Josh Bell prefers not to get dragged into the whole Sports Illustrated/anonymous scout quagmire.
In the most recent issue of the magazine, an anonymous scout insinuated the first baseman was lazy while giving his assessment of the Pirates. Neal Huntington vehemently defended Bell and suggested the comments had racial overtones.
Bell, for his part, was unaware of the story until it was brought to his attention last Sunday. The switch-hitter prefers to take the high road on the situation and “just be even-keeled.”
That’s certainly the mature way to handle it. Of course, the 25-year-old always carries himself in a mature manner and he is probably the hardest-working player on the Pirates, continually working on his hitting and fielding in pregame drills.
“With everything I've done in the offseason, I'm excited to show whoever that (anonymous scout) was and most importantly my friends and my family, my pops, watching every game, that what we've done will pay off,” Bell spent the offseason working with hitting guru Jim DeMarco in the Los Angeles area after his home run total dropped to 12 last season from 26 in 2017 as a rookie.
Bell admits he does not understand why someone would question his work ethic. However, he also knows his dropoff in home runs last season is fair game for critics.
“I feel like with last year's track record, yeah, it was pretty bad,” Bell said. “There's nothing I can do about it now.”
Bell can do something about this season, though. Through four games going into Thursday, he was 2-for-14 (.188) with three RBIs.
Bell vows 2019 will be different. After seemingly changing his hitting approach every other day during his first two major-league seasons, Bell feels that he found something he can stick with after his work with DeMarco and first-year Pirates hitting coaches Rick Eckstein and Jacob Cruz.
He has come to the realization that less can be more.
“If I'm driving the ball all over the ballpark, with my levers the ball is going to fly,” Bell said. “If I try and force the ball into the seats, these guys are throwing too good, they're throwing too hard. The ball is going to be on the ground.” -- John Perrotto at PNC Park
MORE PIRATES
• It is not surprising that the Pirates are holding onto Rule 5 Draft pick Nick Burdi. They loved him when he pitched at the University of Louisville and nearly selected him in the first round of the 2014 amateur draft before opting to take Cole Tucker. The Twins wound up picking Burdi in the second round. -- Perrotto
• The bullpen had blown late-inning leads in two of the Pirates’ three losses prior to Thursday night and could not hold a 1-1 tie in the other. While it is easy to hit the panic button, Clint Hurdle says he has not lost faith in his relievers. Neither have scouts who follow the team regularly. “They have a lot of talent in that bullpen and they’re going to be fine,” a scout from an American League team said. “It’s just a blip on the radar, what’s going on right now." -- Perrotto
• Francisco Cervelli hasn't been in the best of moods. I'm not entirely sure why, but it might be fair to tie that with some of the defensive mishaps, including a couple of his own. Nothing gets to him like sloppy baseball. -- Dejan Kovacevic
• There's an intense awareness inside 115 Federal Street of the outside perception of the Pirates. And, to their credit, rather than running from that, there's been a heightened emphasis on getting out the legitimately good stories about their players, individually and collectively, which they've done through various multimedia. A source inside the front office told me this week there's hope of connecting fans to the players they love and that they feel a good amount of that's already happened. -- DK
PENGUINS
• Matt Cullen hasn’t just played the second-most games by an American-born NHL player. He’s also the answer to a pretty good trivia question. Cullen, along with Zdeno Chara, Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton are the last four active players to have played against Wayne Gretzky. It was 20 years ago this week, April 2, 1999, that Cullen faced the Great One for the third and final time in his career. Cullen, then of the Ducks -- back when they were still mighty and wore purple -- played in Gretzky's eighth-to-last game on a Friday night at Madison Square Garden. Gretzky was 38 -- four years younger than Cullen is now -- and had just rejected a one-year, $1-million deal by Rangers owner James Dolan to play an additional season. In today's money, that's about $1.6 million and is still $350,000 more than what Cullen is making this season with the Penguins. That No. 99 was a shell of his former self, scoring just nine goals in his final season, mattered little to Cullen. Like many who grew up in the '80s, Gretzky was bigger than life, transcending the sport. "To see the guy you grew up idolizing and just watching everything I could on him, it was pretty cool, a pretty surreal experience," Cullen was telling DKPittsburghSports.com. Gretzky didn't record a point in Anaheim’s 4-1 victory, but he did earn a double-minor for spearing Kevin Haller. It turned out to be the final penalties of Gretzky's career, giving him 577 PIMs in 1,487 games. However, the only thing Cullen took away from that game was a cherished memory. He didn't get a stick, a puck or any sort of memento. Didn't even say a word to his hero. "It's funny, I was so young and naive, I didn't even think to do anything," he was telling me. "It was just the experience of playing against him.” — Chris Bradford at PPG Paints Arena
