The other shoe could still drop......but like I've theorized before, BC and Shelton are the perfect corporate yes men for Nutting. They really do their "job" well of staying in the lines of presenting a uniform message (and within budget) through the five losing seasons. Secondly, Nutting doesn't want the hassle of the job search, may just kick the can down the road some more.
That's Shelton and GMBC covering their asses with the owner since they've finished last in the NL Central 4 out of the last 5 years. These moves will not change how this team plays poor fundamental baseball in the field or on the base paths. It will not change the lack of identity, poor lineup construction and lack of talent either. I'm not absolving those two, but the problems are at a much higher level including the owner who has brainwashed fans into thinking a $100 million payroll is the ceiling. Worst owner in baseball and possibly all of sports. Bob, congratulations on another fine year with Pirates Charities. Well done!
Yeah, this is not a good sign! What went wrong this year? The bullpen and the offense! So, let’s get rid of the symbols for both!
The problem with both go much deeper, but these are moves to simply try to satiate the average ticket buyer. No different from signing Tellez and picking up BDLC and Beeks.
I no longer have faith in Cherington’s ability to field a team around what looks like very good pitching- either via acquisitions or player development. If they win next year, it will be in spite of the FO.
The last glimmer of hope I have is for Nutting to hire a real baseball man as POBO. But these moves to me rather signal that Cherington has convinced Williams and Nutting that getting rid of Haines and Meccage will go a long way in solving the problems and they are to clueless - or maybe just don’t care - to be able to see it runs much deeper.
I'd like to see him add 10 to 20 pounds of good weight. Mainly lower body, mid-sections with very little upper body. I think it might help him to hold and maintain his velocity in the mid 90's.
Holding his velocity and if he keeps improving his control, he'd become a potential elite prospect. The pitching ninja put out an overlay of Skenes 4 pitch types "tunneling". I would love too see Reed's 3 pitch mix from him, just to have a visual of Reed's pure nastiness and potential.
Today's prediction: the O's get bounced early because of lack of pitching, pushing them to overpay with their surplus of blonde bombers for luis ortiz this offseason
The silver lining to having a coaching staff that some doubt are able to get the most out of their players is that teams may pay for players who might not seem to have much excess value.
I would not trade Keller but starting next year he's no longer a bargain as his $/WAR is about market rate, but maybe the O's would still pay thinking that they'd get more from Keller than we've gotten. That's also how I explain the Red Sox being willing to trade Yorke for Priester (I'm more optimistic about Yorke than Priester).
I know we have a better reputation for getting the most out of our starting pitchers, but even with Skenes' excellence our starters were bottom third (21st) in the second half of the season.
most offseason´s we have $30mil to spend but not this year because Keller is getting a $10mil raise, Reynolds getting a $3 mill raise and Bednar getting a $3mil raise
I'm concerned that's the case, but it also could be that Shelton and Cherington made these moves in hopes of saving Shelton (we know Ben is a big fan of Derek) and Shelton's fate is still TBD. I never thought Cherington would be the one to fire Shelton, so maybe this doesn't tell us anything yet.
they could stick with their "go get a walk" strategy if they just tweeked it a little bit to force every hitter to choke up after two strikes and protect the plate
I'm more worried about their contact percentage. They didn't swing a lot, and sat around league average in BB%. Larger issue being they had one of the worst contact percentages, also leading to one of the highest K%. So, they seemingly waited for "their pitch", and tried to enact "the most damage". Which isn't the worst philosophy as they were top 10 in HardHit% and Barrel%. Unfortunately they saw one of the highest zone%, had a top 10 swinging strike rate with top 10 called strike rate, leading to the worst called swinging strike rates in the league (tied with Colorado).
Among other things, I've found from seeing a ton of Marauders and FCL games the last few years that the hitters have no sense of game situations or pitching patterns. It's like every pitch occurs in a vacuum.
I can't even guess how many times I've seen a hitter chase the exact same pitch in the exact same spot, usually a breaking ball well off the plate, three straight times. And coaching definitely plays a role in those failures. Too much time with pitching machines and not enough preparation for facing actual humans who have brains.
Thing is this was corroborated by Lance Brozdowski. He has the data for all of Triple-A through Low-A, and the exact same trends bore out in the data. They did damage when they made contact, but they had one of the worst contact rates. You can see it with hitters like Termarr Johnson, who will take their walks, but when they swing, they SWING.
