Regardless, at least we’re Phamine-free tonight. If only Canario would run into a couple. I don’t exactly have high hopes for the guy, but at least he makes loud contact now and then. Phamine can’t get the ball out of the IF.
Not arguing that at all. Just was opining as to why Pham is on the suspension list. I would much rather have Canario playing as you said he makes hard contact and that can at least add some sac flies or potentially a few mohr dingerz if he runs into. Who knows if he starts getting consistent playing time. Not counting on it either but would be a nice surprise !
Shelton flat said Canario was a development project, then gave him 8 PAs in a 16-day stretch, which is hopelessly contradictory. Whatever the outcome, I’m hoping Kelly will at least be honest.
I do not think that Kelly knows any other way to be. He was a grunt, going through it as a 9 year veteran hanging on every year and playing anywhere on the field just to keep his hand in the game. He knows firsthand what these players are thinking even before they start to think it!
Or another way to look at it is count all of the players that attended Point Park College that played even the first level of Minor League ball.
Maybe we could petition the commish, claim we are very offended by Pham's actions... degrading to men or some such... and request the suspension be extended to 100 days.
better yet, dress up as an opposing fan each home game and heckle him into retaliation. guy can't help himself. $10 bucks says you could get him to say one of those words you don't come back from.
Too bad we didn't play the Yankees in New York. They could have put him in right field. Those bleacher fans would probably have sent him into a nervous breakdown and into an asylum for months.
I would like to have Burrows available to come in the middle of the game when needed. You would think this would happen with Falter 1/3 of the time and Mlodzinski most of the time. I know it is one less reliever, but in the long run, it should theoritcally rest your bullpen's arms.
Today’s update on the one team that we can say for sure is worse off than the Pirates:
So yesterday the Rockies did a Shelton on Bud Black, literally a day after the GM expressed full confidence in him. Today’s headline in the sports page:
“If the Rockies are serious about change, they’ll fire [the GM]”
As Aurorus mentioned the other day, the owner’s *son* is their overall scouting director (pro and amateur). That is insane, considering he’s just a rich kid who I believe has never played pro ball.
I'm most happy Donnie did NOT have the contact play on in the 9th with Frazier at 3rd base w no outs. Such a relief. This may be the biggest victory of the day and not the 4-3 win!
Unfortunate failures in high leverage by Rainey and Wentz. I like both pitchers, think they are MLB caliber, so I trust they'll get another chance. But I do hope Eddie Yean keeps knocking on the door.
I can foresee a notable trade at the expense of our pitching depth coming before the deadline this season. Too many arms on the 40-man as guys start to get healthy, as well as AAA arms knocking on the door, most notably Chandler of course. But still have Burrows/Ashcraft/Harrington on the 40-man as well.
Baltimore’s pitching has let them down so far this season and they have a lot of pressure to compete this year. There’s a history of making moves with the organization. The math is mathing.
Math being math, I don't see how they can NOT be looking to trade multiple starters real soon. Ashcraft and Harrington have been shaky, but Bubba and Burrows haven't, and suddenly there's Barco, too. And Jones and Oviedo will be back at some point. And they need help in every single other area of the team.
I just wish somebody other than Birdbrain was positioned to take advantage of the situation. We'll probably just get a couple more prospects that he'll block with guys like Phamine and Frazier.
Cannot see any way Keller makes it through the Trade Deadline as a Pirate. $15 mil in 2025, and then $16.5, $18, and $20. So, possibly $60 mil to spend - about + $20 mil per year. We have to sign Oneil Cruz NOW, and the return for Keller from a contending team needing starting pitching could be substantial. We have to pull the trigger now and get a team prepped to play MLB-quality baseball.
I think making that move and getting a quality bat in return could change the Pirates into a >.500 team after the AS Break, thereby a positive start to the off-season and next ST. But, we have to get that accomplished now! Does B'more want to wait a month? Kjerstad? What other contenders are a SP short? Are the Yankees content? CF Spencer Jones has cut his K Rate from 4 to 1 at AA in 2024 to 2/1 repeating AA in 2025. He hit 17 HR in 482 AB last year and already has 9 in 92 AB this year. This is his age 24 season.
