MILWAUKEE -- Nothing good will ever happen in this place.
And no, believe it or not, I'm not referring to the Pirates being blown up by a pair of two-run home runs in the final two innings of yet another gut-wrenching, soul-crushing, Bernie-sliding 7-5 loss on this Monday night at whatever they're calling the House of Horrors these days.
But hey, if that's where anyone wants to go ...
Just like countless others I've covered here.
I'm talking about something else, though. Something that's far more significant -- or should be -- to those running this operation. And that's this: You should've seen Wil Crowe after this one.
Yeah, you, Bob Nutting.
And you, Travis Williams.
And you, Ben Cherington.
All three of you should've made this trip, seen this sight, felt what was felt by those directly involved. Maybe the entire front office, the scouts, even the analytics army should've made this trip.
As it was, the only witnesses to what followed that Keston Hiura walkoff were the 23,009 in attendance leaping up and down, as well as Crowe's manager, his coaches and teammates. They saw him take one final huff on the mound as the ball almost comically bounced off the tippy-top of the left field fence. They saw him stride toward the dugout slowly enough to avoid crossing paths with Hiura rounding third base. They saw him then dart down the steps and straight into the tunnel to do ... who knows what?
I saw him, too, of course. In the visitors' clubhouse a few fresh minutes later. He stood at his stall, staring inward as he dressed, as everyone else stepped gingerly around him in silence. And I'm talking stone silence. Couldn't hear the clink of a single fork in the adjacent cafeteria.
It was sickening.
I was legit sickened by it.
Still am.
Not over the final score, of course. But over what it'd visibly done to Crowe, one of the most determined young athletes I've covered in any sport in recent years, and someone around whom things should be getting built up, not beaten down.
I asked for a moment of his time, fully aware he'd comply because that's who he is.
"The homer that Garrett Mitchell hit was probably the worst changeup I've thrown all year. Middle-middle. Execution was awful," Crowe replied when I first broached the home runs. "And then the slider that Keston finished the game with was middle-in, middle row. Two terrible pitches. Two of the worst I've thrown all year."
No argument from me. He'd pitched well the previous day in finishing off a shutout in Philadelphia, and he'd get summoned an inning early in this one because of a two-out walk from Duane Underwood, but no one was making excuses, and I won't, either.
I asked how a competitor, how someone of Crowe's spirit, takes this.
"Yeah, it stinks," he'd reply through a gulp and his eyes widening uncomfortably. "Especially with what we're going through there, I'm out there trying to ... you know, not just win a game but help us get out of it. It hits a little harder, you know?"
I nodded, though I couldn't know.
"And I let the guys down. I did."
Like hell he did. That happened back at 115 Federal.
And it's high time they heard about this, because they clearly can't see it -- or don't want to see it -- for themselves.
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They try, the players do. Really hard.
But they lose. Almost all the time.
These Pirates are now 48-80 overall, 5-18 in August, 9-26 since the All-Star break. They're on a precise pace for a second consecutive 100-loss accumulation and, if we're being real, this would've been the third if the still-sorrier 2020 edition hadn't been limited to a two-month schedule by the pandemic.
It's one of the worst stretches in the 136-year history of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club. Arguably the very worst, if the awful offense is afforded extra weight.
And this affects ... who, exactly?
I can answer that myself, and with conviction: It affects Crowe, who cared enough to pipe up pridefully about the potential this group had, almost prophetically, before that sweep at Dodger Stadium. And who was among the precious few anywhere in Pittsburgh to defend the players who'd been publicly denigrated by Dennis Eckersley's classless remarks on a Boston broadcast.
But it also affects, in a way, so many others.
Does anyone, for example, doubt for a split-second that Bryan Reynolds, the team's best player, hasn't been dragged down into a .254/.335/.459 leveling by all that's around him?
Or that the same doesn't apply to Ke'Bryan Hayes, fresh off a nine-year extension, dug even deeper at .248/.316/.354?
Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting they're soft or pouting or anything in that bracket. Both are anything but. And the same goes for all that I'd know and appreciate about Mitch Keller, JT Brubaker, David Bednar, Jack Suwinski, Roansy Contreras, Oneil Cruz and you'd-better-believe Crowe, probably the only other players on this scene -- and I'm being generous -- that I'd project as possibly being part of whenever the winning's expected to take place.