That used to be called "swinging for the fences." We were told from little league on not to do it, and coaches corrected anyone who did. Now, thanks to statcast and number-crunching, most of the hitting coaches in MLB think it is a good idea. All the evidence, from plummeting batting averages to low .obp to a number of total bases per game that equals the "deadball" 80s era indicates that this strategy just does not work.
Some data in a vacuum 5 years ago may have indicated that not protecting the plate with 2 strikes and trying to hit the ball hard produces better results, but the mathematical geniuses obviously never included in their calculations that pitchers would adjust and start using less chase pitches with 2 strikes and more breaking and offspeed pitches early in the count. The ole' uncertainty principle: you can measure for one variable but not two. While the whole league was changing its style of hitting based on one variable, the other variable (the pitchers) were adapting and adjusting.
Glad to see Paul Skenes win ROY from Baseball America. It will be interesting to see the results from MLB. I think he is a lock to finish First or Second, with Jackson Merrill of the Padres being the closest competitor. Jackson Chourio looks like he will be the 3rd place finisher. It will be interesting to see how the vote goes.
The Pirates do not get the extra draft pick because they did not start Skenes at the MLB level at the beginning of the season. For players/pitchers who were drafted in the previous year, I would think they would allow a period of break-in simply based on player safety. Hitters have a history of starting early, but Pitchers not so much regardless of whether they were drafted out of a College.
Agree, bummer for us, but this is the exception to the rule. I think the Pirates handled him responsibly, and it sucks they get “penalized” for it. But, good for Skenes, he was so dominant that he earned that full year of service time.
Haines was hired by Shelton as someone who was on the same page; bullpen coaches don't get to choose their relievers or when/how they're used. I don't disagree with these changes but it's passing the buck.
Mere "offerings"! If somebody in the Senior Management echelon is not calling moving vans, it will not be acceptable. To me that means Shelton and/or Cherrington!
Obviously, Haines and Meccage needed to go, but the Pirates issues ran much deeper than those two "offerings". Shelton was given 4 years then given another year because the Pirates played to a 76-86 record in 2023. With having our best Rotation in many years in 2024, and advancing 9 slots in overall pitching, from 23rd in 2023 to 14th in 2024, we still failed to make any advancements in our overall record. That's failure.
Our GM did not help very much with trading to get IKF and BDLC - both came in and posted numbers that were ridiculously bad. They were both sleepwalking through the remainder of the season as can be seen by their walk to Strikeout numbers - IKF 3 Walks/41 K's and BDLC 4 Walks/52 K's during their time with the Pirates - nowhere near MLB performances! From the top down, just a mess!
Glass half full, and NMR is gonna come in here yelling at me, I'm going to believe Haines and his philosophy were trained org wide, leading to poor results across the board. It would flabbergast me how hitters in Triple-A, would come to the majors, and struggle with the things that they seemingly excelled at (ie.: Tank against fastballs).
I don't have a deep dive dataset to back this claim, aside from the Milwaukee Brewers offense instantly improved upon Haines departure. After steadily declining in his three years. Even David Stearns noted that they needed a new voice "organizationally".
Question is, do they replace him with someone who has a similar mindset?
At risk of being swatted by NMR as well, I’ll agree that it’s hard to think they don’t have some sort of philosophical/approach issue, even if I lean towards the main problem being talent. It’s either that or we just have awful luck.
Yeah, and the issue is trying to dissect what they're exactly doing, or being taught. So, best I/we can do is theorize, and my theory is essentially they were being taught to look for pitches and/or types of pitches in specific zones, their "damage zones". Being told to "A swing" at those pitches. But as we know, a hitter only has a very minimal finite amount of time to determine spin and location. So, that may lead to them taking good pitches since it wasn't specifically in their "zone", or picking up too late that a pitch WAS in their "zone". And it isn't necessarily a one size fits all, as a Nick Gonzales generally took fewer pitches, facing 3.53 pitches per PA, against league average of 3.88
Also the fact that there really isn’t any such thing as a hitters count makes this tough as well? I might see one fastball I can drive, but I’m not supposed to swing at it because it’s a few ticks down in the grid from what’s ideal for me?
Isn’t the real problem the predictability of such an approach? If I’m the opposing pitching coach, and I have a pretty damn good idea of what you will and won’t swing at, isn’t my job is way easier?
Opposing pitcher would need pinpoint control for that to work.
I think and I could be dead wrong, but you fellas are way overthinking this...they don't have good hitters. The few good hitters produced fine, the bad one did not.
It's not like we keep the same dudes, dump Haines and suddenly we're Murderers Row & Cano.