You meant the NL West - I had deliberately tried to stay away from NL Clubs - better he pitches in a place it would not bother us except for a few games a year at best.
I’m well aware this take may age about as well as milk on a countertop but…Roki looks like shit. Their rotation is basically Yamamoto, Dusty May and not much else. And I don’t even know how many of their convalescing pitchers are due back this season.
Padres could be game, especially since Cease is gone after this season.
Giants for the reason you cited-Mitch would give them a pretty rock solid rotation.
Roup is probably going to be a good starter. He has the Priester problem of junk fastball and plus plus curve. He is actually trying to pitch by hardly using his fastball and using a cutter most of the time. I don't think it's going to work, but once he gets it sorted, he should be pretty good. All of his pitches are good except his fastball. Look at his stuff+ numbers on Fangraphs.
I don't know how accurate it is. I just know him because I signed him in OOTP to be a 5th starter (with ratings based on those fangraphs numbers) and ended up keeping for 3 or 4 years and moving him up to 3rd starter, before he priced himself out for the value he was giving.
I agree that Keller should be the one to go in a deal. Hopefully a major league ready outfielder can be acquired and we can part ways with the corpse that is Tommy Pham.
Obviously Rainey was a disappointment yesterday, but how's this for a manager sharing accountability with his players:
"It didn't work out. Some of that might be on me, too, because we had Rainey up a lot for different hitters and different stretches along the way," Kelly said. "Just didn't work out today in that lane, but he's been doing a great job."
I think so much better than what had become the standard "(player) needed to execute his (pitches/AB)" explanation with never any acknowledgement about not putting a player in the best position to succeed. Kelly can't work miracles with this roster, but he's such an easy guy to root for.
Very refreshing. Also when Davis was thrown out at home on their standard contact play from 3B (which they do every, single time they have a runner on 3rd), compare Donnie's remarks to those of Shelton about Gorsky getting thrown out. Donnie did not blame the player, but Shelton blamed the whole thing on Gorsky's inexperience and not knowing what a great defender Machado is (meanwhile my 76 year-old mother could have thrown Barco out on that play).
Good comments here. Kelly actually addresses what happened on the field. Hopefully he represents at least a minor departure from the Cherington/Shelton practice of throwing the same empty buzz phrases at people like smoke bombs.
And, yeah, the prattle about Machado’s arm was comical.
To my mind, the first real test of Donnie as a manager will be if the Pirates' baserunning improves over the next couple of months. It is the first thing that I would address as manager because they are so bad. It is unimaginable that professional baseball players who have spent years playing baseball could be so bad at running the bases. It needs addressed as a top priority, especially for a team that can't hit and isn't great in the field.
IIRC Brock is the base-running coach. So Kelly is going to need to sit down with him and explain what he wants and does not want to see. Or alternatively hand him a pink slip (I'm in favor of the latter).
Hey, they've already jumped all the way from 29th to 28th in BsR! And that's without taking into account their internal data, which shows them at Ty Cobb Level for baserunning!!
Oh... they lead the league in TootBlans... despite having made the fewest attempts to take extra bases of any team in baseball by a wide margin, so the percentage of Tootblan vs. attempt is unbelievably bad... like historically... like maybe worst in the history of baseball.
I’d be interested to see these numbers. I see tootblans all over baseball now, so I didn’t think it was just a pirate thing. I also think the definition of a tootblan is likely not really catching the true baserunning mistakes. Does it count jogging to first, does it consider game situations, does it consider being thrown out on extraordinary defensive plays. I also don’t think this is on the manager. Baseball instincts are refined over years of play, not taught during the mlb season.
The worst thing about the Gorksi quote was that Hayes had made an equally bad baserunning mistake earlier in that game. He could have made a general comment about the coaches needing to continue to work with the players about situational baserunning or something.
Yeah... the Gorsky thing was a bad example for DK to pick. Hayes was eating sunflower seeds that whole game (and his pickoff at 2B, where he was obviously not paying any attention to what was happening was worse than Gorsky). The real question that DK should have asked was why they always run on contact when at 3B... why every time? Is that some sort of mandate from the analytics people in the front office?
