Forget, for the moment, the pathetic payroll. And the failure to sign a significant free agent for a second consecutive winter. And Bob Nutting again blowing off the fans. And Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington again contorting into pretzels attempting to explain all that to those attending Saturday's PiratesFest at PNC Park.
I'll get to all the standard stuff in a bit. But indulge me first, please, in some actual baseball conversation.
Late in the afternoon, once the fuss and fanfare had begun to fade, I asked Clint Hurdle an actual baseball question, one that had been on my mind for a while: With all the improvement made by the Pirates' Central Division peers this offseason, is it possible that their pitching could still be the singular equalizer?
"What is it now, 140 years?" he came back. "How long's the game been around?"
It's been 173 years, if we're picking nits. The first recorded baseball game in American took place June 19, 1846, on a humble sandlot in Hoboken, N.J.
But I saw where he was going.
"Good pitching beats good hitting," he'd proceed with a couple shakes of the head. "That's it. Good pitching beats good hitting. It always has. You look at the postseason, you're going to face the best starters, the best relievers ... and you've seen some magnificent teams get there and struggle. The game's always been about pitching. And we have pitching."
They do. The 2018 rotation overall ranked middle of the pack in the National League in nearly every category. But if isolating on the starters who'll comprise the top four of the 2019 rotation -- Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams, Joe Musgrove and Chris Archer -- it looks legitimately promising. The first three, in addition to all being 26 to 28 years old, had matching 1.18 WHIP figures last summer, as well as a collective 3.37 ERA. As for Archer, let's just remember there's a reason our city went agog over his acquisition last summer and, in fairness, that he pitched hurt after his arrival.
All four can be better. That's no pipe dream.
Same goes for the back end of the bullpen, which will get a full year of Felipe Vazquez, Keone Kela and, remember, Kyle Crick, who was quietly but consistently terrific.
Every team has some lame fifth-starter competition in the spring, and the Pirates won't be an exception. Every team has unreliable middle relief, and they won't be an exception there, either.
Otherwise, though ...
"We have a strength in place," Hurdle said. "And it's real. It's tangible. When we got to the right side of our bullpen, we didn't lose many games."
Nope. They went 69-3 when leading after seven innings, 69-2 when leading after eight.
"To have the starters we do, to have the bullpen we do, yes, it plays," he finally concluded his answer. "Run prevention is always going to play a significant role."
I'm not making predictions here, and I'm definitely not getting delusional. The top four rotations in ERA in 2018 made the playoffs, and the champion Red Sox ranked eighth. But the top four hitting teams, per OPS, also made the playoffs, and the Red Sox were No. 1 with a bullet. It absolutely takes both. So the Pirates will need to hit far better than a 17th-best OPS and their sixth-fewest home runs.
But within the Central, where they already had a division-best 43-33 record and where that pitcher-batter familiarity already weighed their way, yeah, this might matter a little more.
Jordan Lyles, a newcomer who'll be among those vying for the rotation's fringe, offered a sharp semi-outside perspective.
"The biggest thing that attracted here was the opportunity to be a starter, but I also liked the idea of being part of this pitching staff," he said. "I saw these guys last year and they can all pitch, both the starters and the relievers. To me, this pitching staff stacks up against any team in the division, and it's a really good division. When you have good pitching, you always have a chance to win and we definitely have a chance to win with the guys that are here."
• I know, I know, no one wants to hear about actual baseball. I'll get with the program.
It's obscene that Nutting now officially hides from these things. It wasn't all that long ago that he'd stand tall at each Sunday, greeting fans as they'd enter the main floor of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Even when the 20-year losing streak was still going. It was, truth be told, more than any of our three local franchise owners would do in a similar setting. And it was commendable.
Now, though, the issue isn't about the team losing. It's about his money. And when it's about his money, that always comes first. He'll happily answer all day why a baseball team lost. But bring up his receiving a $50 million bonus check from Major League Baseball, then having the audacity to slash payroll by $30 million ... well, there are roughly 80 million reasons he wouldn't want to be around.
• The franchise of Roberto Clemente has become a filthy financial scam. What's worse, it's unaccountable to anyone.
• One of the last questions at the afternoon management Q&A came from Tim, a fan, who asked the panel of Coonelly, Huntington and Hurdle why Nutting wasn’t here. The place burst into applause.
“Not showing up is speaking to us, in a way," Tim spoke into the mic. "It would be nice to see him at a PiratesFest.”
Coonelly jumped in to say Nutting was on the West Coast on business.
Right. Because these PiratesFest things just spontaneously pop up on the annual calendar.
• Awkward moment of the day had to be this:
Manny Machado to the Pirates?!
...Nah. #dkps #Pirates pic.twitter.com/t5sKG3aggl
— Hunter Alek Homistek (@HunterAHomistek) January 26, 2019
A fan asked at one of the Q&As, the one for coaches, if the Pirates might be pursuing Manny Machado, and Greg Brown gunned it down with gusto: "I'll answer that: No. Not a chance in the world."
OK, so the question was plenty misplaced for members of Hurdle's on-field staff. I'll grant that. And Brown's answer was undeniably accurate. I'll grant that, too. But on what grounds does the team's play-by-play man, even one who’s held the job for three-plus decades a) speak for management; or b) so flatly dismiss that the acquisition would be plausible?
