◆NEWSPirates Notes: Keller, Pitching Pursuits, Lineup◆ROSTERSigned free agent RHP Enmanuel Nunez to a minor league contract◆STATPaul Skenes ranks 4th in the NL in strikeouts (200)◆STATNick Gonzales ranks 4th in the NL in batting average (.303)
◆NEWSPirates Notes: Keller, Pitching Pursuits, Lineup◆ROSTERSigned free agent RHP Enmanuel Nunez to a minor league contract◆STATPaul Skenes ranks 4th in the NL in strikeouts (200)◆STATNick Gonzales ranks 4th in the NL in batting average (.303)
The Pirates dropped their second straight game after being shut down by another left-handed starter in a 4-1 loss to the Cardinals in the first game of a three-game set in St. Louis. The Pirates had no extra base hits and just one run against LHP Quinn Mathews and couldn’t hit a collection of mediocre relievers for the Cards. Jared Jones couldn’t make it five innings against as he struck out six in 4.2 innings and gave up three runs. Tyler and Doug recap this one on the NS9 Postgame Show powered by Primanti Bros. You can watch and listen here:
Here’s my 3 takeaways from this loss…
It’s Year 7 and the Pirates are Still Behind the Cardinals
With the 4-1 loss to the Cards Friday night, the Pirates fall to 65-71 and the Cardinals improve to 68-68, three games ahead of the Bucs. It’s Year 7 of the Ben Cherington regime and the Pirates are still chasing a Cardinals team that did next to nothing in the offseason and sold at the deadline. The Pirates arguably have more talent on their roster than the Cardinals, but it doesn’t matter because the Cards are still better than the Pirates and showed it again in the first game of this series. Jimmy Crooks comes out, who has a .326 slugging percentage and hitting .174, belts a two-run home run in the bottom of the 3rd inning. Then the Pirates make three errors which leads to an unearned run. Once again, they’re still not a fundamentally sound team and you aren’t going to win many games when you don’t hit and make three errors.
This Team is B-O-R-I-N-G
Even when this team was above .500 and won a couple games, they weren’t that fun. They weren’t that exciting. Even when they were hitting and in top 3 in runs scored, the bullpen would melt down and blow games or Paul Skenes struggled to right the ship and win a game for a couple months. And now when we finally have a bullpen, the offense not only regress but they have come crashing down especially against left-handed pitching to the point of being a lifeless and boring offense. And then pretty much all season the defense has been sloppy and horrendous. After three more errors on Friday, the Pirates 87 errors are second most in MLB.
In this game, they got shut down by a pitcher named Quinn Mathews, who’s a rookie with a 6.43 ERA coming into this game. After facing the Bucs, it’s down to 5.03. Oh and he got his first win of his MLB career with this win…woooo hooo good for him. It really does not matter the name or who it is on that mound, but if they throw the ball with their left hand, the Pirates are sunk before the game is started. The Pirates have 12 runs in seven games on this roadtrip. That’s 1.71 runs per game. That’s pathetic. To be honest, it’s kinda amazing they even won two games on this roadtrip with that kind of offense.
I’m not sure what Jared Jones is at this point or what to do with him. He’s had some electric starts this season. He went from throwing four pitches mixing in his curve and changeup into his arsenal to have a handful of starts where he abandoned those pitches and threw nothing but the fastball/slider combo. It worked for a couple starts then he started getting hit around, probably because it was predictable when you’re only throwing two pitches and now he’s back to mixing the other ones in and hasn’t been effective in getting outs and going at least five innings. In this loss, he made it just 4.2 innings with seven hits, six strikeouts and three runs allowed.
In Don Kelly‘s postgame presser, he said Jones ran out of gas in the 5th…
After a fairly good month of July, Jones has only gone five innings once in his five starts now in August. His ERA in August is an abysmal 7.40 ERA. He owned a 3.81 ERA after July and now his ERA drops to 4.83 ERA. The milk’s gone bad folks. I’m not sure if Jones is running out of gas on the season coming off of UCL surgery and long rehab or what. I’ve been steadily in the “Jones is a starter camp,” but after seeing these starts in August where he is struggling to go five, I’m not sure if he is or should be going into next season. Where are you at with Jared Jones at this point? Let me know in the comments and if you want to see Jones in the rotation next season.
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The Debate
If Jared Jones doesn't take a big step forward next year, should the Pirates move him to the bullpen?