Watching some of the video relating to promoting Don Kelly to Manager, the question about a Bench Coach was raised and I think I heard Kelly say he has to get around to making that decision. If so, is it possible that he would choose Neil Walker as the Bench Coach?
I know this possibility has probably already been raised by the local news and talk shows, but that news does not get to us in Tennessee.
Walker would be fun and may be good, but I'd prefer an experienced coach or even ex-manager. Of course it needs to be someone that Kelly is comfortable with, so I can't speculate on who the candidates might be.
Kelly is a Player's Manager - he has been where they are and is still young enough to know what they are thinking and relate. I doubt that he would want a former Manager as his Bench Coach. Lord knows that Shelton did not seem to achieve any useful level of expertise from his 6 years as a Manager, and Managers like Clint Hurdle are too far removed from this generation and too locked into their own way of doing things.
A great victory for the Bucs - they needed to finish with a positive and win the series from the Braves, a playoff challenger. An excellent start by Mlodzinski, and just enough contact at the plate to get enough runs to post the W.
Very impressed with the outing from Mike Burrows at AAA. Kind of a mystery to me is why he was 1 out away from being the pitcher of record, but was pulled after 86 pitches, and the batter was a guy he had struck out in his previous AB.
Also impressed with Lefty Reliever Jaden Woods, 23, at AA against Erie, a Detroit Tigers Affiliate. A 6th Round Pick in 2023 out of Georgia, he has advanced quickly, pitching 20 innings at A+ and then 20 more innings at AA to finish 2024. Would not be surprised to see him promoted to AAA soon.
Javier Rivas continuing to establish himself as a hitter and especially pleased to see that 2 RBI Double was a line drive to RF. Glove will play at SS in MLB, and his bat has come alive at A+. Although his K/BB ratio is around 4/1, that is also an improvement for him - last year as an older player at Bradenton it was about 8/1. He will play almost all of 2025 as a 22 year old, not turning 23 until Sep 1.
Pirates don’t care about pitching wins nearly as much as Pitchers or us fans. They care much more about preventing injury. Whether or not you agree with this philosophy is up to you. I for one do not!
Looks like IKF up, Peguero down.
Pirates transaction page shows Pham has been suspended?!
I know he appealed his suspension for the incident with the fan against the Angels. Did the appeal finally get heard now serving?
Regardless, at least we’re Phamine-free tonight. If only Canario would run into a couple. I don’t exactly have high hopes for the guy, but at least he makes loud contact now and then. Phamine can’t get the ball out of the IF.
Not arguing that at all. Just was opining as to why Pham is on the suspension list. I would much rather have Canario playing as you said he makes hard contact and that can at least add some sac flies or potentially a few mohr dingerz if he runs into. Who knows if he starts getting consistent playing time. Not counting on it either but would be a nice surprise !
Shelton flat said Canario was a development project, then gave him 8 PAs in a 16-day stretch, which is hopelessly contradictory. Whatever the outcome, I’m hoping Kelly will at least be honest.
I do not think that Kelly knows any other way to be. He was a grunt, going through it as a 9 year veteran hanging on every year and playing anywhere on the field just to keep his hand in the game. He knows firsthand what these players are thinking even before they start to think it!
Or another way to look at it is count all of the players that attended Point Park College that played even the first level of Minor League ball.
Canario’s OPS almost a 100 points higher and climbing
Pham-.475
Canario-.570
Ah, could be. I think those are usually heard on mondays.
WTM made the ruling for the commissioner and increased the suspension to 100 days. Thank you
Maybe we could petition the commish, claim we are very offended by Pham's actions... degrading to men or some such... and request the suspension be extended to 100 days.
better yet, dress up as an opposing fan each home game and heckle him into retaliation. guy can't help himself. $10 bucks says you could get him to say one of those words you don't come back from.
Too bad we didn't play the Yankees in New York. They could have put him in right field. Those bleacher fans would probably have sent him into a nervous breakdown and into an asylum for months.
I think I would swap Shugart for Burrows.
11 k’s in 4.2 is excellent
You got your wish, sorta. Burrows is now in the AAA pen. It’s just not the Burrows most likely to favorably impact the big league pen….
