Oh, man, I missed this place.
Sorry for the sap, but that's the way it was. Step by step, from the Maz statue out by the Allegheny River, to the special security entrance set up beyond right field, to having my temperature taken by a little gun-looking thing aimed at my forehead, to submitting a written waiver in case I die or something ... to seeing the big smile through the mask of Glen the Omnipresent Elevator Man who works both here at PNC Park and over at Heinz field ... to the wonderful older lady at the one food stand kept open beaming, "It's sooooooo nice to be here, even like this!" ... to a long, satisfying stroll along the concourse while Cole Tucker was taking hacks in a sim game against Geoff Hartlieb ... to the stairwell leading up to the press box.
Back to work. Back to baseball.
Almost.
Maybe.
We'll see.
And no, I'm not going there. No coronavirus. No complaining about regulations. Not after the Pirates finally were permitted to open PNC Park to media types like me and Alex Stumpf. Not after the first Tuesday in many months that felt like something other than just another Groundhog Day ending in Y.
Not after the two of us bounced around like bleeping schoolkids:
Again, we'll see.
The same Allegheny County Health Department that ruled last Friday no gatherings of 25-plus were allowed also announced earlier in the afternoon that we'd had 204 new cases in the previous 24 hours and ... yuck.
But for now, there's this. There's work. There's baseball.
Oh, and there's also one other thing that's even more precious on this particular parcel of our North Shore: There's hope.
Yeah, I know, I know. The only thing anyone can speak that's more contrarian than something upbeat about a pandemic is something positive about the Pirates. But I liked this team's talent and potential through the All-Star break last summer, after which it was ravaged by injuries, more injuries and then a Neal Huntington/Kyle Stark minor-league system. I liked this team that much more this past spring in Bradenton. Not just for the fresh energy injected by Ben Cherington and a mostly new front office, Derek Shelton and a mostly new coaching staff, Joe Musgrove and a mostly new clubhouse leadership group, but also for more of that talent and potential on display.
Go ahead and hate the owner, hate the payroll, hate the better part of the past four decades. It's got little to do with what I'm discussing, but I'm painfully aware which way the weathervane's pointing with Pittsburgh's baseball fans, especially those who claim to be paying more attention than they are.
I've seen bad baseball teams. I've covered a 105-loss calamity in 2010. This is not a bad baseball team.
And when surreally inserted into an unprecedented scenario of a 60-game season, of an unwittingly equalizing schedule that sees them cross-match with the American League Central and the miserable likes of the White Sox, Royals and Tigers, of a universal DH that'll allow Shelton to mitigate his team's greatest shortcoming in the bottom of the order ... hey, that's hope.
If that isn't enough for you, I asked Cole Tucker, maybe the bubbliest spirit in the sport, after his session yesterday if the Pirates can carry any confidence from the first half of 2019.
"Yeah, totally. I mean, we’ve had plenty of conversations, DK, about that," he came back. "We feel like we have really good players and a really good core of guys, and a lot of those guys are going to be around here in Pittsburgh for a long time. So we, like you saw last year, were really competitive. When I got called up, we were in first place. You talk, like, a five-game win streak could win you a division."
He paused a second, at least as much as he's capable.
"That's really exciting when you have young, exciting players like we do. I’m not an expert guru on who’s going to do what, and I don’t read into the predictions and stuff, but we’re just focusing on going out and playing baseball and being as good as we can. It's going to be short. It's going to be exciting. And we believe that we have the firepower to make some noise and disrupt some things."
Tell that dude there's no hope.
He's a pretty good player, too, with as much promise as anyone on the roster. And yet, he currently doesn't have a position. Instead, he spoke of finding a way to force himself onto the field, even if that means shagging flies in center.
Everyone's skeptical. I get that. There's no hiding from 93 losses, from not really replacing Starling Marte and Felipe Vazquez, from a $51 million payroll.
But tell me, please, what's the fatal flaw in the following lineup, should Shelton fill it out this way July 24 in St. Louis, facing the Cardinals' righty Jack Flaherty:
1. Kevin Newman, SS
2. Bryan Reynolds, LF
3. Adam Frazier, 2B
4. Josh Bell, 1B
5. Colin Moran, 3B
6. Gregory Polanco, RF
7. Jose Osuna, DH
8. Jacob Stallings, C
9. Jarrod Dyson, CF
No, they aren't the '27 Pirates -- who, let the record repeat, won the pennant before losing to the '27 Yankees -- but I'll ask again for the fatal flaw. Not perceived, but real.
Newman and Reynolds went neck-and-neck in the National League rookie race last summer. Bell's fresh off 37 home runs and 116 RBIs. So I'll presume, at the very least, we can agree the Pirates are doing just fine at the top two and cleanup.
Yeah?
OK, so let's check off the rest ...
Frazier doesn't profile as the classic No. 3, but he also had the fourth-highest OPS among all big-league second basemen in 2019 at .745. (And I'd argue he should move up a slot since the leader, Jose Altuve, was hearing garbage cans in Houston.)