But take this from someone who's now covered multiple decades of this franchise's failures: Losing kills.
Losing kills confidence and, thus, losing kills growth. It's demoralizing. It's deflating. And when it's baseball, that's the most god-awful Groundhog Day imaginable. It strips away everything that's good about sports. There isn't the same pep to the step. There isn't the same eagerness to learn, the same attention to detail, the same sense of a real reward for a job well done. The kind that can only come from positive results and, in turn, positive reinforcement.
That's hardly unique to this group. It's human nature. We all fare better, get better when we feel like we're winning in life.
Someone explain to me, please, how this scene, the one I'm describing here, helps the progression of the Pirates -- in any projected year -- get to winning when, in fact, they'll need some or all of the aforementioned players to be part of that.
Anyone?
Bob? Travis? Ben?
Why not support this small but still critical collection of players, at least a little?
Why not spend more to augment the roster with an A.J. Burnett or a Russell Martin, as was the real spur for those three playoff teams?
What good will it do to wait on the Altoona prospects, as they're doing, if that next wave will only arrive into a wreckage that'll be four or even five years in the wrecking?
Do the people running this team really think the players don't hear how people in Pittsburgh -- never mind Eckersley -- speak of them?
Do they really think they're as numb to it as those behind the headquarters' soundproofed walls?
Do they really think there's no residual impact from all this, that it can just continue into perpetuity or until Quinn Priester and Henry Davis come to save the day or until whatever date any of them actually has in mind?
Heck, I'll take this further: Do they really think they'll even have jobs that far down the road?
Say what one will of Nutting's ownership, but one of the few checkmarks of his tenure was the mass firings of the previous regime, which I remain convinced arose from public pressure. As I'm fond of saying to any of the higher-ups who'll hear it, this ain't St. Petersburg, where the Rays can conduct their unending science projects in peace because no one there cares about baseball. This is Pittsburgh, where we kinda know both what we're watching and what we're being sold.
It happened once that Nutting cleaned house, and it can happen again.
Or, this time, it could go further.
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It's not my style to spit complaints without offering solutions, and I'll do so here by naming names.
Nutting needs to authorize -- and enforce -- a raising of the payroll into the $100 million range. Not in some far-flung, nebulous future but in 2023. The revenue's more than there, and he knows it, just like everyone in the city knows it. And this notion that it's being stashed away would only fly if he'd plop every single penny he hasn't spent the past decade into a giant, transparent piggy bank out by the Roberto Clemente statue for all of us to see.
And count.
Daily.
It's not a dramatic increase, incidentally. Contrary to public misperception, the current big-league payroll's expected to wind up at around $65 million. Adding $35 million is a relative pittance when recalling that similar markets -- including this one in Milwaukee, which is two-thirds the size of the Pittsburgh metro area -- spend markedly more.
If Nutting doesn't raise it to $100 million in the fourth year of this management, as he did in the fourth year of the previous management, then he's either got to fire everyone all over again or sell the damned team. Because that'll mean he's either got an even worse management team at hand or, to be brutally blunt, he needs to get out the business of sports altogether.
Sports are about competing. Sports are about passion. Sports are about what Crowe just experienced these past 48 hours, the high and the low.
And spare me that the owner can't be forced out. I promise you that, in a place as inexorably linked to sports as Pittsburgh, the will can find a way.
Williams is next. He focuses on the business end, but oversees it all.
It's well past time we hear from him. Regularly. With gusto. This company doesn't need a CEO as much as it needs a face, a voice that can communicate with the fans what's being attempted. Not with a PR objective, but because of a bona fide belief. And since Nutting can never be that guy -- even if he were good at it, his image is ruined beyond repair -- that's got to be Williams.
I know the man. I trust the man. I've been that way about him since his time with the Penguins. And I feel he's the best qualified for this.
So get started. Now while the games are still going and those who care the most need to hear it the most.
Cherington ... needs to start coming to games.