I would like to have Burrows available to come in the middle of the game when needed. You would think this would happen with Falter 1/3 of the time and Mlodzinski most of the time. I know it is one less reliever, but in the long run, it should theoritcally rest your bullpen's arms.
Today’s update on the one team that we can say for sure is worse off than the Pirates:
So yesterday the Rockies did a Shelton on Bud Black, literally a day after the GM expressed full confidence in him. Today’s headline in the sports page:
“If the Rockies are serious about change, they’ll fire [the GM]”
Sound familiar?
Rox have an even bigger owner problem than the Bucs, if you can believe it.
Equally as bad, maybe.
As Aurorus mentioned the other day, the owner’s *son* is their overall scouting director (pro and amateur). That is insane, considering he’s just a rich kid who I believe has never played pro ball.
I don't know how you can blame the GM when he can't even choose his own scouting director: second most important person in the organization.
Even Nuttin would think that was nuts.
Only because he has three daughters......you'd be surprised.
I'm most happy Donnie did NOT have the contact play on in the 9th with Frazier at 3rd base w no outs. Such a relief. This may be the biggest victory of the day and not the 4-3 win!
Unfortunate failures in high leverage by Rainey and Wentz. I like both pitchers, think they are MLB caliber, so I trust they'll get another chance. But I do hope Eddie Yean keeps knocking on the door.
Yean has been incredibly lucky so far
4.79 FIP.
I put little cred attached to FIP, but I really liked what I saw in spring training. Eye test>FIP.
lol
"effectively wild"
Oof. Of the abundance of fantastic arms currently in AAA, I think I'll jump off the Clemente if Eddy Yean gets the call.
Better get your swimming suit ready.
Laugh out loud! Best comment of the day.
Talking relievers here, not starters.
I get it, but they're better off using one of their plethora of starters than like the 9th best pitcher in Indy right now.
Eddie might walk one of every four batters he sees against big league hitters.
But Eddy only needs to face 3 batters :) to get the job done.
I can foresee a notable trade at the expense of our pitching depth coming before the deadline this season. Too many arms on the 40-man as guys start to get healthy, as well as AAA arms knocking on the door, most notably Chandler of course. But still have Burrows/Ashcraft/Harrington on the 40-man as well.
Baltimore’s pitching has let them down so far this season and they have a lot of pressure to compete this year. There’s a history of making moves with the organization. The math is mathing.
Math being math, I don't see how they can NOT be looking to trade multiple starters real soon. Ashcraft and Harrington have been shaky, but Bubba and Burrows haven't, and suddenly there's Barco, too. And Jones and Oviedo will be back at some point. And they need help in every single other area of the team.
I just wish somebody other than Birdbrain was positioned to take advantage of the situation. We'll probably just get a couple more prospects that he'll block with guys like Phamine and Frazier.
Cannot see any way Keller makes it through the Trade Deadline as a Pirate. $15 mil in 2025, and then $16.5, $18, and $20. So, possibly $60 mil to spend - about + $20 mil per year. We have to sign Oneil Cruz NOW, and the return for Keller from a contending team needing starting pitching could be substantial. We have to pull the trigger now and get a team prepped to play MLB-quality baseball.
I think making that move and getting a quality bat in return could change the Pirates into a >.500 team after the AS Break, thereby a positive start to the off-season and next ST. But, we have to get that accomplished now! Does B'more want to wait a month? Kjerstad? What other contenders are a SP short? Are the Yankees content? CF Spencer Jones has cut his K Rate from 4 to 1 at AA in 2024 to 2/1 repeating AA in 2025. He hit 17 HR in 482 AB last year and already has 9 in 92 AB this year. This is his age 24 season.
My money would be on the AL West.
Dodgers are seemingly always willing to add SP and could take on Keller's salary without blinking.
Pads have little brother syndrome with LA and have a trigger finger for trades like a cop pulling someone over in a bad neighborhood.
Giants scratching and clawing for a wild card with the corpse of Justin Verlander and some jabroni named Landon Roup taking up 2/5 of their rotation.
You meant the NL West - I had deliberately tried to stay away from NL Clubs - better he pitches in a place it would not bother us except for a few games a year at best.