Personally, I'm glad they fired Haines, hell, fire all of 'em. But, that isn't going to make them better.
Good points. Hard to figure Davis, but some hitters do well if they have immediate good contact - if not, they start to make unnecessary adjustments . . . sort of overthinking it. He has it inside of him, but he needs to believe in himself.
The Brewers are a lot looser group this year - I would put that on Murphy, not a hitting coach.
helmet advertisements want to make me puke
Brock absolutely needs to be next. Haddad is invisible in the dugout.......for a strategy coach does he
ever dispense any intel or say a word? They both need pink slips.
The other shoe could still drop......but like I've theorized before, BC and Shelton are the perfect corporate yes men for Nutting. They really do their "job" well of staying in the lines of presenting a uniform message (and within budget) through the five losing seasons. Secondly, Nutting doesn't want the hassle of the job search, may just kick the can down the road some more.
Haines and Meccage fired......🥱
That's Shelton and GMBC covering their asses with the owner since they've finished last in the NL Central 4 out of the last 5 years. These moves will not change how this team plays poor fundamental baseball in the field or on the base paths. It will not change the lack of identity, poor lineup construction and lack of talent either. I'm not absolving those two, but the problems are at a much higher level including the owner who has brainwashed fans into thinking a $100 million payroll is the ceiling. Worst owner in baseball and possibly all of sports. Bob, congratulations on another fine year with Pirates Charities. Well done!
There is a system-wide crisis that firing Haines and Meccage does not address in any way.
Yeah, this is not a good sign! What went wrong this year? The bullpen and the offense! So, let’s get rid of the symbols for both!
The problem with both go much deeper, but these are moves to simply try to satiate the average ticket buyer. No different from signing Tellez and picking up BDLC and Beeks.
I no longer have faith in Cherington’s ability to field a team around what looks like very good pitching- either via acquisitions or player development. If they win next year, it will be in spite of the FO.
The last glimmer of hope I have is for Nutting to hire a real baseball man as POBO. But these moves to me rather signal that Cherington has convinced Williams and Nutting that getting rid of Haines and Meccage will go a long way in solving the problems and they are to clueless - or maybe just don’t care - to be able to see it runs much deeper.
Here for more Carlson Reed content.
I'd like to see him add 10 to 20 pounds of good weight. Mainly lower body, mid-sections with very little upper body. I think it might help him to hold and maintain his velocity in the mid 90's.
Holding his velocity and if he keeps improving his control, he'd become a potential elite prospect. The pitching ninja put out an overlay of Skenes 4 pitch types "tunneling". I would love too see Reed's 3 pitch mix from him, just to have a visual of Reed's pure nastiness and potential.
GO 'EERS.
Too bad he's not in the AFL. I guess that's the downside to throwing 108 innings your first full season.
I would have loved to seen him again better competition. Although they could just push him straight to Altoona next year and do the same
Today's prediction: the O's get bounced early because of lack of pitching, pushing them to overpay with their surplus of blonde bombers for luis ortiz this offseason
Ortiz has a nice salary that fits our budget
We´ve got to salary dump Keller
So do skenes, jones, ashcraft, burrows, chandler, oviedo, falter… gotta deal someone
The silver lining to having a coaching staff that some doubt are able to get the most out of their players is that teams may pay for players who might not seem to have much excess value.
I would not trade Keller but starting next year he's no longer a bargain as his $/WAR is about market rate, but maybe the O's would still pay thinking that they'd get more from Keller than we've gotten. That's also how I explain the Red Sox being willing to trade Yorke for Priester (I'm more optimistic about Yorke than Priester).
I know we have a better reputation for getting the most out of our starting pitchers, but even with Skenes' excellence our starters were bottom third (21st) in the second half of the season.
all this crap about wanting to be like the rays
at this moment, the rays trade Keller
at this time last year, the rays traded Bednar
100%
True statement and a sad commentary on how cheap Bob Nutting is.
meh - we all know by now the payroll is a constant
most offseason´s we have $30mil to spend but not this year because Keller is getting a $10mil raise, Reynolds getting a $3 mill raise and Bednar getting a $3mil raise
plus we took on $7.5 from IKF and Cutch will be back for $5mil
so really we have only like $2.5 mil to spend this winter
i’d guess that announcing these changes first means Shelton gets another year
I'm concerned that's the case, but it also could be that Shelton and Cherington made these moves in hopes of saving Shelton (we know Ben is a big fan of Derek) and Shelton's fate is still TBD. I never thought Cherington would be the one to fire Shelton, so maybe this doesn't tell us anything yet.
