OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: The Sky is Falling

[JimmyTwoTimes]

Well we had the tying run up at bat lol

Hurdle happy

 

[ChaosAgent]

We've had way more than that...but no need to keep this going

What other ones? Kela, who isn't actually good? Dickerson?

Were the other teams we played totally healthy?

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

8 games under was the worst we reached last year. Thats when the 11 game win streak happened. Bad things followed.

I could see a repeat of us going on a run with Williams coming back but not sure I want to.

 

[DanielPlainview]

Any trades to be made need to be done to improve the team for the next couple of seasons (while they still have Taillon, Williams, and Musgrove). That means not moving Vazquez or Marte - those moves are made by a team looking to completely retool and the Pirates won't be there until the next round of pitching prospects are in line (3-4 years).

Polanco should be up for trade. IMO, he's an overrated player who feels increasingly like a liability. Maybe someone else feels like they can unlock his potential and would be willing to give a couple valuable pieces for him. Of course, moving him at all is contingent on how well Will Craig plays RF (I think he'll be fine). If he's terrible, then the team is just kind of stuck with the Reynolds-Marte-Polanco trio.

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

What other ones? Kela, who isn't actually good? Dickerson?

Were the other teams we played totally healthy?

You act like losing your top 2 starters isnt a big deal. And we constantly had 10 guys on the IL at once...one came back and another gone. While we did adjust...it took time for those batters to get going. That cost them alot of 1 run games..ruining momentum...etc.

But you can just chalk it up to them being the worst team in history.

 

[ImporterExporter]

You don't keep Vasquez and Marte. That's beyond clear.

We are nowhere near close to contending and never will be so long as Hurdle is manager and Huntington is GM. Not to mention Searage absolutely destroys young arms.

Honestly, we're in a no win situation. The team is poop and the people running it are even worse.

We're more or less the Edmonton Oilers.....just without the generational superstar.

 

[DanielPlainview]

You don't keep Vasquez and Marte. That's beyond clear.

We are nowhere near close to contending and never will be so long as Hurdle is manager and Huntington is GM. Not to mention Searage absolutely destroys young arms.

Honestly, we're in a no win situation. The team is poop and the people running it are even worse.

We're more or less the Edmonton Oilers.....just without the generational superstar.

You certain do keep those two if you're trying to compete in the coming seasons. The team has no replacements for them.

Moving on from Hurdle and Searage is definitely necessary. I'm sick of watching the same issues and patterns creep into the season, year after year.

 

[ChaosAgent]

You act like losing your top 2 starters isnt a big deal. And we constantly had 10 guys on the IL at once...one came back and another gone. While we did adjust...it took time for those batters to get going. That cost them alot of 1 run games..ruining momentum...etc.

But you can just chalk it up to them being the worst team in history.

It's a big deal. But a decent team should be able to tread water. Play .350-.400 baseball, you know? What has happened especially with this pitching staff over the last 3 weeks - including with Musgrove and Archer - is a disgrace. It almost makes you contemplate if the entire team is tipping pitches or if opponents have broken our signs or something.

 

[ImporterExporter]

You certain do keep those two if you're trying to compete in the coming seasons. The team has no replacements for them.

Moving on from Hurdle and Searage is definitely necessary. I'm sick of watching the same issues and patterns creep into the season, year after year.

I guess we just disagree on whether this team is capable of contending in the next few seasons.

We don't have an ace. We don't even have anyone I'd consider a #1.

Either way, until we clean house in the dugout (coaches) and front office we're f***ed. And even then it may not matter given our ownership situation.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

You certain do keep those two if you're trying to compete in the coming seasons. The team has no replacements for them.

Moving on from Hurdle and Searage is definitely necessary. I'm sick of watching the same issues and patterns creep into the season, year after year.

I think I basically agree with you other than Vazquez. If you can get the equivalent of the Chapman trade on steroids for him, then I say you pull the trigger on the deal and try to rebuild the bullpen. If there's one thing Huntington can do with consistency, it's find the next late inning bullpen arm to take over. I wouldn't just trade Vazquez for the sake of it, but selling high on him potentially allows you to get another talent influx and have less holes to fix. The Dodgers have to be approaching desperation in terms of trying to win it all, and the bullpen is their most glaring need. They seem as primed as anyone else to offer a big haul for a dominant reliever.

And I'll say this in an attempt to sound some optimism: I'd gladly take an 8 game winning streak to get back to .500. Let the team trend upwards and catch fire, and hell, let them trade a package with Keller or Craig to get Marcus Stroman, too. I don't trust Huntington to make the right key trades, and the NL in particular is a dogfight that nobody but the Dodgers is going to run away in, and that's irrelevant to us now. If we can get hot enough to erase this losing streak and return to .500, somehow limping to the ASB only 5 or so games back in the division, then I said f*** it, let's go.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Couldn't even get a reclamation reliever for him. Sort of a waste now that we're all giving up on the season.