Oops, yes, NL!
I’m well aware this take may age about as well as milk on a countertop but…Roki looks like shit. Their rotation is basically Yamamoto, Dusty May and not much else. And I don’t even know how many of their convalescing pitchers are due back this season.
Padres could be game, especially since Cease is gone after this season.
Giants for the reason you cited-Mitch would give them a pretty rock solid rotation.
Roup is probably going to be a good starter. He has the Priester problem of junk fastball and plus plus curve. He is actually trying to pitch by hardly using his fastball and using a cutter most of the time. I don't think it's going to work, but once he gets it sorted, he should be pretty good. All of his pitches are good except his fastball. Look at his stuff+ numbers on Fangraphs.
'ppreciate the comment. Maybe it's the crank in me but I haven't bought into the PitchingBot stuff+ thing.
I don't know how accurate it is. I just know him because I signed him in OOTP to be a 5th starter (with ratings based on those fangraphs numbers) and ended up keeping for 3 or 4 years and moving him up to 3rd starter, before he priced himself out for the value he was giving.
The Dodgers do make some sense, Keller would provide a reliable work horse to their oft injury race stable.
Padres make a ton of sense with the guys that are going to be exiting.
Giants and DBacks to a lesser extent this year but more in the off-season.
I agree that Keller should be the one to go in a deal. Hopefully a major league ready outfielder can be acquired and we can part ways with the corpse that is Tommy Pham.
I love Keller, but I would move him faster than a drunk gets to the bar on payday.
Agreed, fellas, gotta be Keller.
I would think he would have the highest value. But Heaney should also have a market, especially given his post season experience with the Rangers.
Does Pham have any kind of bonuses in his contract?
If so, figure he'll be gone about a few days before they are due to pay him one.
Pirates Batting Leaders n Losers
*
Monday, May 12, 2025
*10 games minimum
*
*
BATTING
*
Joey Bart .291
Isiah Kiner Falefa .280
Keybryan Hayes .253
*
Jack Suwinski .128
Henry Davis .129
Jared Triolo .149
*
ON BASE PERCENTAGE
Joey Bart .411
Oneil Cruz .369
Andrew McCutchen .346
*
Henry Davis .206
Jared Triolo .216
Matt Gorski .226
*
SLUGGING
*
Oneil Cruz .462
Andrew McCutchen .391
Matt Gorski .387
*
Jack Suwinski .154
Tommy Pham .213
Henry Davis .226
Just another Manfred Monday….FCL and Bigs.
FCL very unlikely. Lots of rain.
So I guess I didn’t take it with me yesterday. Thought I might have, rain followed me just about the entire trip
sources saying the Astros are in on IKF
Love them sources!!
BOBBY!!!!
Obviously Rainey was a disappointment yesterday, but how's this for a manager sharing accountability with his players:
"It didn't work out. Some of that might be on me, too, because we had Rainey up a lot for different hitters and different stretches along the way," Kelly said. "Just didn't work out today in that lane, but he's been doing a great job."
I think so much better than what had become the standard "(player) needed to execute his (pitches/AB)" explanation with never any acknowledgement about not putting a player in the best position to succeed. Kelly can't work miracles with this roster, but he's such an easy guy to root for.
Very refreshing. Also when Davis was thrown out at home on their standard contact play from 3B (which they do every, single time they have a runner on 3rd), compare Donnie's remarks to those of Shelton about Gorsky getting thrown out. Donnie did not blame the player, but Shelton blamed the whole thing on Gorsky's inexperience and not knowing what a great defender Machado is (meanwhile my 76 year-old mother could have thrown Barco out on that play).
Good comments here. Kelly actually addresses what happened on the field. Hopefully he represents at least a minor departure from the Cherington/Shelton practice of throwing the same empty buzz phrases at people like smoke bombs.
And, yeah, the prattle about Machado’s arm was comical.
To my mind, the first real test of Donnie as a manager will be if the Pirates' baserunning improves over the next couple of months. It is the first thing that I would address as manager because they are so bad. It is unimaginable that professional baseball players who have spent years playing baseball could be so bad at running the bases. It needs addressed as a top priority, especially for a team that can't hit and isn't great in the field.
