OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: New season of plundering begins

[Empoleon8771]

The team is 11-7 this year, by the way this thread is talking you'd think they'd be 2-16

 

[Empoleon8771]

Good lord Cruz.

 

[sovietsanta87]

The team is 11-7 this year, by the way this thread is talking you'd think they'd be 2-16

I get that. They’ve also lost 5 of their last 7. Over 162 game season this team will be exposed for playing bad fundamental baseball

 

[Empoleon8771]

I get that. They’ve also lost 5 of their last 7. Over 162 game season this team will be exposed for playing bad fundamental baseball

Yeah every team goes through hot and cold runs. I don't think anything is surprising.

I agree that this team needs to clean up the fundamentals, but I don't think they're in some dire situation right now like others seem to think.

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

As usual, the Bucs get absolutely hosed by the umpires. Olivares is called out on a force play where it clearly was bobbled until he was safely on the bag.

 

[BusinessGoose]

Lost control again

Tough visit to NY

 

[WickedWrister]

Kind of an ugly stat

 

[BusinessGoose]

3 unanswered in the 6th, 3 more in the 8th...6-3 loss

3 unanswered in the 7th..3-1 loss

2 unanswered in 3rd, 4 more in 6th, 3 more in 8th...9-1 loss


Ugly stat indeed. We are losing the game half way through... That 6-3 loss really sucked as we were in total control of the flow

 

[metalan2]

Just want to pop in and say the Pirates have the worst manager in major league baseball.

Jared Jones 59 pitches, 50 strikes, and gets pulled. Obscene.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Just want to pop in and say the Pirates have the worst manager in major league baseball.

Jared Jones 59 pitches, 50 strikes, and gets pulled. Obscene.

There is no excuse for it. There is no justifiable reason to pull a kid who is dominating that much.

If he was 7 IP and 80-85 pitches? Sure, even on a 1 hitter. Pull him, but don't tell me the 20 pitch difference and workload management, or predetermined inning to come out was the reason. It's stupidity.

And moreover, it can f*** with a young pitchers head, being yanked, dealing as he was.

 

[metalan2]

There is no excuse for it. There is no justifiable reason to pull a kid who is dominating that much.

If he was 7 IP and 80-85 pitches? Sure, even on a 1 hitter. Pull him, but don't tell me the 20 pitch difference and workload management, or predetermined inning to come out was the reason. It's stupidity.

And moreover, it can f*** with a young pitchers head, being yanked, dealing as he was.

I just saw that Jones was planned to go five no matter what before the game. So even if the kid was throwing a no hitter, with 50 pitches, he was coming out.

Have to love this franchise.

The Pirates are rounding into their normal mid April form where their bats go cold for the remainder of the season. Squarely on Andy Haines who is quite possibly the worst hitting coach in major league baseball.

Suwinsky had an at bat here he didn't swing at one pitch during an at bat with 6 pitches lol.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Jones said he agreed with the decision to pull him yesterday, with saying "do you want to see me later in the year or do you want me to be shut down?".

But beyond that, the fact that this team has stopped scoring runs is a wildly bigger issue than pulling Jones an inning too early.

 

[MrBrightside]

Jones said he agreed with the decision to pull him yesterday, with saying "do you want to see me later in the year or do you want me to be shut down?".

But beyond that, the fact that this team has stopped scoring runs is a wildly bigger issue than pulling Jones an inning too early.

Eh, this is a savvy player having his manager's back more than a realistic expression of what he felt. I'm fine with limiting his workload a bit, but it should be based on pitches, not innings, and he never had an inning where he threw more than 14 pitches. Study after study shows it's the longer innings that are the most taxing on player's arms.

 

[BusinessGoose]

Jones already had issues staying in long, guys were dialing him in

So I'm okay sort of with not having him go too long

But like... Warm the pen up, and pull him if they start connecting, otherwise let him work the counts

Whatever, there were some really stupid baserunning mistakes, really odd fielding choices, and some stupid lineup/rotation choices this series (then again, these warts were present from day one, we were just able to tread water enough to still have a winning record)

 

[MrBrightside]

On his podcast this morning DK stated that Pirates' hitters have the lowest average exit velocity in the majors this season. If true that's pretty scary, particularly given that the White Sox have been shut out like 7 times and the A's exist. Hayes seems to have reverted to what he was his entire career before August 2023, Triolo's BABIP luck seems to have largely run out, Tellez kind of sucks, and man do they need Cruz and Davis to take a step forward.

 

[Fogel]

By fWAR, Pirates are 6th in pitching and 22nd in batting. I think most would have assumed the bats were ahead of the pitchers.