 

[cookthebooks]

i dont think the pirates are historically bad and thats the problem - they are aiming for mediocre and not risking being historically bad in the pursuit of trying to win a world series

 

[ChaosAgent]

The historically bad part was the anger getting to me.

They are a 100-loss team that belongs in the doldrums. Their traveling motorcade of generic righty pitchers that they claimed was pretty good turned out to suck.

 

[Winger for Hire]

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

Well now his career can officially begin. Further proving we need change. So we should all be hoping he tears it up in Toronto

 

[DanielPlainview]

If he does, that would have to be the final nail in the coffin

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Can't really do anything else but laugh at this point.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

"" ""

 

[ImporterExporter]

Nick Kingham will turn into a reliable MLB arm.

And still my guitar gently weeps.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Rangers Release Nick Gardewine

Seems like a guy worth taking a flier on, though I'm also down to just roll with Neverauskas, Holmes, Feliz to see if any of them stick. I sort of would prefer to see Hartlieb go back to AAA and get more work in there, but it seems like maybe he should just try and work it out in MLB. He's looked really bad at times, but he's also the guy with the least amount of experience, so maybe there's even more hope for him. I actually have a bit of hope for Clay Holmes – if he gets the control down, he should be pretty effective out of the pen.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Just for the sake of eulogizing the season:

 

[DJ Spinoza]

That's at least interesting. I am sort of hopeful that we won't skip Keller's start with the off day lined up. I don't really think we will, but who knows. There's probably a world where Brault pitches ok enough against the Marlins tomorrow and we don't see Keller again for a while. I'd guess that this is just a spot start for Agrazal, but I'm basically of the mind that you just ride anyone that can look half decent right now.

In any case, it will be good to see if Keller can find a little more success against a team like the Tigers, who certainly have some hitters in the lineup, but maybe almost no scouting on him at all. I am fearful for the worst with him, especially because it just seems obvious that the path for him to be successful right now is to bully hitters with high, hard heat so that they are off balance for his curveball, and then start working in the cutter/slider (are they two pitches?) as another look. But we all basically know this, and know that he's going to try and go out there and pound fastballs into the lower half of the zone.

 

[DanielPlainview]

I sort of suspected Agrazal would get the spot start on Saturday, but there was still some doubt given he's only had 8 starts in AAA. I'm excited to see how he does.

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

This is what I was talking about before...we could now see these young pitchers come up and do well before they were expected to. If not for injuries Agrazal would prob still be in AA let alone getting a start for the Pirates. Brubaker hasnt gotten his chance yet but will when he comes back. If these guys(along with Keller) can come thru that put us in a much better position heading into next season. They dont have to have ERA's under 2....just not implode like the others and continue to improve throughout the rest of the season.

Our rotation would be better off because of it...and our relievers...depth.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I just want to see some good baseball this weekend. I might only be able to watch tonight, but let's execute and finish some games here. There's been so much shit that the average inning is almost unwatchable right now, which I think is damaging a lot of our perspectives.

If the pitching remains horribly bad, then we're only at the very beginning of a death spiral, and it's fair to assume that in about three weeks time, our win total will be much closer to the Marlins and Royals than the Padres and Rockies. The homer, never-say-die optimist in me wants to point out that if we run the table here for a little bit, we're realistically probably right back in the thick of the NL race. And in some sense, the playoff odds don't really become cast in stone until early August or so.

I won't go that far, but this team can historically be very streaky, and we have a number of pitchers underperforming what you'd expect from them by a lot. I keep telling myself that I will jettison the long writeups about this team, so I'll at least try to keep this off hand post shorter, but either direction wouldn't surprise me much with this group. Maybe we get a couple bounces in tonight's game, get a good vibe going, and finish the road trip on a high note, or maybe we see more of the same, Agrazal isn't fooling anybody, and Archer proves those two ok starts were flukes.

Basically any path back to respectability requires a five game winning streak that starts tonight, and then a team that has a lot of second-half momentum. Jason Mackey has a good quick writeup in the PG about what's been going wrong, and rightly points out that for us to be on pace for 90ish wins, we basically have to win 3/4 games for an extended stretch, which is almost impossible to conceive. However, I think some of the projection stuff also suffers from being done too early in the season. This team has been highly volatile, and the injury question marks (most especially Taillon), rookies, and general shittiness of the bullpen suggest that there's no way to think it won't remain volatile in a bad way, but we've also seen brief glimpses of the team handling very solid NL contenders such as the Cardinals and Rockies. The margin for error is now even thinner than ever, but despite all the times I've said in the past several games/posts, I'm not quite ready to declare the season dead.

When we flail around to a 3-5 record in the next 8 games and then get stomped by the Astros, the corpse will be good and dead, but until that happens, I'm still squinting for a zombie wrecking havoc.