Think about this.
Huntington himself would tell fans in a later session, "Any team can afford any one player, or even any two players," and he wasn't exempting the Pirates. His context was that he'd prefer not to do that because it keeps him from having the "12 or 14 really good players" needed to win a championship, but he made that first statement, too. The Pirates can afford any one player, or even any two players. It's true, even now.
I'll repeat for emphasis: The Pirates were handed $50 million last spring, and the result in the interim has been slashing payroll by $30 million. And get this: If they did sign Machado for about $30 million a year, they'd still rank dead-last in the Central in payroll at $101 million, or $15 million less than anyone else.
So again, what did this fan ask that Brown clearly knew was so misguided?
That the Pirates are way too cheap to even consider such a thing?
If that's it, mega-props on the cannonball!
• They are too cheap. There's nothing else to it. A payroll slash was instituted, and that's that. No one else of any worth will be signed.
If that sounds hard to accept, consider that even the whopping $2.725 million invested in Lonnie Chisenhall this winter represents precisely $2.725 million more than the Pirates put into free agency last winter.
Also consider this from Huntington on this day: “We said at the time we got Chris Archer and Keone Kela, those were probably going to be our main gets of the offseason. The fact is, we can’t get a Chris Archer in free agency. There would be 20 teams after him.”
They're Lonnie-and-done.
• Overall, Coonelly and Huntington handled themselves adroitly. They've been through enough of these that nothing was going to surprise them. And Hurdle's a master in a crowd. Even with the snarliest questions sent their way, they'd flip it into applause for the team more often than not.
• I did get a kick out of this, though, from Coonelly on a very touchy topic around baseball these days: “Trust me, the Pittsburgh Pirates will never tank.”
Here's betting that won't be how Tony Clark and the union see it this spring. The Pirates are about to become the target.
• Oh, and if there's no tanking in baseball, then what's a more appropriate term for following up a 98-win season with a rotation holding Jon Niese, Ryan Vogelsong, Jeff Locke and converted reliever Juan Nicasio?
• Huntington described the Pirates' top two minor-league affiliates as having "layer after layer" of talent.
He was right about there being layers, just not what he was serving up in those layers. The current crop, despite golden draft position for a decade-plus and multiple trades of veterans for prospects, has three prospects on most of the new top-100 lists. On Baseball America's, long the most respected, Mitch Keller is No. 26, Ke'Bryan Hayes is No. 49, and No. 79 is Oneil Cruz. No first-round picks made the list. Cruz was acquired from the Dodgers as part of the Tony Watson trade.
It's funny, but it's the one mistake or shortcoming to which he'll never admit, and he's otherwise been really good about that. Not the drafting and developing. Never the drafting and developing, no matter how painfully obvious it's become.
• Huntington took an uncharacteristic, classless shot at Rene Gayo, the team's longtime Latin American scouting director, saying unsolicited to a fan that the Pirates have had two of their best classes from that region the past couple years and better, he went out of his way to stress, than any over the previous decade. Gayo wasn't mentioned by name, but the dig was obvious.
If it wasn't for Gayo, Huntington wouldn't have two-thirds of his starting outfield, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco, as well as a long list of other players/prospects who were traded away for real pieces that contributed to the 2013-15 playoff appearances.
Marte and Polanco alone are more talent than Huntington and Kyle Stark have been able to squeeze out with their drafts and many multiples of greater resources than what Gayo was given.
Know what else Huntington wouldn't have without Gayo?
A job.
• One last one, I swear, and I'll swing back to actual baseball ...
A fan asked Huntington about his payroll, and he replied, “We have enough. ... The spending, we can’t control what’s written about us, what’s said about us. ... Payroll gives you a larger margin for error, but we’ve proven you can win with a lower payroll.”
If by "what's written about" payroll he's referring to pure math, then he might want to run that concept past his army of white-shirted advanced-stats guys. I'm betting they'll side with math.
If by "proven you can win" he's referring to ... wow, I can't imagine what he'd be referring to.
One wild-card game?
• Actual baseball, as promised: There's no mystery at shortstop. The Pirates aren't going to the outside, and they aren't about to absorb more of Kevin Newman.
Listen to Hurdle's answer when I asked what he'd prioritize in choosing a shortstop this spring between Erik Gonzalez and Newman:
"More range at short than maybe anyone you've managed" is a powerful statement.
That deal is sealed. They really like Gonzalez. Tune out anything else.
• Equally sealed: Jung Ho Kang is the third baseman. He's told the team that's where he wants to play and stay, and they're honoring that. With Adam Frazier at second and Josh Bell at first, the whole infield is set. Catchers, too. Starting outfielders, as well. All that's missing is a batting order and a couple slots on the bench.
• I'll bet BrewersFest, or whatever the Brewers call their winter event, was a comparative blast. I also bet no one there ever mentioned market size, as Coonelly and Huntington did repeatedly. That's because Milwaukee is two-thirds the size of Pittsburgh. Cincinnati's smaller, too. And St. Louis is the exact same size.
Man, I need to go to a hockey practice or something. Think I'll do that Sunday.
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