They had a seven-run inning to beat Arizona 9-6 yesterday. Mainly noteworthy because April 22 was the last day they had seven runs in a game, let alone an inning. Be nice if that outburst got them on some sort of streak that isn't a losing streak. 

After beating Miami last night, they're (I think) 17-16 with Don Kelly as manager. At the least, that win moved them above .500 with him as the manager. 

Makes me wonder what this season would be like if Sheldon's worthless ass had gotten canned after last year, or if they at least didn't wait as long as they did this year to remove him. I mean, under Kelly, it's not like their offense suddenly did a 180 and is now putting up 10 runs a game. They did last night, but most of their games, win or lose, seem to be really close where the difference is there's a better chance of quality execution when it's needed. 

Took in the game today…my son got to play the National Anthem

That's awesome!

So, not only is Oneil Cruz is one hell of a massive month-long slump with the bat, but he also seems to have checked out mentally. A week or two ago, he had an almost comical (ie: comical to anyone not a Pirate fan) defensive blunder where he completely misplayed a routine ball into center field and then just stood there and watched it go to the wall. Last night, he got removed from the game because he "lost track of outs" and didn't run out a double play grounder. 

This team can't have anything positive. 

Six straight wins is a weird feeling. Three straight shutouts also is unexpected. And the team having strong offensive showings in five of the six (all but Skenes' start because he's not allowed to have support) is very, very insane. It's like 10-15 players got Invasion of the Body Snatchers'd and their alien substitutes are WAY better at the sports thing than the inferior human originals. 

Heretic wrote:

Six straight wins is a weird feeling. Three straight shutouts also is unexpected. And the team having strong offensive showings in five of the six (all but Skenes' start because he's not allowed to have support) is very, very insane. It's like 10-15 players got Invasion of the Body Snatchers'd and their alien substitutes are WAY better at the sports thing than the inferior human originals. 

4 straight wins by 7+ runs….only the 3rd time in MLB history

Well, they followed that up with a shit ton of nothing over the last two days!

What a shock! Zero runs with Skenes starting. That never happens!!!

4-7, 1.94 ERA. Nice.

Heretic wrote:

What a shock! Zero runs with Skenes starting. That never happens!!!

Brutal

justincredible wrote:

4-7, 1.94 ERA. Nice.

And now it's 4-8 with a 2.01 ERA. Because giving up two runs in five innings (with 78 pitches because they're managing his work load for reasons) is way too much for this offense to overcome.

Every day Ben Cherington is the team's GM is a wasted day. Dude has been incompetent at building a team, it's year 6 and they're worse than they were when he started, they have no offense and he's a fucking analytics nerd who'd rather put money in that department than into the actual team. Just the concept that a dude who's fucked up everything he's touched so far with the team could possibly be in charge of the draft and this month's inevitable fire sale/tearing it down/trying again spectacular is depressing because you know he's going to completely botch everything up because he has some giant hard on for some player who grades out to be another Spencer Horwitz -- an average-at-best guy whose WAR number will be anywhere from +.3 to -.5. 

"Hey, let's dump Keller, Reynolds, Bednar, Cruz, everyone....to get 8 light-hitting nobodies who can play five positions. Oh, and 2-3 mediocre-at-best pitchers who can fit any role from spot starter to middle relief to mop-up guy." Dude's gonna make us suck more than the Rockies and White Sox while insisting he made the right moves and they just didn't pan out for some reason. Under his GM-ship, every aspect of this franchise has turned to shit besides all the promising young arms that he'll probably fuck up just because that's what he does. 

It's just amazing how seemingly every power hitting prospect just falls apart at the big league level. Suwinski went from a guy who wasn't great, but could hit .220ish with 20-30 homers to a guy who can't hit, period. Cruz has power and speed and a .205 average -- dude's probably gonna strike out at the home run derby. Henry Davis shows flashes, but is still a .200 hitter who happens to have some pop. 

Just firing Cherington isn't enough. Firing him out of a cannon into the sun wouldn't be enough. Starting up gladiator games and throwing him to a starving lion...now that might be a start, but I think we'd need some sort of magic that allows him to die a thousand deaths to just scratch the surface of what he deserves. 

Hard to disagree.  The fans and great ballpark deserve better, not to mention the greats who came before.

Welp, today's game lasted until the bottom of the second, when Burrows has just imploded. Down 5-0; pack it up and try again tomorrow, guys! No way in hell you'll get that many runs without having 4-5 days to put the work in. 

QuakerOats wrote:

Hard to disagree.  The fans and great ballpark deserve better, not to mention the greats who came before.

And the saddest thing is, I thought there was legit reason for hope after last season. 76-86 finish with the best young pitcher in the game, a few other good young arms and a respectable, if not great, offense. Make a few moves to shore up some weak spots and I figured they could easily compete for a wild card.

Instead, most of the offense has regressed (in particular, Reynolds, Cruz and Bart) and not enough guys have stepped up to even be as good as "sub-par". When it comes to bright spots, I can only give actual props to Cutch, Gonzales, Kiner-Falafa and Pham for the recent period when he actually did something about his contacts so he could see the ball. And of those guys, Gonzales is the only guy who might be part of the team's future, as Cutch is nearing the end of his career and both K-F and Pham are short-term guys who'd I'd expect to see moved by the deadline. 

Let the great dump-off begin.

