the Toledo Mud Hens first baseman/outfielder didn’t name an individual, but rather an entire pitching staff.
“Indianapolis had a great staff,” Madris said of Pittsburgh’s Triple-A affiliate, which hosted Detroit’s from April 15-20. “They had a great starting five that week. Every arm, including the bullpen, was above average. They were all around 18-plus inches of vert — a lot of ride, a lot of hop on their heaters. You really had to push them down in the zone.”
Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, Braxton Ashcraft, Mike Burrows, and Carson Fulmer made up Indianapolis’s rotation. The first of that group impressed Madris with more than just his high-octane heater.
“Bubba Chandler has the new changeup,” said the 29-year-old slugger, who has big-league time with the Tigers, Pirates, and Houston Astros. “They’re calling it a splinker, like [Paul] Skenes’s, and he was throwing it 93-94 [mph]. He’s impressive. I’d seen him when I was Pittsburgh and he was a younger two-way guy. His athleticism was incredible; you could tell that he could have been a quarterback at Clemson. He’s always had a lot of raw potential, and now he’s defining himself as one of the best prospects in baseball.”
Chandler has a 1.42 ERA and a 39.6% strikeout rate over 25-and-a-third Triple-A innings.
Sorry Catch, but WTF cares what Bligh Madris has to say, a career AAAA player? Arghhh this is what 11 games under feels like and I don't like it.
BA has a phenomenal piece on Chandler in their 10 Statcast Standouts:
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/bubba-chandler-coby-mayo-headline-10-statcast-standouts-may-5/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hot-sheet-ranking-mlb-s-20-hottest-prospects&_bhlid=f5c3a2d5b1863f18bbe955a1cfe16bcdebbf44f4
Great stuff Catch.
This is the most disappointing season for me since 2016. I thought they would at least be competitive and hover around .500.
I don't see how any of them survive the off-season. I would guess Shelton, Cherington and Williams are all gone by end of November.
They're not going to fire the GM in the middle of the season...If they do anything, they'll fire Shelton.
Couldn’t have said it better.
They need to fire Shelton today.
Problem is that’s either Cherrington and Williams admitting failure, which I don’t they can/will do. Or it has to be ordered from Nutting, which would say to Cherrington/Williams, “you’re dead men walking too”.
Agree.
The only reason to not fire Travis Williams, Cherrington, and Shelton all three is the draft. You can’t really hire a long-term replacement mid-season. And if you clean house now, who runs the draft? One of their minions. Still and all, if I’m Nutting, I do it today.
It’s unlikely, but you could clean house and have an interim GM (Graves maybe?) run the draft while they look to hire a po’ boy who would then hire a GM. That’s too much change too quickly for Nutting, though. Trying to think of the last regime change of any team that started before August and I can’t think of one.
I can't remember a baseball GM being fired in May. Then again, I don't really follow GMs for the other 29 teams.
It's not common, but has happened. Preller, in San Diego, was hired mid-season after they fired Byrnes early in the season. The GM in Colorado right now (though probably for not much longer) took over very early in the season after the previous GM quit.
There's not enough time for a new regime to come in and prep for the draft. Besides, Shelton and Williams aren't drafting players.
I doubt Cherington adds much to the draft. If the staff stays in place, it’ll go off about like it would have anyway.
As you say, I doubt that Cherington (or most GMs) has a lot to do with the creation of the draft board, except to set priorities and designate responsibilities. A board is the basis for most of their picks. After the first couple rounds, they have 2 minutes to make a pick. They just pick the next guy on their board who hasn't been picked already. There is not much time to do anything else.
I would prefer they can Cherington before the draft, however, so the new GM can evaluate the process of how they produce the board. Producing a draft board is a scouting process that incorporates information from data analysts and live scouts (who have areas and assignments). It took Cherington years to make personnel changes in the scouting department (the same sense of urgency that he has displayed in every other aspect of his job). I would prefer that the new GM get started immediately evaluating how the personnel perform in preparing for a draft, rather than trusting to Cherington's people this year and then evaluating them next.
He's the top dog in the room, I'd say he writes off on every pick they make.
You're right but I still agree with Wilbur. The other guys are doing the work, Cherington is just the top dog to give the nod.
If his performance is worthy of firing then I'm not terribly concerned about letting staff make the picks.
Except maybe for the top pick, he hasn’t seen these players. His impact is in the hiring, which is done.
I’d rather have Oliver Onion running the draft than Cherrington et al.
I don't think his drafting is the problem.
He has been pretty good with the draft and acquiring pitching….