No comments yet — be the first to weigh in.
With Tyler Sweeney and Ryan Alexander.
Chapters
Key takeaways
1
Even after a seventh losing season, Ben Cherington will likely be back. Bob Nutting knows he doesn't give any GM what they need to win, and he'll accept Cherington's bad-luck injury excuses.
2
Cherington made good offseason moves but didn't finish the job. He never added a right-handed bat or fixed the rotation, and the deadline bullpen help came two months too late.
3
The Pirates have more talent than the Cardinals by a fair margin. St. Louis still plays better because it has a winning culture.
4
No metric, analytic or gut feeling justifies Jared Triolo (.630 OPS) batting leadoff. Asked to do it as manager, one host says they would resign.
5
Jared Jones needs to take a big step forward next year or he may have to move to the bullpen. The Pirates should also look for starters this offseason and include Mlodzinski in any trade.
All right. The intro didn't. There's the intro. All right. What's going on, beautiful people? This is the North Shore Nine podcast presented by FanDuel. You're listening to the NS9 Post Game Show powered by Primanti Brothers. I am Tyler. With me is Doug. Doug, Pirates loses 1-4 to 1 to the St. Louis Cardinals. This was an atrocious looking baseball game. It was hard to watch. That was very unenjoyable.
Can this season just end already?
Well, the Pirates didn't win per se, but I think Bob Nutting, Travis Williams, and Ben Cherington have won. The culture that they have created has overcome every bit of talent, goodness, heart this team has had. This losing culture, this lack of sense of urgency, this, I'm a robot.
We're going to do everything we can to lose. And then I want to flip the switch one day.
And guys like Bryan Reynolds, who have been here for six, seven, eight years, whatever, have just been beaten down.
And you bring in some guys with some spark, but it's not enough that Bob Nutting, Travis Williams, and Ben Cherington are undefeated with their losing culture.
And, again, it's going to take some changes. And we know Nutting's not going anywhere, sad but true.
But we could get rid of the other two and maybe shake things up. Maybe get some guy that says, gee, we've got some good players. I would like to win.
It's quite frustrating. And I know this is not, well, it does revolve around the game today because this game was just another case of they lost a game because of the same reasons that we've been saying are an issue for the last five months.
They can't hit left-handed pitching. For so long, we said the bullpen wasn't an issue. How many games do we lose because of that?
They lose because of the same reasons over and over and over and over and over.
And it's incredibly frustrating that it's now August 28th.
And with this being basically just cemented in that they are going to be under 500 this year for the seventh year of Ben Cherington as general manager, seventh year with Travis Williams here.
And again, August 28th. And I don't know. I'm 50-50 on whether they're going to bring Ben Cherington back.
I'm not convinced that they're going to get rid of him.
I'm convinced they're going to bring him back because I am too.
It's a losing team. Bob Nutting is a loser. Bob Nutting knows he doesn't give any general manager what he needs to succeed.
Right. So that's his first rationalization to keeping him.
And you're like, oh, maybe one more year. This will be the year that turns it around type thing.
Ben Cherington, is a loser.
so Ben Cherington is committed to his process, committed to his systems, that thing.
And again, he's the guy that's shrugging his shoulders saying, God, we've just run into a little bad luck.
And he's going to tell Bob, man, I had us right where we needed to be.
Now, I know Evan Sisk got out of it, but if you bring in Evan Sisk with runners scored 50% of the time, more than 50% of the time, he allows them to get home.
He did knock in the run of the game, but when he makes an error, but there is no universe, there is no matchup, there is no lineup, let's do a simulation of 10,000 lineups that should have Jared Triolo batting leadoff.
Seventh, eighth...
I don't care if it's against a left-hander.
I don't care if it's against a left-hander that's 97 years old, right?
He's...
Jared Triolo, he hits left, he's better, he's not a good hitter.
and I do have this question.
And I know it sounds silly, but we talked about it in spring training.
We need a backup shortstop.
There is no one really that can do it.
And, should we have kept the Leaker Williams?
Like, wouldn't some of this gone better?
the fielding and stuff?
Like, he could play a pretty good shortstop, and he's not much of a worse hitter, than Triolo.
I don't...
I just, again, it's these moves you have to question.
And, things are bad when I'm, like, posing the question, should we have kept the Leaker Williams?