Ke'Bryan Hayes to the Reds for...a 34-year old reliever and a 20-year-old A-ball shortstop. Not only trading a guy with 5 years of control and who is one of the best defensive players in the game to a division rival, but getting at best one decent prospect for him is pure Ben Cherington. It does clear away a fair amount of future salary, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they fuck that up!

Next out: decent-ish middle reliever Caleb Ferguson to Seattle for...a 19-year-old A-level starting pitcher who, from his stats so far this year, ranks in the category of "just how the fuck do you decide THIS is the guy you want??!?". Don't get me wrong, I'm bright enough to know that you're not getting a top prospect for an average middle reliever, but 6.18 ERA with a 1.61 WHIP in 16 starts (so not a small sample size)? Basically gave up a major league player for a guy whose main baseball claim to fame likely will always be the fact his name is Jeter Martinez. Parents must have loved the Yankees; he'll never get bought by them though...

And now, David Bednar to the Yankees for three prospects. Wasn't disappointed they traded him, as closers are volatile. Case in point: David Bednar. Dominating for a couple years, sucked last year and early this year, went to the minors for a bit and has been utterly amazing since returning with like 1 run in his last 25 innings. 

As for the haul, I guess not bad, but in comparison to what a couple other teams got for dealing closers, I don't know if it adds up. Their eighth-ranked guy (C/1B) who is described as an expert pitch framer and MLB ready, although his stats say he raked at AA and has struggled with the bat at AAA. And if there is one thing we are not lacking in, it is catchers struggling with the bat. Their 10th ranked guy who is at A and also is a C/1B because you can't have too many of those, I guess. And an OF who is not in their top 30 prospect list. 

Guess I'm the most "jury is out" on this one of any of their moves so far. Moving him was the right choice, but with the closer market so boom-ing, I don't know if they got all they could have. I'd add in how the Twitter verdict seems to be centered on "FUCK CHERINGTON", but Pirates Twitter is, if anything, even more hateful towards that stupid piece of shit than I am, if one can believe that. 

Bailey Falter -- serviceable and quality, but inconsistent starter -- traded to Kansas City. For two minor league guys, neither of whom are even Top 30 prospects according to MiLB. 

Also, the Rogers guy that was part of the stupid Hayes trade with Cincinnati got flipped to the Cubs. Probably for nothing, but who fucking cares about anything any more. Ben Cherington (incompetent) and Bob Nutting (cheap, apathetic) have ruined this franchise. We'll all probably be dead before they ever contend again. I hope they die screaming in a fire. Soon. 

I feel your pain. 

After a day, I think the main thing other than anger I'm feeling about this team is pure confusion. Because this trade deadline looks like they didn't have a clue as to what their plan was.

This is Cherington's sixth year, in which he hasn't had a single winning record and it's pretty obvious that whatever he's trying to do isn't working. Way I see it is that the team had two choices.

1. Go all-in on a full rebuild. Dump off all the rental pieces and anyone else (other than a select few that you're going to try to build around) and do a hard reset. Of course, this would have probably needed them to fire Cherington, which for some reason didn't happen, since why would you have a failed GM run the show? To watch him fuck it all up again?

2. Dump off the rental pieces and make a couple other moves where you trade from positions of strength (pitching) to shore up positions of weakness (offense) in the hopes that with a couple good off-season moves and a couple players returning to form next year (looking at you, Reynolds), the team can at least be in wild card contention.

Coming into the deadline, the messages were mixed. On one hand, I was hearing that other than Skenes, Cutch and maybe Cruz, no one was safe (Plan 1). On the other, Cherington was talking about wanting to make moves to compete next year (Plan 2). And what they did was this weird thing where they did neither.

Counting the pre-deadline Adam Frazier trade, they only dumped off three rentals. Not included in that list is the most valuable, as Tommy Pham has been among the best hitters in baseball since mid-June. He's on a one-year contract and now they probably won't get anything for him, when they could have gotten probably a mid-tier prospect or two. So, they failed at that. Kiner-Falafa could have netted something. Heaney's been bad for a while, so that might have been like Ferguson, where they can only get a meh low-level guy. 

They also got next to no help for 2026. Frazier netted a 28-year-old AAA vet who is having a good year. One of the players in the Bednar deal is a catcher who could contribute, although his AAA stats this year suck compared to his AA stats, so he might not be ready yet. One of the players in the Falter deal is a 28-year old AAA reliever who had the most hilarious stat line in his 5.1 innings of MLB work. 1.6ish ERA with a 1.8ish WHIP...which kind of says that only giving up one run in those 5.1 innings was pure luck and not remotely sustainable. Everyone else is in A-ball and years away from being in the bigs. Assuming any of them ever get there, as only two of the 6 or so A  players actually register as prospects. 

It's just stupid. One of the closers dealt landed a guy that is a top 10 prospect; on the Cleveland thread, Lally said that Bieber, who hasn't pitched in over a year, got a top-50 prospect and Pittsburgh couldn't even grab a single top 100 guy. Stupid as hell. 

And they come back from their shit show of a trade deadline by blowing leads of 9-0 and 15-6 to lose 17-16 to fucking Colorado of all teams. 

Thomas Harrington (called up to replace whoever) fucking sucked ass. Dennis Santana, who was untouchable as a set-up guy, got murdered in trying to be David Bednar. 

Fuck this team. And fuck me for being a fan. 

Seeing Jack Suwinski and his .120-hitting self in the starting line-up virtually every day is really helping me have understanding of how it feels to go to a routine doctor's appointment and finding out you have inoperable terminal cancer and it's actually a big surprise you're still alive, so, yeah, don't ask about how long you have left.