Already wrote one column from the Pirates' home-opening 13-9 clubbing of the White Sox on this Friday at PNC Park, and I've already written plenty on the subject that's to follow, so here's to keeping this one as compact and powerful as a Bryan Reynolds swing.
Pay the man.
All he'd contribute to this particular cause was a three-run home run in the fourth inning, one that brought almost as much enthusiasm from the leaping relievers in the Pittsburgh pen as did from the capacity crowd of 39,167:
And for his next trick in the fifth, a Little League grand slam that has to be seen to be believed, though it'd be correctly scored a three-run triple plus a throwing error:
The first of those put the Pirates up for good, 7-5. The next put them up, 12-7, and allowed them to run Wil Crowe through to the end of the game and keep the rest of their pen fresh while Chicago's will remain on fumes through the full weekend.
Reynolds also singled, so his final line would be 3 for 5 with six -- yeah, six! -- RBIs, and three runs scored. And for the season, he's now Major League Baseball's No. 3 hitter as ranked by his 1.572 OPS, trailing only the Brewers' Brian Anderson at 1.593 and the Red Sox's Adam Duvall at 1.578. Within that, he leads the majors in hits (13), home runs (5) and RBIs (13).
As Derek Shelton put it afterward, "It's probably the most locked in I've seen him. We've seen him locked in at times. But just the tempo throughout his entire at-bats and ... the thing that stands out is not so much the pitches he's swinging at but the pitches he's not swinging at. I know over the course of three years, I've talked about that, being a hitting coach, but when you don't swing at bad pitches and guys have to come into the zone to guys like him, he can do a lot of damage."
As Reynolds himself put it, "It's one of those times where it’s ... yeah, you feel good in the box."
As Andrew McCutchen put it when asked kiddingly if Reynolds was stealing headlines on his big homecoming day: "That’s fine. He can keep doing that. Keep doing what he’s doing. It’s been fun to watch thus far in the season. Shows the type of special player that he is. He’s shown that pretty early this year and he’s shown it in the past."
Also and related: Pay the man.
Not because he's off to such a sizzling start, as that'll cool, as it does for even the best of them. Not because he's shown several times in his tenure with this team that he's capable of soaring at this level on a consistent basis. Not because he's become so dedicated to this team that there's scarcely on occasion where he can be asked about anything at all without it swinging back to the Pirates as a collective. Or that, on this same subject, after this game, he seized on three separate answers to reporters' questions the opportunity to thank the fans for coming out and pleading with them to continue doing so.
I asked him how it felt just to be part of that, reminding that it hasn't always been like this over his tenure even beyond the COVID years:
"Yeah, it was awesome," he'd reply. "The fans today were … it was packed and they were locked in and they stayed the whole time. It was fun to play in front of a stadium like that. Hopefully, we'll keep rolling, and it'll be like that more often."
And did I note that Reynolds' five home runs in the first seven games was matched in franchise lore only by Willie Stargell in 1971?
Or that his 32 total bases in the first seven games breaks the record held by the small-headed version of Barry Bonds?
Trying this again: Pay the man.
No, I'm not about to resurrect all the offers and numbers and opt-out clauses. Nor am I going to pick good guys and bad, even though I found it wholly loathsome that CAA, Reynolds' agency, agreed to money terms with the Pirates and then decided to whip out the opt-out clause. That's trash bargaining.
Rather, I'm going to point to management, all the way up to Bob Nutting, and remind everyone at 115 Federal that Reynolds just happens to be the type of player who can make a company more money than it invests. All this osmosis, all these optimistic outlooks can sing all summer long -- and for summers to come -- if players of his caliber are retained. They have to see that. And if they haven't seen it in a while, this single afternoon should serve as a striking reminder.
Did you know that the Pirates' three most profitable seasons of Nutting's tenure were 2013-15?
Remember what happened in all three of those?
Unsolicited advice: Revisit the money terms -- eight years, $106 million -- negotiate the opt-out clause to a later year or, better yet, offer enough money that there's no such clause. He's worth it. He might even be a steal. Then, sign the paper before the CAA guys move the goalposts again, shake hands, and get back to ... you know, more of what we all just witnessed.
Bottom line: Pay the man.