The drafting of arms and acquiring them in general has been impressive. But as impressive as the arms have been, the bats are the exact 180 opposite.
I think the root of the problem stems from how he went about doing his *build*.
He traded away the Bells, the Martes, the Musgroves, the taillons for a bunch of kids a million miles away from the show. The hit rate on kids like this is astronomically low. They call them lotto tickets for a reason. It's one thing trading a Tony Watson for Oneil Cruz, but to try and rebuild like this is just a bad strategy.
And this also from Noah Hiles (I'm glad the beat writers are picking up on things some of us have been asking for a while):
"One conversation Shelton was unwilling to entertain, however, was the notion that his team looked to be checked out Sunday afternoon. When asked if he felt the club had a noticeable lack of focus in their most recent loss, the manager disagreed, and instead pinned the defeat on another poor offensive effort."
Shelton conducts himself like a stoic captain of the Titanic. Understood there are times he has to keep his composure, but he does absolutely nothing to raise the level of play. I've said before, he is a fine color analyst after the game, he can point out all the examples of what happened......
but that's only one small part of his job he's supposed to be doing. Good for the new reporter to ask the hard questions.
This team checked out long ago. The lack of focus and effort has been a problem for years and it’s growing rapidly now. The players know Moe, Larry and Curley don’t care about winning. Attitudes filter down.
The irony of it all is that the only player who is demonstrating leadership and hustle and does not look like he checked out 2 weeks ago is Cruz: the guy everyone accuses of lacking hustle and leadership and not being heads up.
I don't think that's ironic at all.
Again, aside from the mouthbreathers, we all know he has the ability. We all know he's done it. It's the consistency for which we're commenting.
I think it's okay to acknowledge what separates good players from great ones and it's a disservice to the latter not to.
Aside from McCutchen, of course.
We had two tootblans, but guess who gets called out (and yet in his own lack of awareness it doesn't seem to occur to Shelton that he's essentially doing after the game what he credits himself for not doing during the game):
“He made a young player mistake,” Shelton said of Gorski after the game. “ … He's got to learn. Pulling him off the field and embarrassing him there, no, but talk to him, yeah. It wasn't a lack of effort play, it was a lack of awareness play. We have to talk to him.”
Yeah Brock will talk to him......which never brings better results.
In fairness to Shelton, it was in response to a particular question by DK, who is the one who singled out Gorski. I wish DK would have picked a different example of the half dozen or so egregious errors that the Pirates made yesterday (or any day for that matter). Hayes was obviously eating sunflower seeds most of the game yesterday and picking any one of his assortment of half ass plays would have been better.
Walk said when the third baseman is playing back and the ball is hit to third, you are taught to break home. He also noted that the ball almost hit him when he was breaking home so he broke stride.
Two problems though:
1) I'm not sure Machado was playing back that far
2) Machado has a cannon for an arm so I'm not sure that rule applies.
Whether I agree with that answer or not, Walk gave it some thought....unlike Shelton.
I've seen Gorski enough in Indy to know he is one of the better and smarter baserunners in the organization. For Shelton to say it was a young person's mistake was a lazy answer throwing Gorski under the bus for making the same type of mistake we have been seeing the Pirates make for six years. Very insulting to those of us that actually watch the Pirates.
I wish I could like this comment twice
Guess Hayes made an “old players mistake”….getting picked off 2nd.
Not a lot of opportunity to practice being on 3rd with less than 2 outs in the Pirates system. I imagine they work on things they see more in game situations. How to run off the field from 2nd as part of the GIDP that sort thing.
And of course, Gorski is not a "young player" and has been in the system the entire six years that Cherington has overseen development. Guess they never found time to teach him what to do in that situation.
That particular play crossed me as a “you can get away with it in AAA, but not in the bigs” type of scenario. No AAA third baseman is the level of defender Manny Machado is. Gorski is athletic enough of a guy where even if he doesn’t get a great jump, it’s probably a pretty close play at the plate in the minors. No such luck here.
There’s been a lot of boneheaded plays worthy of sitting guys down lately, that wasn’t one of them in my opinion. Plus, he’s one of the few players that are actually hitting the ball with some authority.
As a basketball coach if there was a fundamental error, I seldom said "I need to talk to him and explain it to him". It was my job to teach them fundamentals before I put them on the court. When they did make one in a game situation, they knew why. I didn't have to explain it, I just had to hold them accountable. Then figure out in practice how to keep from seeing repeated mistakes. Telling them something they already know never worked. :) I guess those standards don't apply to a major league baseball team.