IIRC Brock is the base-running coach. So Kelly is going to need to sit down with him and explain what he wants and does not want to see. Or alternatively hand him a pink slip (I'm in favor of the latter).
Brock needs to go yesterday and take Rabelo with him.
Hey, they've already jumped all the way from 29th to 28th in BsR! And that's without taking into account their internal data, which shows them at Ty Cobb Level for baserunning!!
Good post, Aurorus.
Is it me, or have we had an alarming number of TOOTBLANs this season.
Oh... they lead the league in TootBlans... despite having made the fewest attempts to take extra bases of any team in baseball by a wide margin, so the percentage of Tootblan vs. attempt is unbelievably bad... like historically... like maybe worst in the history of baseball.
A team who’s last in all MLB in runs scored has to be bad at running the bases. This comes as no surprise to me.
I’d be interested to see these numbers. I see tootblans all over baseball now, so I didn’t think it was just a pirate thing. I also think the definition of a tootblan is likely not really catching the true baserunning mistakes. Does it count jogging to first, does it consider game situations, does it consider being thrown out on extraordinary defensive plays. I also don’t think this is on the manager. Baseball instincts are refined over years of play, not taught during the mlb season.
Is there anything that measures base running value? Statcast? By team, I’m saying-I see Statcast has it by individual player.
The worst thing about the Gorksi quote was that Hayes had made an equally bad baserunning mistake earlier in that game. He could have made a general comment about the coaches needing to continue to work with the players about situational baserunning or something.
Yeah... the Gorsky thing was a bad example for DK to pick. Hayes was eating sunflower seeds that whole game (and his pickoff at 2B, where he was obviously not paying any attention to what was happening was worse than Gorsky). The real question that DK should have asked was why they always run on contact when at 3B... why every time? Is that some sort of mandate from the analytics people in the front office?
Watching some of the video relating to promoting Don Kelly to Manager, the question about a Bench Coach was raised and I think I heard Kelly say he has to get around to making that decision. If so, is it possible that he would choose Neil Walker as the Bench Coach?
I know this possibility has probably already been raised by the local news and talk shows, but that news does not get to us in Tennessee.
#FreeJimLeyland
Walker would be fun and may be good, but I'd prefer an experienced coach or even ex-manager. Of course it needs to be someone that Kelly is comfortable with, so I can't speculate on who the candidates might be.
#FreeJimLeyland
Kelly is a Player's Manager - he has been where they are and is still young enough to know what they are thinking and relate. I doubt that he would want a former Manager as his Bench Coach. Lord knows that Shelton did not seem to achieve any useful level of expertise from his 6 years as a Manager, and Managers like Clint Hurdle are too far removed from this generation and too locked into their own way of doing things.
Clint is now the Rockies bench coach, after the Bud Black firing.
A great victory for the Bucs - they needed to finish with a positive and win the series from the Braves, a playoff challenger. An excellent start by Mlodzinski, and just enough contact at the plate to get enough runs to post the W.
Very impressed with the outing from Mike Burrows at AAA. Kind of a mystery to me is why he was 1 out away from being the pitcher of record, but was pulled after 86 pitches, and the batter was a guy he had struck out in his previous AB.
Also impressed with Lefty Reliever Jaden Woods, 23, at AA against Erie, a Detroit Tigers Affiliate. A 6th Round Pick in 2023 out of Georgia, he has advanced quickly, pitching 20 innings at A+ and then 20 more innings at AA to finish 2024. Would not be surprised to see him promoted to AAA soon.
Javier Rivas continuing to establish himself as a hitter and especially pleased to see that 2 RBI Double was a line drive to RF. Glove will play at SS in MLB, and his bat has come alive at A+. Although his K/BB ratio is around 4/1, that is also an improvement for him - last year as an older player at Bradenton it was about 8/1. He will play almost all of 2025 as a 22 year old, not turning 23 until Sep 1.
Pirates don’t care about pitching wins nearly as much as Pitchers or us fans. They care much more about preventing injury. Whether or not you agree with this philosophy is up to you. I for one do not!