KEFLAVIK, Iceland — Long enough layover to try to collect assorted chaotic thoughts on all the sports stuff I’ve missed ...
• I’m not a big regrets guy. Generally speaking, I’ll revisit events and experiences that need to be revisited, then move on.
But sorry, it’s still tough to stomach the concept of singularly, giddily praising the Pirates’ front office — as so many seem to be doing — for simply exercising the common sense any winning franchise would have applied in the same circumstance.
Put it another way: Chris Archer and Keone Kela needed to happen in 2015. Or just after 2015.
That remains, at least from this perspective, the unrivaled, undisputed most egregious offense under Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington. That 2015 team won 98 games. It might have been the best team in Major League Baseball. It might have been a World Series champion, our city’s first in nearly four decades. And even if it had fallen short, there always could have been next year had those guys not decided to prioritize the preservation of the handful of promising prospects they’d been able to draft and develop.
Yeah, where might they be today without Tyler Glasnow, the most coveted asset at the time from potential trade suitors?
You know, the throw-in, alongside Austin Meadows, in the Archer trade?
At the time, Glasnow would have reaped an unimaginable reward. Sure, he had skeptics even when overwhelming minor-league batters, particularly related to his mental toughness, but not to the extent they didn’t think they could solve him. Everyone wanted him. Everyone would have ponied up to try to get him. The bidding war could have brought a major piece or two to a roster that didn’t need much but sure would have benefited from a big-time starter to supplement — or surpass — A.J. Burnett, Gerrit Cole, J.A. Happ and Francisco Liriano.
That’s the move you make to win a championship.
Is it a lockdown guarantee?
Of course not. It’s baseball. But nothing’s guaranteed in sports or in life, which is why that’s never what it should be about. All a front office can do is give the people on the field the best chance at that championship at that particular point in time, provided all else is properly aligned.
Nice to see they’ve figured that out three years and tens of thousands of empty seats later.
• There’s credit to be given, though. There really is.
Huntington’s smart acquisition of Corey Dickerson, as well as his justified faith-through-adversity in Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco, paid off with an outfield strong enough to withstand not only the trade of Andrew McCutchen, but also now the departure of Meadows. That’s impressive. Not sure how many could have seen that coming, even those of us who never stopped believing in Marte and Polanco.
There’s also credit to be given for Meadows’ seemingly sudden rise this summer after two exasperating years of injuries. He’s a first-round pick, but that’s generally the only round in which this baseball operations staff can produce a bona fide major-leaguer — quick, name another besides third-rounder Jordy Mercer — and it’s still the primary task at hand.
Credit, too, to Meadows himself. Never pouted. Not when he was benched. Not when he was sent back for what we now can see was obviously to preserve his Super-2 status for trade value. He just kept swinging, kept smiling.
He’ll be a terrific ballplayer in St. Pete.
• But let’s reserve the real credit for everyone who pushed — and pushed and pushed — for these guys to finally figure out what the Royals, Brewers and so many others had long ago figured out: Hoarding prospects — or in the Pirates’ case, clinging desperately to what little they have — isn’t going to get you anywhere. There simply has to be a next step along the way.
The fans knew what that step was, probably because there are two other teams in town that have practiced this all along. And the fans reacted. Not in concert. Certainly not as part of anything remotely resembling an organized boycott. But they did react. They stopped going to games. They stopped watching games. They stopped buying anything that had anything to do with Nutting.
People will want to extrapolate this into some folk tale. They shouldn’t. Again, nothing was organized. The few who tried fell flat on their faces. But fans did stop going, did stop watching, and if you don’t think that hit Nutting where it hurts the most, you haven’t been paying attention. He had no choice but to respond. Not with his local TV contract and stadium naming rights deal hovering simultaneously.
Does anyone think it’s coincidence that Nutting and Coonelly took turns putting out unprecedented triumphant quotes to the press after a trade deadline?
Does anyone think it’s coincidence that Coonelly hilariously described the Pirates as operating from ‘a position of strength’ in trading away prospects, when any fool with a copy of the latest Baseball America can easily see that almost all of their better young talent is now already in Pittsburgh?
Does anyone think it’s coincidence that Huntington made multiple statements purporting to have been a buyer all along, when in fact he was shopping no fewer than five veterans a month earlier — including Dickerson — and even a week earlier he himself wouldn’t publicly commit to buying or selling?
Again, they can have their credit. But context is everything. And the broader context here was that their collective hand was forced by the fans and, of course, the team on the field.
• Give it up for these players, huh?