Moran excites no one. Nor should he. He's 27 years old and, unlike Ke'Bryan Hayes, one of those players I'm describing as having potential, Moran likely is exactly who he is. At the same time, Shelton sounds determined to start him -- "You'll see Colin at third a lot," he spoke earlier this week -- and there's the not-small matter of Moran having produced 80 RBIs in 466 at-bats last year. Advanced metrics sneeze at RBIs anymore, but people on baseball fields definitely don't.
Polanco ... we'll see. We've all seen what he can do. That's as far as I'll go for now. I believe in his extraordinary ability. I believe in his character. I don't often believe in the consistency of his approach.
Osuna homered 10 times in 266 at-bats. Guy can roll out of bed and hit. I'd like to see more of that, not less. Shelton's right that he doesn't exactly have an Edgar Martinez in the fold to DH, but he does have on individual who's shown he can grab a bat off the rack and rake. As Shelton told us last night, "It obviously allows us to lengthen the lineup."
Stallings won't hit anywhere near peak Russell Martin or Francisco Cervelli, so he'll bear the brunt of a lot of criticism in spite of his excellent defense and pitch-framing. He knows that, too. But he's also stubborn in insisting he can hit. And his league-average .262/.325/.382 slash line, including six home runs in only 191 at-bats, hardly represent some albatross. In fact, this'll sound nuts, but FanGraphs' annual Steamer projections have Stallings winding up these 60 games as the Pirates' overall MVP.
Dyson ... yeah, I've got nothing on that one. He won't hit. He's still fast at 35, and he'll catch everything, but that won't result in runs.
Still, is the No. 9 hitter anyone's fatal flaw?
If we're being real, rather than fretting over Nutting, the payroll, Seven Springs and all that, this lineup's got some ceiling to add onto a .265 team batting average that ranked sixth in all of baseball last season. Work Tucker and Hayes in there as pleasant surprises, and the discussion only elevates.
The pitching feels far less certain to me, and that's why, going against the baseball grain, I won't place a lot of weight in it in predicting competitiveness. This team hit its way within 2.5 games of first place at the All-Star break last summer, and the pitching just kind of hung on until it didn't.
But what's weird with this rotation, in particular, is that all of them have done it. To paraphrase an old coach with the Pirates, if it's in there, it's in there. Two years ago, Trevor Williams was among the league's best righties for half a season. Joe Musgrove's shown his own spurts. Mitch Keller's not far removed from being among the highest-ranked prospects in the game. Steven Brault strung together a dozen starts last year that were among the most effective anywhere by a lefty.
"Everybody talks about how, since it’s a short season, anything can happen," Brault told us yesterday. "But the way we’re looking at it is – and I think it’s really smart – imagine if you were at this point in a regular season and we were 100 games into a season and every single team was tied. We had 30 teams tied with the exact same record, with 60 games left. It would be crazy. Just imagine. A hundred games into a season and everybody’s tied. Insane. That’s how we’re approaching it, like it’s a 60-game playoff race sprint from the get-go."
Pitching will be pivotal. I won't underplay it.
These gentlemen are singing -- in Brault's case literally -- about all they're learning from Oscar Marin, the pitching coach who replaced Ray Searage and installed all kinds of new tracking for mechanics, spin rates and the like. And it's compelling to hear them. It really is. The way Musgrove and Keller raved about Marin to me in Bradenton, I'd have bet my house on the rotation collectively booking a private plane to the next All-Star Game.
But, to echo from a couple other counts above, we'll see. On this facet more than any other.
I've got no quarrel with the bullpen, either, at least not the back end. If Keone Kela's healthy, he's a closer with pedigree and attitude. Kyle Crick and Richard Rodriguez can both handle setup. Nick Burdi was blowing people away in Bradenton with 100-mph heat and 91-mph wipeout sliders, though health will be key for him, too.
We can get into fringe relievers, fifth starters, bench bodies and the like, but when examining a roster like this, it'll succeed or fail based on the everyday eight and a few pitchers. And health.
And hope, too.
It's a strange time. This was a strange scene, much as I enjoyed it in every direction I looked:
The simulated games executed by pitchers are conducted in nearly complete silence, which has to be experienced to be grasped. I wasn't comfortable with it at all. The sessions witnessed yesterday were organized and thorough in essence -- Shelton credits bench coach Don Kelly for that -- but they're also disjointed by necessity, with no more than a dozen players at a time for safety purposes. Masks are everywhere, some even during drills. When coaches instruct players, they gather ... but never too closely. When someone congratulates someone else, as I saw Shelton do with Tucker after one drill, it was with a bat tapping his glove. Contact-free, as the epidemiologists say.
"We're adjusting," Shelton would say after the final drills were done through a drizzle around 9 p.m. under the lights. "We've adjusted from where we were seven days ago, and I'm sure we'll have to keep adjusting."
At the same time, the overwhelming sense of chemistry and camaraderie I'd sensed in Bradenton appears to have held firm, if not gotten stronger. I've talked with a few players through this shutdown on a personal level, and they raved about the constant communication with teammates. Bell recently told me he's never felt the team was tighter than now.
Hey, we're shutting things down all around us these days. No point shutting this down till it gets a good look, right?
MORE CAMP COVERAGE
• Brault, Kuhl could go 'piggyback'
