While speaking on his weekly radio show on the Pirates Radio Network, Ben Cherington said the Pirates are aware that they have things to fix moving forward after getting off to a 2-7 start and he says the organization is "accountable" for that.

Cherington did not speak with reporters at PNC Park, as he usually does when he’s at a Sunday home game.

On the show, hosted by Joe Block, he highlighted the team's inability to "shut down innings," the countless defensive "leaks," and offensive struggles during his 30-minute interview.

"Those are the obvious things you look at and we have to improve those things to get better and that gets back to where we are in the season," Cherington said of the Pirates' early struggles and highlighted that they are only nine games into the season. "We believe that it will improve with the people that we have here, the players that we have here, the staff that we have here. We believe that strongly, and we’re accountable for that, for sure." 

Through their first nine games, the Pirates have the fifth-worst batting average (.198) in Major League Baseball. Their 27 runs scored is the third-lowest total in the league and they have struck out 87 times which is tied for the fourth-highest mark. On top of that, they have the second-lowest slugging percentage (.295), trailing only the Astros, and the fourth-lowest OPS (.586).

Defensively, they are tied for the most errors (7) and have the second-highest ERA (5.22) while walking the fifth-most hitters (36). Cherington said because of the early struggles he has seen players in the clubhouse starting to press a little and said players need to take "a breath."

"I have seen some examples of where guys just look like they are trying to do a little too much and we know that in baseball, that is a difficult way to play the game," Cherington said. "There’s no lack of care or effort or focus or intent to execute. But, we know in the game that if that effort gets too high, maybe you’re squeezing the baseball a little bit too hard or maybe as a hitter you’re trying to do too much and you’re swinging at a pitch that you maybe wouldn’t, defensively trying to make the perfect play, etc. It’s a hard game to play that way."

Cherington advised that players need to focus on the things that they can control and focus on their process and game prep so they can enter the game as confident as possible. However, he has confidence that the Pirates will improve, despite the way they have played early on.

"Again, nine games in, we know what the results are, and we need them to be better," Cherington said. "We have a long, long season and we respect the length of that season and we believe it will get better."

Here are a few other notes from Cherington's show:

• Cherington said that sending David Bednar to Class AAA Indianapolis was a difficult decision and it was also a difficult conversation and "not one that he liked in the moment." Cherington said they saw a few things during spring training -- velocity, fastball metrics and improvement of secondary pitches -- that they thought were pointing toward a bounce back season. But, as those struggles continued early, Cherington said they had to tackle Bednar's problems head on.

"Really it was just a matter of, rather than keep squinting, let’s tackle this head-on with David, in full support of David and do the work necessary, not to just be on the team and be part of a pen, but be what we all know he can be," Cherington said. "That’s clearly the outcome we want. We want to bring him back and have him be exactly what we know he’s capable of being and help us win games and I believe that is going to happen."

Bednar made three appearances in Miami and produced an 0-2 record while completing just one inning of work, giving up four hits, three earned runs, one home run and two walks. His ERA ballooned to 27.00 after his final appearance on March 30 in a 3-2 loss to the Marlins. He didn't record an out while throwing eight pitches and giving up a run. 

The former two-time All-Star closer has yet to pitch for Indianapolis after yesterday's game against the Iowa Cubs was rained out. However, Cherington is hoping spending some time out of the spotlight will benefit Bednar.

"Obviously, this is where he wants to do it, this is where we want him to do it. He will have to do it here at some point and we believe he will," Cherington said. "We made the decision for some period of time and we hope it’s a relatively short amount of time, but for some period of time, we hoped that he would benefit from getting out of this environment and attacking the things head-on that we know that he can do."

• After calling Thomas Harrington up to make his major-league debut earlier this week, and not being scheduled to pitch in the Pirates' upcoming series against the Cardinals, Cherington was asked how they will deploy their starting rotation this season and specifically, Paul Skenes. There had been some conversation about using a six-man rotation at times during the spring, but Cherington said they are not going to be locked into a "five-day or six-day all year."

"We are going to be strategic about it, there will be days, where our guys, including Paul, will pitch on normal rest -- four days in between on the fifth day -- and there will be other times where we look to give guys extra days," Cherington said. "We'll just stay ahead of it and that will depend on where we are in the season, how guys are responding, maybe how the most recent outing went, kind of anticipating the schedule coming up, there's a little bit of matchup stuff we look at, when do we want to slot guys in. So, there's no set formula the rest of the year, we'll continue to take it a start at a time, but some days he (Skenes) will be on five, some days he will be on six. But he is a regular major-league starting pitcher, we are not trying to control volume like the way we were last year. We'll still be mindful about it, obviously. We're not going to put him, or anyone else, in any sort of danger zone, intentionally, but we're looking forward to him taking a regular turn, for sure."