Remember that awful scene I was describing out in L.A. just a month ago, when the Pirates’ pitchers were getting pulverized all over Dodger Stadium?
Here’s my column from the finale out there, one that flatly called for a full-blown fire sale.
And why not? Who’d have fantasized they could rattle off 16 wins in 21 games, as they've done? Or 20 of the past 32? Or that they'd lead the National League in home runs for July? Or that the young rotation would settle itself as never before?
That’s to the credit of everyone in that clubhouse. And you’d damned well better believe it’s to the credit of Clint Hurdle, whose name seems to come up only in conjunction with losses anymore.
• If the Pirates somehow make the playoffs, Hurdle will be the National League’s Manager of the Year, and it won’t be close. He’d certainly get my vote as a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
• Wait, they lost last night?
Ugh. Never mind. He's the worst.
• I'm almost as excited about Kela as about Archer, though the numbers for both come with their own obvious merits:
Archer's durability is a trait people inside baseball will rightly embrace more than those on the outside. In any sport, little is valued more than being available, but that applies tenfold to a big-league starting pitcher. Look at those GS and IP figures up in that graphic, and look no further.
Kela, though ... that's a pretty cool case there independent of the numbers. He's 25 and, per accounts from Arlington, he's had his share of flare-ups, including one last year that got him shipped to the minors out of spring training. But his manager there, old friend Jeff Banister, is one of the best humans -- and best judges of humans -- I've had the good fortune to get to know in this career. And if Banister believed in Kela enough to hand him the closer's job this year, as he did, that speaks volumes here.
• No one outside Chicago could possibly want to accept this, but the Cubs will win this Central. And the Brewers and Diamondbacks will take the two wild-card spots, meaning once Arizona inevitably gets passed by the Dodgers.
But that won't mean the front office's effort would have been in vain. It's still the right thing to add Archer and Kela with their multiple years of control, and it's still right to value proven major-league talent over unproven prospects, particularly when they're coming through a system that's gotten close to zero results.
• Ramon Foster's a lucky man to have only sprained that knee in his scary roll-up the other other day, given that he'll be back in plenty of time for the Steelers' games that matter most. He's as passionate about winning a Super Bowl ring as any individual on that roster.
But the injury will still come with two significant repercussions, it says here:
1. Whatever minuscule chance might have existed that Kevin Colbert would offer him the long-term extension he'd also been coveting, that went poof. That's a large, older frame -- 328 pounds and 32 years old -- to be trusting to endure a wonky knee moving forward, unfair as that might sound.
2. B.J. Finney, who's a half-dozen years younger, could use the playing time, if only because he's the heir apparent, and he's yet to prove he can man the position over a sustained stretch. He's got a gadget book there, and that'll get him by for a spell, but it's different when he's splattered all over film rooms around the NFL.
Hey, with the loose theme this morning being regrets, where was that when it could have faced Leonard Fournette back in January?
It's not like Mike Tomlin and Keith Butler didn't know that Stephon Tuitt, Javon Hargrave and Tyler Matakevich were hurting that day.
But living in the present, wow, yes. Because Tyson Alualu, unlike a lot of other people he was watching from the sideline that day, can wrap and tackle.
The more the coaching staff gradually unveils these defensive adjustments, the more I'm intrigued.
• I don't care what Le'Veon Bell's doing in Florida, other than whether or not he's keeping himself in optimal football shape.
• If you'll allow me to close on a personal note here: Thanks to everyone for the kind wishes through the vacation. It wasn't easy staying away from work, even on the wrong side of the globe, but the kids eventually succeeded in pounding that point home.
What I want to share here is how satisfying it was to read and enjoy our staff's coverage of our sports teams when I wasn't part of it. You know, just like a reader. I felt like I was right there at PNC Park. Or Latrobe. Or wherever the news took us.
This is the strongest, the healthiest this business has ever been, and my feeling on that will only grow with our new hockey writer, Cody Tucker, formally coming aboard Monday with a story that ... you'll see. A couple of us have already taken a peek at the draft, and let's just say for now that it's very indicative of the caliber of reporter/writer we were confident we'd be getting.
Or, as Taylor Haase tweeted ...
Got a ? at @CodyTucker_DKPS’s first feature for @DKPghSports and it’s ?
— Taylor Haase (@TaylorHaasePGH) July 31, 2018
Our reporters are working to bring you not 'recaps' -- I actually can't stand the word -- but the humanity, the pulse of the people involved, as well as all the analysis and original news you'd expect.
I'm feeling as refreshed and pumped as at any point I can recall since this venture launched. Let's have some serious fun around here this fall.
Heck, maybe this summer, too, right?
