"I mean, it's not linear."
This was the final week of February. In Bradenton. Ben Cherington and I were standing out in right field, having a good back-and-forth on the future of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club. And the subject at hand, as it often is on this side of the conversation, was the immediate future.
As in, what constitutes meaningful progress in 2022?
And what's above was the man's answer, as only he could accommodate without so much as cursory access to his own C-drive.
In the moment, I had to think about it. Not that it wasn't clear what he'd meant in a sweeping context. Progress is seldom linear in any walk of life. No situation improves in some equal way every single day. There are setbacks, pitfalls, even outright crashes. But I didn't instantly connect how he might've meant to apply this to the Pirates.
Now ... yeah, I'm there. Thanks to Diego Castillo.
"It's pretty fun," the kid would reply Wednesday afternoon when I'd asked how it's felt to take to the PNC Park field these past few days with other kids, this following a flat-liner of a 3-1 loss to the Tigers. And he almost smiled as he spoke. "It's pretty fun to go out there, like, try to get the W. Because I'm pretty sure a lot of teams come here and play against us all confident or whatever because we're young. So we prepare. We prepare to go out and play well and get the W. Sometimes we get it, and sometimes we don't. That's baseball, you know? But I'm 100% sure all these guys are ready to go."
That's it. That's what it took Cherington a half-dozen words to say, and that's what Castillo, in his second language, would articulate that much more artfully.
This game stunk. The home team struck out 13 times out of the game total 23, including another of those kids, Cal Mitchell, for the final out to strand runners at the corners. I was impressed each time I'd scan the crowd of 11,723 and not find anyone who'd nodded off. It's brutal what Major League Baseball's become as entertainment, in general, and this just might've been Exhibit A through Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Worse, within that, the team's two cornerstones, Ke'Bryan Hayes and Bryan Reynolds, laid a combined 0-for-7 egg atop the order, stranding five runners along the way.
Worse still, within that, the replay officials in New York possibly blew an overturn that led to Detroit's go-ahead run in the eighth inning:
Jonathan Schoop's sky-ball into left-center appeared -- that's appeared -- to hit the pinky of Reynolds' glove before entering the webbing on what would've been a spectacular diving catch covering an acre of grass en route. And it was, in fact, initially ruled a catch.
In Reynolds' mind, that's what it was.
"I felt it hit the pinky," he'd tell me afterward. "I don't see how, if it hit the grass, it would make it into my glove. It would bounce straight up, right?"
One would think so.
Making matters more confounding, the Tigers had a runner at first base, Harold Castro, who'd have been DOA at second had the umpires ruled right away that Reynolds hadn't made the catch. Castro was no more than 4-5 steps off first at the time the ball hit Reynolds' glove.
And yet, the replay officials -- not the umpires -- decided upon the overturn that Detroit should have runners at first and second.
Derek Shelton emerged from the dugout to speak with crew chief Bill Welke, who was working first base on the day, but that didn't amount to much. Nor did Shelton have much to offer afterward beyond that "the right call" was made since officials have "the latitude" to place runners wherever they deem appropriate based on where they'd have been if the call was right in the first place.
Sorry, but that's absurd. I can't criticize Shelton for not losing his mind arguing it since there's no arguing allowed after a replay call ... but that might be one where it's worth being tossed.
One player in the home clubhouse -- not Reynolds -- told me that even Miguel Cabrera, after his ensuing single put the Tigers up, 2-1 ...
... would concede in casual banter following the inning that he thought the Tigers got a gift with the baserunning setup.
So, why couldn't Reynolds simply have thrown to second to record the out in the event the call would get overturned?
Yeah, cross that one off, too. Because he did. Threw to Tucupita Marcano, who relayed to Castillo, standing on the bag.
"I had the ball," Castillo would tell me. "Nobody called him out."
A.J. Hinch, Detroit's manager, didn't sound all that definitive about his perspective, saying, "I mean, obviously, to the naked eye, it was kind of 50/50. We know that they called him out. Even when the replay showed up on the big board, I wasn't 100%."
Hey, whatever. Again, the Pirates' bats were bunk from the beginning, and that didn't feel as if it'd change if the event stretched deep into the evening.
Behold:
See?
Daniel Vogelbach, the majors' second-most productive designated hitter before his recent hamstring strain, hasn't quite gotten his timing back, as he'd tell me afterward.
He'll be fine. A lot of them will.
On the sunny side of this decidedly non-linear day, Jack Suwinski, yet another of those kids, launched this 0-2 changeup from Detroit starter Alex Faedo over the Clemente Wall for his seventh home run in his first 124 big-league plate appearances.
This without a stop in Class AAA Indianapolis.
He's good. Maybe really good. Which makes for quite the boon, considering all of us were convinced only a couple months ago that there wasn't an outfield prospect who'd hit his weight at any level of the system.
Sunnier still, Mitch Keller continued to piece together a Keller puzzle that seems to have, for better or worse, more pieces with each passing trip to the mound.
This six-inning output -- one run, four hits, seven strikeouts, two walks -- marked his fourth consecutive solid appearance, the past two since his return to the rotation, and it might've been his most promising in this sense alone: He threw only seven standard four-seam fastballs out of his total of 95 pitches, which meant that he'd lean hard on the sinker he just concocted last month, in addition to a suddenly vibrant slider:
BASEBALL SAVANT
The Tigers hit that slider early, but not once he'd found the shape he'd been seeking, and that's what I asked him about afterward:
"Yeah the slider's been a huge a huge pitch for me this year, and I say huge as in, I've been struggling with it a lot," Keller replied. "Like finding a grip that I like, and just getting a consistent shape with it. The first couple innings there, I didn't really have a feel for it. But then I threw one really good one, I think it was to Javy Baez, and then just kind of just kind of locked in with that mentality, a little bit on that feeling on that specific pitch and rolled with it."