Agree. I would think if Shelton was going they would have announced it with these 2.
Now do shelton next
Now we can begin to heal.
And if the Pirates come out worse hitting next season, well, then I might just pack it in that the Pirates are just cursed.
they could stick with their "go get a walk" strategy if they just tweeked it a little bit to force every hitter to choke up after two strikes and protect the plate
I'm more worried about their contact percentage. They didn't swing a lot, and sat around league average in BB%. Larger issue being they had one of the worst contact percentages, also leading to one of the highest K%. So, they seemingly waited for "their pitch", and tried to enact "the most damage". Which isn't the worst philosophy as they were top 10 in HardHit% and Barrel%. Unfortunately they saw one of the highest zone%, had a top 10 swinging strike rate with top 10 called strike rate, leading to the worst called swinging strike rates in the league (tied with Colorado).
Eighteen Cherington flunkies taking up space in the locker room and they couldn't figure any of this out.
Funny enough, I went back to 2021, and the Brewers data mimics the CSW% and Contact%.
Go to 2024, the Brewers still have a high CSW%, but 11th Contact%.
Among other things, I've found from seeing a ton of Marauders and FCL games the last few years that the hitters have no sense of game situations or pitching patterns. It's like every pitch occurs in a vacuum.
I can't even guess how many times I've seen a hitter chase the exact same pitch in the exact same spot, usually a breaking ball well off the plate, three straight times. And coaching definitely plays a role in those failures. Too much time with pitching machines and not enough preparation for facing actual humans who have brains.
the were rarely "waiting for their pitch" as much as they were there to "draw a walk" as their first priority
the plan completely crumbled when the umps caught wind of this and made up the strikezone on a whim for any given night
Thing is this was corroborated by Lance Brozdowski. He has the data for all of Triple-A through Low-A, and the exact same trends bore out in the data. They did damage when they made contact, but they had one of the worst contact rates. You can see it with hitters like Termarr Johnson, who will take their walks, but when they swing, they SWING.
It also tracks (pun intended) with the new bat tracking data. The Pirates led the league (tied with BAL and ATL) in average bat speed.
That used to be called "swinging for the fences." We were told from little league on not to do it, and coaches corrected anyone who did. Now, thanks to statcast and number-crunching, most of the hitting coaches in MLB think it is a good idea. All the evidence, from plummeting batting averages to low .obp to a number of total bases per game that equals the "deadball" 80s era indicates that this strategy just does not work.
Some data in a vacuum 5 years ago may have indicated that not protecting the plate with 2 strikes and trying to hit the ball hard produces better results, but the mathematical geniuses obviously never included in their calculations that pitchers would adjust and start using less chase pitches with 2 strikes and more breaking and offspeed pitches early in the count. The ole' uncertainty principle: you can measure for one variable but not two. While the whole league was changing its style of hitting based on one variable, the other variable (the pitchers) were adapting and adjusting.
Glad to see Paul Skenes win ROY from Baseball America. It will be interesting to see the results from MLB. I think he is a lock to finish First or Second, with Jackson Merrill of the Padres being the closest competitor. Jackson Chourio looks like he will be the 3rd place finisher. It will be interesting to see how the vote goes.
The Pirates do not get the extra draft pick because they did not start Skenes at the MLB level at the beginning of the season. For players/pitchers who were drafted in the previous year, I would think they would allow a period of break-in simply based on player safety. Hitters have a history of starting early, but Pitchers not so much regardless of whether they were drafted out of a College.
Agree, bummer for us, but this is the exception to the rule. I think the Pirates handled him responsibly, and it sucks they get “penalized” for it. But, good for Skenes, he was so dominant that he earned that full year of service time.
Haines was hired by Shelton as someone who was on the same page; bullpen coaches don't get to choose their relievers or when/how they're used. I don't disagree with these changes but it's passing the buck.
Mere "offerings"! If somebody in the Senior Management echelon is not calling moving vans, it will not be acceptable. To me that means Shelton and/or Cherrington!
If you throw the virgin into the volcano, the baseball gods will be pleased.
The first of our off-season wishes came true almost immediately with Andy Haines being let go.
Obviously, Haines and Meccage needed to go, but the Pirates issues ran much deeper than those two "offerings". Shelton was given 4 years then given another year because the Pirates played to a 76-86 record in 2023. With having our best Rotation in many years in 2024, and advancing 9 slots in overall pitching, from 23rd in 2023 to 14th in 2024, we still failed to make any advancements in our overall record. That's failure.