 

[Coastal Kev]

By fWAR, Pirates are 6th in pitching and 22nd in batting. I think most would have assumed the bats were ahead of the pitchers.

Every hitter seems to regress

 

[sovietsanta87]

Every hitter seems to regress

Can’t be a coincidence

Jack Leiter got crushed in his mlb debut

 

[Fogel]

Can’t be a coincidence

Jack Leiter got crushed in his mlb debut

They rushed him. They did a mechanical tweak and he looks much better than last year, but 3.77 ERA/4.84 FIP is not that good and 14IP is way too small to see if he really has absorbed those tweaks.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I did these last year as a way to kind of journal some thoughts and attempt to break the season up into manageable chunks in order to take the pulse of the team. After an especially frustrating game today, the timing might make sense, though I don't know if I have too much to add beyond what's been said recently by several of us. Still, want to try and get something in the ether, since it's been a solid chunk of games.

Starting record: 0-0
Record over stretch: 9-3

To get the obvious on the table: there's very little to truly complain about after a 9-3 stretch of games, which is a high point type record for most teams in the league unless they go on an absurd winning streak. To get that kind of record, you are looking at smooth sailing, with series wins, a sweep, and at worst a split, and that's what we got. If you could sim that result out of the remaining April games (and May 1 vs the A's), the record would be 13-7 or 22-10, which would be absolutely phenomenal (but also very unlikely).

I think that taking a step back, it was basically smooth sailing. The starting pitching has been quietly very good, other than a blowup from Falter and some bad/mediocre early season Keller. Gonzales and probably Perez will end up with a clunker or two over the next few weeks, but generally they look pretty sharp and like they can hold the fort and give you 5-6 innings every time, which is perfect.

The offense has been pretty consistent up and down the lineup. In most games, it's noticeably a big strength and probably the engine behind the current start. Davis' timing is way off while Cruz is running a higher K% than desirable in a still-too-small sample. To me, Cruz still pretty clearly passes the eye test, as he is putting himself into good counts and not chasing badly and getting out of sorts. I think Davis is going to right the ship and he's shown a few positive signs in the last handful of games.

The bullpen has also been better than expected, given the injuries. The uncertainty around Bednar is worrying, but even in a worst case scenario, we have a couple of other options.

I think the biggest theme so far to the season is that we've had great luck on our side. This is the case for stuff like the hits generally seeming to fall, extra innings wins like Saturday's game, or even the opponents we've faced and when we've faced them. Miami remains in pretty clear free fall and thinking back to that series, there were definitely moments in a couple of those games where a bad team gave the game away. I think we also lucked out with the timing of facing Baltimore, which is now punctuated with them calling up Holliday and making that lineup more dangerous.

Still, for all of that, I think the final word at the moment is that this is a solid team that has consistently positioned itself to win games for a reason. I don't think some of the worries prior to the season have totally gone away, but the more of these kinds of great stretches you can stack up, the more expectations need to slightly shift, since prorating an 80-win team or so changes if that team can have multiple 8-2 stretches under its belt. If you add in some great flashes, such as how Jones has looked and the hope of Skenes arriving in May, then there are reasons to be optimistic.

Looking ahead: 4 @ PHI, 3 @ NYM
I like to look for 10 or so game stretches, but it can be a little difficult to decide where to arbitrarily break things up. This shorter 7-game road trip that is bookended by two days off seems like a good smaller chunk, as these games will be a big test and are a good opportunity to cement the good start by managing to go 4-3, which I think has to represent the starting goal.

Philly can be tough, though their offense has had a bit of a slow start. They'll no doubt be looking at our series and their long homestand (against us, Colorado, and the White Sox) as a get right spot, so I think the starting pitching will be magnified in order to keep their offense in check and give us the chance to take two games. We'll face competent LHP in Suarez and Sanchez, then early season success in Turnbull and a true ace in Wheeler.

The Mets have also started slower and have some pitching woes as well as an offense that hasn't done a ton of damage on most nights. Grinding a split in Philly and then taking 2/3 from New York with Perez, Jones, and Falter slated for that series seems like the optimistic way to draw up this stretch. Falter's two starts on this road trip seem pretty magnified. It's hard to imagine him replicating what he did vs. Baltimore and both Philly and New York have plenty of guys who can punish this kind of pitcher and make that game in the series nearly impossible to win.

My gut reaction is to say that those games may be the x-factor for how this stretch will go. If we can manage to win 1 of the ones he starts, then I like our shot to go 4-3, but if both are auto-losses, it will be hard to be basically perfect in the other games.