There's certainly nothing linear about this gifted young man's progress. But there's also no disputing the pot of gold that awaits at the far end.
Zoom out, and there's a lot of that.
Pick apart the names most responsible for the 8-4 run that preceded this two-game Detroit sweep, and they're either rookies or not far removed from it. Which is why there can be a development as dynamic as taking all three at Dodger Stadium, and one that's as much of a mixed-bag dud as these past 48 hours. They'll smack bombs to straightaway center off All-Star closers, and strike out all damned day, as they did here. Their pitchers will mow down bunches of their own, but they'll also bump their own heads, as the otherwise superlative Wil Crowe did in that bizarre eighth inning on this day.
The overall record's 24-30. Means next to nothing. Contention's not coming in 2022, and it never was.
The run differential's minus-79, third-worst in the majors. Also means next to nothing. A handful of grotesque blowouts have skewed that figure for the duration of the summer.
The standings show third place in the Central, only five games out of the National League wild card. Means completely nothing. Stop even looking at that.
Here's what does matter: The right players need to keep playing. Not Yu Chang. Not Yoshi Tsutsugo or Josh VanMeter or Jake Marisnick or anyone else who's got no future here. A few of the kids are here, and most of them are, like Castillo suggested, looking more than comfortable. That doesn't mean they get carte blanche, as Rodolfo Castro learned the hard way, but it does mean that they've got to get the default call to the mound or the lineup.
And on that foundation, they've got to get better. All of them. Individually and collectively.
When will the results matter? As in, the final scores of games?
My feeling for a while now has been that it's when the Altoona pitching arrives. Or at least once it starts knocking on the door from Indianapolis. As it is, Quinn Priester's got to get healthy with the Curve, and at least a handful of others need to really rise above for that to blossom into a full-blown cavalry. What's currently in Pittsburgh comes with some promise, notably in the treasured right arm of Roansy Contreras. But it'll take much more from Keller, Zach Thompson and especially JT Brubaker for this rotation to be taken seriously. It'll need lots of help. And since that isn't forthcoming from Indy, I'm looking at 2024 for the Altoona arrivals.
That's where it's frustrating. I get it. And that's where impatience can be a killer, where spending on a free-agent starter can crush a payroll, particularly one this limited, and where trading for a free-agent starter can come at the cost of precisely the kind of prospects this team needs to keep.
I've trusted Cherington since his hiring. Maybe that'll be a mistake, but so far it hasn't been. His plan -- unlike anything ever put forth by his predecessors -- prioritized pumping ceiling-type prospects into the system, even if that'd mean some big swings and misses along the way. It's not the safe way. It's not trading Gerrit Cole for a package of 4-A guys. But it's the only way, and I believed this long before Cherington came along, for a team that spends like the Pirates to contend for an actual World Series championship within baseball's grossly imbalanced economics.
Plain and simple, it takes a high-risk, high-reward, spikes-and-valleys approach.
We just witnessed some spikes. Now, the team embarks on an eight-game trip through Atlanta and St. Louis, facing, in order, the World Series champions, and the opponent that's owned them like no other for decades. Here's guessing that won't go well.
But circle this date: June 17. There's an off-day after the trip, June 16, which would offer management -- baseball and business alike -- a chance to announce that Oneil Cruz will arrive, in hopes that it'll help fill some seats at PNC Park for that Friday night game against the Giants and, from the young man's perspective, create a big welcome.
Another spike, perhaps.
And, if he hammers the ball the way he can, we'll see some actual linear progress ... right into the seats.
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
Before the gates opened at PNC Park, Wednesday morning.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
• Scoreboard
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• 10-day injured list: OF Ben Gamel (hamstring), RHP Heath Hembree (calf), OF Jake Marisnick (thumb), 1B Yoshi Tsutsugo (lumbar muscle strain), Josh VanMeter (finger)
• 60-day injured list: Kevin Newman (groin), OF Greg Allen (hamstring), RHP Blake Cederlind (UCL), RHP Nick Mears (elbow surgery), Roberto Pérez (hamstring, out for season)
Updates on all of the above came Wednesday morning from Todd Tomczyk, the team's director of sports medicine. In order of their listings above: Gamel might begin running next week, but he isn't close to a game ... Hembree and Mears were assigned Wednesday to begin a rehab stint with Indianapolis, with both expected to make multiple outings there. . ... Marisnick's building up post-surgery pain tolerance. ... Tsutsugo's resumed light baseball activity. ... VanMeter's experimenting with padding inside his gloves. ... Newman's pain-free, building up his baseball activity. ... Allen, who'd been rehabbing his left hamstring, just hurt his right hamstring. He won't begin rehabbing for another another month.
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
1. Ke'Bryan Hayes, 3B
2. Bryan Reynolds, CF
3. Jack Suwinski, LF
4. Daniel Vogelbach, DH
5. Diego Castillo, SS
6. Cal Mitchell, RF
7. Tucupita Marcano, 2B
8. Yu Chang, 1B
9. Michael Perez, C
And for Hinch's Tigers:
1. Harold Castro, 3B
2. Jonathan Schoop, 2B
3. Miguel Cabrera, DH
4. Austin Meadows, RF
5. Javy Baez, SS
6. Spencer Torkelson, 1B
7. Kody Clemens, LF
8. Eric Haase, C
9. Daz Cameron, CF
THE SCHEDULE
Next up are four in Atlanta, four in St. Louis, beginning Thursday, 7:20 p.m. against the champs, with JT Brubaker (0-5, 4.70) taking on lefty Max Fried (5-2, 2.74). Alex Stumpf will have this trip.
THE CONTENT
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