Our GM did not help very much with trading to get IKF and BDLC - both came in and posted numbers that were ridiculously bad. They were both sleepwalking through the remainder of the season as can be seen by their walk to Strikeout numbers - IKF 3 Walks/41 K's and BDLC 4 Walks/52 K's during their time with the Pirates - nowhere near MLB performances! From the top down, just a mess!
I get Haines but Meccage didn't pick the relievers in his pen or the one going into the games at particular times.
Glass half full, and NMR is gonna come in here yelling at me, I'm going to believe Haines and his philosophy were trained org wide, leading to poor results across the board. It would flabbergast me how hitters in Triple-A, would come to the majors, and struggle with the things that they seemingly excelled at (ie.: Tank against fastballs).
I don't have a deep dive dataset to back this claim, aside from the Milwaukee Brewers offense instantly improved upon Haines departure. After steadily declining in his three years. Even David Stearns noted that they needed a new voice "organizationally".
"...aside from the Milwaukee Brewers offense instantly improved upon Haines departure."
Exactly two of of the Brewers players with the most at bats in 2021 improved their performances in 2022, and one was a *healthy* Christian Yelich.
The Brewers improved their offense by getting better hitters.
Adames: Acquired in 2021 from Rays, and even got 413 PAs with MIL in 2021
Urias: Acquired from Padres, played 2020 and 2021 with Brewers
Wong: Signed as FA prior to 2021 season
Jace Peterson, I guess a "better" player?: In MIL org from 2020
Tyrone Taylor!!!!: Drafted by MIL, debuted in 2019, got into 93 games in 2021
Caratini: Here's a new not Hunter Renfroe hitter. A better hitter, I guess.
Narvaez: Had been with the team since 2020
Tellez: Why does that sound familiar? But also, acquired in 2021
Brousseau and McCutchen: There's two new hitters. Cutch putting up the worst wRC+ season of his career. And Brousseau's 160 plate appearances.
Probably also worth mentioning that the league average OPS dropped 22 pts from 2021 to 2022, .728 to .706
They also dropped from 9 to 16 in wRC+ in 2023. That’s gotta be attributable to a delayed Haines hangover, right?
Oh really? Hunter Renfroe?
Question is, do they replace him with someone who has a similar mindset?
At risk of being swatted by NMR as well, I’ll agree that it’s hard to think they don’t have some sort of philosophical/approach issue, even if I lean towards the main problem being talent. It’s either that or we just have awful luck.
Yeah, and the issue is trying to dissect what they're exactly doing, or being taught. So, best I/we can do is theorize, and my theory is essentially they were being taught to look for pitches and/or types of pitches in specific zones, their "damage zones". Being told to "A swing" at those pitches. But as we know, a hitter only has a very minimal finite amount of time to determine spin and location. So, that may lead to them taking good pitches since it wasn't specifically in their "zone", or picking up too late that a pitch WAS in their "zone". And it isn't necessarily a one size fits all, as a Nick Gonzales generally took fewer pitches, facing 3.53 pitches per PA, against league average of 3.88
Also the fact that there really isn’t any such thing as a hitters count makes this tough as well? I might see one fastball I can drive, but I’m not supposed to swing at it because it’s a few ticks down in the grid from what’s ideal for me?
In which you're once again completely fabricating scenarios to justify your predetermined conclusion.
Isn’t the real problem the predictability of such an approach? If I’m the opposing pitching coach, and I have a pretty damn good idea of what you will and won’t swing at, isn’t my job is way easier?
I'm sorry but think this through for literally just a second.
Your advice is to throw off the pitcher by swinging at pitches you suck at?
Opposing pitcher would need pinpoint control for that to work.
I think and I could be dead wrong, but you fellas are way overthinking this...they don't have good hitters. The few good hitters produced fine, the bad one did not.
It's not like we keep the same dudes, dump Haines and suddenly we're Murderers Row & Cano.
Personally, I'm glad they fired Haines, hell, fire all of 'em. But, that isn't going to make them better.
They need talent. Talent trumps all.
Essentially, which could be why they led in CSW%. Throw in or around their blue spots on their heat maps.
Though, now that I'm looking specifically at the Pirates, more batters than not took a higher amount of pitches per PA than league average.
Good points. Hard to figure Davis, but some hitters do well if they have immediate good contact - if not, they start to make unnecessary adjustments . . . sort of overthinking it. He has it inside of him, but he needs to believe in himself.
The Brewers are a lot looser group this year - I would put that on Murphy, not a hitting coach.