• Like many NHL teams and a few million other people, the Penguins have dutifully filled out their NCAA tournament brackets. And as you might imagine, there’s not a lot of expertise or thought that goes into it. Some players take all the favorites. Some just like the name of a particular school, like, say, Wofford. However, Erik Gudbranson is the exception. Though he might not be an expert, the Ottawa native is fairly knowledgeable about college hoops and had been enjoying the run of Duke’s R.J. Barrett, a Mississauga, Ontario, native. Gudbranson says he actually trains with several basketball players in his off-season. Though he’s 6-foot-5, Gudbranson says he never played basketball. His height was put to better use in hockey and volleyball. — Bradford
• Last weekend, Jake Guentzel’s eyes were glued to the television about 50 feet in front of his locker stall at the Lemieux Complex. NHL highlights? No. Guentzel was dialed into golf. It wasn’t even The Masters. It was the Texas Open. But you almost had to break the 24-year-old’s attention away to conduct a brief interview, which he did happily. If all goes according to plan, Guentzel won’t be hitting the links until mid-June, but he does enjoy watching and playing the sport. One of the many benefits of playing in the NHL is that players’ summers are free. Obviously, that means a lot of golf. Guentzel says he routinely plays up to five times a week in the off-season and that, he says, is common among his teammates. Who’s the best? According to Guentzel, it’s Justin Schultz. — Bradford
• Speaking of Guentzel, whether he finishes the regular-season with 38 goals or 40 is almost beside the point. The five-year, $30-million extension the winger scored on Dec. 27 keeps looking better by the minute. Guentzel received the satisfaction of signing a long-term deal in-season, but he may have left some money on the table had he gone to restricted free agency this summer. Consider Guentzel's contract came after the Maple Leafs signed William Nylander to a six-year extension that carries an AAV of $6.9 million. If you hadn't heard, Nylander has just six goals in 52 games this season. By comparison, Guentzel is the steal of the season. -- Bradford
STEELERS
• A report surfaced earlier in the week that Ben Roethlisberger would no longer be doing his weekly radio hit on KDKA-FM. Everyone assumed that was because of the criticism Roethlisberger was receiving for some of the comments he has made in the past on that show. As Lee Corso says, not so fast my friend. If Roethlisberger does, in fact, end his relationship with KDKA-FM -- and I'm told that's not a done deal at this point -- he could still wind up doing a show on another outlet, like WDVE-FM with the station's morning show. -- Dale Lolley at Rooney Complex
• With the release of Morgan Burnett earlier this week, the Steelers have approximately $6.75 million in salary cap space. That leaves the team just enough space to sign its draft picks this year, but little else. Roethlisberger's pending contract renegotiation -- and it continues to be pending -- could lower that number slightly, but Kevin Colbert likes to go into a season with at least $3 million in available cap space, in case of emergency. That means the Steelers will have to make some other moves to get to that number. The most sensible restructure -- they've already done Vince Williams -- would be to do so with Alejandro Villanueva. A simple restructure of Villanueva's contract would create an extra $2 million in cap space. -- Lolley
• One of the reasons I've had issues with Antonio Brown, through members of the national media, taking shots at Roethlisberger as a bad teammate is this story I'll relate from when I did a weekly radio show with Brown. One day, we were in studio with Brown when his former teammate, Ziggy Hood, signed a deal with the Bears. In between breaks, I mentioned it to my radio partner and Brown. Brown was unaware who Hood was. Now, you can joke about Hood all you want, but there is no way Brown should not have known who he was. After all, he had been the team's first-round draft pick in 2009, the year before Brown was drafted, and was a starter in each of Brown's first four seasons. I can guarantee you Roethlisberger knows who every other player on the 53-man roster is, even if he doesn't necessarily interact with them all. That was not the case with Brown. -- Lolley