Quoting myself here not for narcissistic reasons (hopefully), but just to go back to the last recap post and establish a little continuity. I don't think there's a ton that needs saying that others aren't already pointing out. Nonetheless...

Starting record: 9-3
Record over stretch: 2-5

One of the main sentiments I was seeing after the initial 12 games was that there was too much sloppiness with how the Pirates got to that record, and that worse times were coming. This was punctuated by Bednar pretty much singlehandedly costing us a win and a chance at 10-2.

Those worries turned out to be right, though I think the story of the 7-game road trip is a little bit simpler. The offense went ice cold. We can certainly point at fringe roster players needing to throw important innings, but the core issue is that the offense stopped doing much damage at all, especially when it had opportunities to. It's stating the obvious, but when you execute like that and can put up 5 or 6 runs, you give yourself some freedom to win games that you didn't play perfectly.

It might be an interesting exercise to look from the Phillies and Mets perspectives and tell a story about how they won imperfect games. I think in terms of opponents, we had some good and bad fortune. The Mets have been heating up and that partly cost us, whereas the Phillies have been and basically remain very cold offensively, which is what enabled us to scrap two games in that series despite being relatively uninspiring otherwise.

The biggest bright spot is Jones, as a kind of microcosm of the general starting pitching performance so far, which Fogel just pointed out recently. I think that's the biggest shame in this stretch of games. I said a few days ago that splitting the Phillies series was very crucial because it protected us from a disastrous road trip. Getting swept sucks, and we looked horrible a lot of times and especially to end the road trip, but 2-5 is more bad than disastrous to me, though of course disaster might be looming on this homestand.

That said, the shame is that the starting pitching has been such a solid foundation that we should have been able to hit that 4-3 record over the recent stretch. When you strip away the bad feeling of watching a team struggle, a 2-game swing is not really that huge, but the broader point is that the pitching probably won't be that consistently good.

Looking ahead 3 vs. BOS, 4 vs. MIL
Maybe 7 wasn't our lucky number for me to pick with the last stretch, but it again works out pretty neatly here, as we have a 7-game slate before going back on the road again for another 7-game slate.

The general tale that seems on deck is whether or not we have a prayer of turning the ship around offensively and not spoiling the good start before the calendar even gets to May and we get Skenes creeping even closer. It's hard to muster a lot of optimism for the homestand after that Mets series, but this is really the first of many big tests for the team, as to whether they can turn the page and regain some momentum.

The Red Sox are a similar story to us, really, as they aren't a team that was on a ton of radars and have had success fueled by starting pitching, with a pretty middling offense that strikes out a lot. We catch a huge break as Tyler O'Neill goes on the IL just before the series, but it's hard to see us doing a lot of damage against Boston's pitching. That said, it's a home series and we have Keller and Perez going, so we need to find a way.

Milwaukee will be tough and might set the tone as to whether we will be in an NL Central battle that is shaping up to involve basically everyone, or if we are witnessing a slide back down to a permanent lower position in the division. They are not a good matchup for us on paper, because their pitching has been plenty good and their offense has been better. For the entire homestand, my gut says that we are going to need somebody on offense to really step up and start taking over, as a sparkplug to get this team moving in the right direction. The only player who comes to mind as a possibility is Reynolds, because Cruz has just altered between crushing some balls and then being entirely overmatched. I think just about everyone would be happy with a 4-3 homestand -- and for me (and maybe some others), things have gotten bleak enough that 3-4 doesn't sound half bad, though 3-4 w where 3 of the losses are to Milwaukee would be tough to take. Let's see if we can nab the series vs. a Boston team that is solid, but definitely beatable, and then maybe we'll have some momentum for Milwaukee. Priester is coming up for the Friday start, which has "continue the vibes from Wednesday's Mets spiral" written all over it.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Skenes strikes out the side ho hum literally the players do not have a chance against him

 

[BusinessGoose]

Quoting myself here not for narcissistic reasons (hopefully), but just to go back to the last recap post and establish a little continuity. I don't think there's a ton that needs saying that others aren't already pointing out. Nonetheless...

Starting record: 9-3
Record over stretch: 2-5

One of the main sentiments I was seeing after the initial 12 games was that there was too much sloppiness with how the Pirates got to that record, and that worse times were coming. This was punctuated by Bednar pretty much singlehandedly costing us a win and a chance at 10-2.