Baseball isn't a petri dish. For all the innovations and all else to this great game, it's still about people. And I don't know that I've ever encountered an executive more distant from the one stage that should matter the most to him. Maybe it's compartmentalizing. Maybe he doesn't want to deal with what happens to a Crowe or a Reynolds or a Hayes on a night like this because it's easier or more fun to get all wistful about an Endy Rodriguez or a Termarr Johnson. I can't say.
What I can say is that he's tied his field manager's hands a hundred ways to Yoshi, and it feels like it's long-distance puppeteering without any of the fuss or muss.
Neal Huntington once was livid with me for writing something similar about him, stressing that baseball's different from the other two sports I cover -- the Steelers' and Penguins' execs are omnipresent, by the way -- and he was correct on that count. But it doesn't buy this degree of license.
Let Cherington see and feel what's happening to his players at the top tier. Not just hearing it from Derek Shelton. Live it a little. Let everyone know that what's in Pittsburgh right now is part of the project, too.
Let Cruz know that, if he screws up ...
... he'll have a friend at the other end.
Or two. Or five. Or heck, maybe half a roster.
Let everyone know that it stinks to see Cruz and Rodolfo Castro flex like this to roar back for the lead ...
... just to have it flushed down the commode.
Let a terrific kid like Suwinski, who was finally brought back up for this game and delivered a solid single, a walk, a stung out, an outfield gun-down at the plate, and this quality pregame chat we had ...
... feel like he's part of an plan more important than the Indianapolis Service-Time Express.
Imagine how long it'd be before the next Super-2 manipulation that hurts not only the parent roster but also the player. Or how long it'd be before the next Josh VanMeter or Kevin Padlo pickup, once he can fully envision how much better, say, Keller, Brubaker and Contreras would pitch with a superior cast behind them. Or how long it'd be before the next time he told Shelton he's got to cobble together another bullpen game with Tyler Beede starting. Or Bryse Wilson, for crying out loud.
Shelton ... I can't even go there.
He's the one everyone sees on TV, so he's the target of the most ire. But he's also the one who's kept VanMeter planted on the bench for all but six plate appearances in the past 17 games -- including in a key pinch-hit situation in this game -- because he knows VanMeter's bad at baseball. He's not a dolt. He's choosing from a batch of bad apples in putting together the fruit basket each afternoon, but he wasn't the one who picked them.
The pitching coach, the hitting coach ... this is where the discussion broaches into distraction.
The three men at the top need to get their collective act together. And that doesn't mean coming up with the best sell job on why 2023 should be yet another year of killing the clock for the Curve cavalry but, rather, coming up with a way to do right by the few good players they've already got. Help them. Pick them up. Make them better by making the team better.
There'll still be nights like this. Particularly here. But maybe they won't feel so bloody pointless.
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
View from the visitors' dugout, American Family Field, Milwaukee, Monday afternoon.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
• Scoreboard
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• 15-day injured list: RHP David Bednar (low back), RHP Colin Holderman (right shoulder soreness), LHP Dillon Peters (left elbow inflammation)
• 60-day injured list: RHP Yerry De Los Santos (lat), OF Canaan Njigba-Smith (wrist), RHP Blake Cederlind (elbow), RHP Max Kranick (elbow), C Roberto Pérez (hamstring)
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
1. Oneil Cruz, SS
2. Bryan Reynolds, CF
3. Ben Gamel, DH
4. Michael Chavis, 1B
5. Rodolfo Castro, 3B
6. Jack Suwinski, LF
7. Kevin Newman, DH
8. Tucupita Marcano, 2B
9. Jason Delay, C
And for Craig Counsell's Brewers:
1. Christian Yelich, LF
2. Willy Adames, SS
3. Rowdy Tellez, 1B
4. Hunter Renfroe, RF
5. Kolten Wong, 2B
6. Andrew McCutchen, DH
7. Jace Peterson, 3B
8. Omar Narváez, C
9. Garrett Mitchell, CF
THE SCHEDULE
Another one of these Tuesday, for better or worse: Mitch Keller (4-10, 4.50) vs. Jason Alexander (2-1, 5.26) with a first pitch of 8:10 p.m. Eastern.
THE CONTENT
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