Those worries turned out to be right, though I think the story of the 7-game road trip is a little bit simpler. The offense went ice cold. We can certainly point at fringe roster players needing to throw important innings, but the core issue is that the offense stopped doing much damage at all, especially when it had opportunities to. It's stating the obvious, but when you execute like that and can put up 5 or 6 runs, you give yourself some freedom to win games that you didn't play perfectly.

It might be an interesting exercise to look from the Phillies and Mets perspectives and tell a story about how they won imperfect games. I think in terms of opponents, we had some good and bad fortune. The Mets have been heating up and that partly cost us, whereas the Phillies have been and basically remain very cold offensively, which is what enabled us to scrap two games in that series despite being relatively uninspiring otherwise.

The biggest bright spot is Jones, as a kind of microcosm of the general starting pitching performance so far, which Fogel just pointed out recently. I think that's the biggest shame in this stretch of games. I said a few days ago that splitting the Phillies series was very crucial because it protected us from a disastrous road trip. Getting swept sucks, and we looked horrible a lot of times and especially to end the road trip, but 2-5 is more bad than disastrous to me, though of course disaster might be looming on this homestand.

That said, the shame is that the starting pitching has been such a solid foundation that we should have been able to hit that 4-3 record over the recent stretch. When you strip away the bad feeling of watching a team struggle, a 2-game swing is not really that huge, but the broader point is that the pitching probably won't be that consistently good.

Looking ahead 3 vs. BOS, 4 vs. MIL
Maybe 7 wasn't our lucky number for me to pick with the last stretch, but it again works out pretty neatly here, as we have a 7-game slate before going back on the road again for another 7-game slate.

The general tale that seems on deck is whether or not we have a prayer of turning the ship around offensively and not spoiling the good start before the calendar even gets to May and we get Skenes creeping even closer. It's hard to muster a lot of optimism for the homestand after that Mets series, but this is really the first of many big tests for the team, as to whether they can turn the page and regain some momentum.

The Red Sox are a similar story to us, really, as they aren't a team that was on a ton of radars and have had success fueled by starting pitching, with a pretty middling offense that strikes out a lot. We catch a huge break as Tyler O'Neill goes on the IL just before the series, but it's hard to see us doing a lot of damage against Boston's pitching. That said, it's a home series and we have Keller and Perez going, so we need to find a way.

Milwaukee will be tough and might set the tone as to whether we will be in an NL Central battle that is shaping up to involve basically everyone, or if we are witnessing a slide back down to a permanent lower position in the division. They are not a good matchup for us on paper, because their pitching has been plenty good and their offense has been better. For the entire homestand, my gut says that we are going to need somebody on offense to really step up and start taking over, as a sparkplug to get this team moving in the right direction. The only player who comes to mind as a possibility is Reynolds, because Cruz has just altered between crushing some balls and then being entirely overmatched. I think just about everyone would be happy with a 4-3 homestand -- and for me (and maybe some others), things have gotten bleak enough that 3-4 doesn't sound half bad, though 3-4 w where 3 of the losses are to Milwaukee would be tough to take. Let's see if we can nab the series vs. a Boston team that is solid, but definitely beatable, and then maybe we'll have some momentum for Milwaukee. Priester is coming up for the Friday start, which has "continue the vibes from Wednesday's Mets spiral" written all over it.

Nice writeup

I want success vs MIL, just as a division opp

Skenes strikes out the side ho hum literally the players do not have a chance against him

!hype!

I hope it works out for us, we could really use a star

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Skenes running into slightly minor trouble in the third, but still striking out guys left and right and nobody can touch him. In the second, one guy caught up to the FB and put it in the gap, and then in the third, the leadoff guy reached on a horrible throw by the 3B (Nunez) on a routine ground ball, after which Skenes walked another guy, but still no damage. He is totally dominating, though the pitch count is slightly higher than you'd want to see after three innings.

I am not watching but apparently Chandler is having a nice start vs Bowie so far. Twitter is saying he hit 100 which is believable in itself, but I think that Bowie is one of the stadiums that doesn't really have accurate data or a reputation for it (it's Orioles, and all their facilities are bottom tier), so I am not sure I would trust that for certain.

 

[MrBrightside]

Pitching Skenes in AAA would be like the Penguins starting Crosby in WBS his rookie season so he could work on faceoffs.

 

[BusinessGoose]

Well we will be without Chapman for two games

Pirates' Chapman gets 2-game ban for tantrum

Pirates pitcher Aroldis Chapman has received a two-game suspension and an undisclosed fine for his "inappropriate actions" during Monday's loss to the Mets.

www.espn.com

While I feel the NHL needs to suspend more, barring finding out exactly what he said, MLB umps are weak as f***