Well, for the record, Leaker Williams is hitting significantly, or has hit significantly better than...
Pretty much everything they've thrown out there at shortstop, aside from Konnor Griffin this year.
Yeah.
So, I don't know that it's...
But, like you said there, and I'm going to bring it up again.
We talked about the issues that we knew were there in the spring.
Not having any depth there at shortstop was an issue that we didn't raise a big stink about it, but it was definitely something that was a concern.
And here we are.
In August, Konnor Griffin's been down for quite some time, and they still don't have a shortstop.
The swing and miss is really popping up in his game right now.
He still does a good job of seeing pitches.
The walk rate's still good.
He's got to hit more baseballs to be a viable major league player.
Is he more Nagowski at this point or Rodolfo Castro?
Not a good option.
I don't like either of those options.
They're done.
Maybe he's just an overmatched rookie that will adjust.
We'll see.
Yeah.
I...
Big believer in his Merlin.
Love the kid.
Had a great stretch.
But now we're getting in a little bit here into the nitty-gritty.
The league's punched back on you.
We haven't seen him adjust back.
He's got to start putting the ball in play a little bit more.
Yeah.
He's got to start making some contact.
He's got a good eye.
He's got to start making contact.
And it was...
everybody knew it was an issue here.
Even early on, while he was hitting the ball over the wall as much as he was.
The strikeout rate and the contact rate was still really bad.
But we...
We got to make an adjustment here, Magician.
Yes, the Pirates.
Pirates are very stubborn.
like, Henry Davis has one of the worst swings you'll ever see.
And he's doubling down and sticking with it.
Like, he needs to break that thing.
Now, Esmerlyn Valdez, it's like, we're just not making adjustments here.
Kid's got a good eye.
He's patient at the plate.
He doesn't seem to be spooked by big moments.
I still have a lot of faith.
I'm hopeful.
But I'm a pirate fan.
And I can't have nice things.
So...
Yeah.
My brain immediately expects the worst.
Yeah, it's just...
again, if we're making predictions, based on the history that we've had this century, it'd be like, yeah, he was a flash in the pan.
It was fun while he lasted.
It was, to Ke'Bryan Hayes, September 20.
it's like, wow, that was fun.
Never saw it again.
Yeah, and I don't even want to put this comment up here, but got to give a shout out to Silas here as he says, Esmerlyn Valdez Suwinski, question mark.
God, I hope not.
That's hurtful.
That is hurtful.
He should have had to pay more than $2 for that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I don't think it's anything...
I don't know.
I don't know.
He's got to hit the ball.
He's got to put the ball in play more often.
The problem is there is no answer now, because even if he gets on a hot streak, it's late August and September when they're out of it.
I've watched a million players, pitchers wear down.
A bunch of guys have great stretches this time.
So, again, I'd feel better about it if he does that, but I won't believe in anything now until, we're a season and a half in of him being good.
But, yeah, and then you got Nick Gonzales coming up next with a runner in scoring position, because he's come through, like, in those cases, often this year.
The ribeye.
Mr. Ribeye.
Again, just not a good day.
Not a good day at all, Doug.
No.
Again, it's that lifeless, and again, we keep calling them DOA, and then they do what they do in the first couple of games.
Well, even those San Diego games, it was like, golly.
They were a little frustrating, even though they won the first two, but, they're, yeah, just, they just look so disengaged.
they're all got their heads hung down.
It's, yeah.
They're not a good baseball team, plain and simple.
Nope.
They're not good enough.
This group is not, I'm getting, I actually, I'm going to take that back.
I think they are a talented enough baseball team to be in the playoffs.
Aren't they more talented than St. Louis?
By a pretty decent margin, I think.
Yeah, I would, I'm right.
That's, there's more talent on our roster than there is, and this shows you how important culture is.
The Cardinals have a winning culture, even when everyone, counts them out.
They had their lowest attendance tonight since, like, 1920.
That's just unbelievable.
And, but they're still, again, playing better than we are.
More fundamentally sound, whatever, more, just better production, better approach, better everything.
but I do think the Pirates have more talent.
The Cardinals trotted out five guys in our lineups with a sub 700 OPS tonight.
That's just quintessential Pirates.
Yeah, that's, that was our last, six years of, rosters, right?
Yeah.
Meanwhile, the Pirates trot out the guy with the 630 OPS to hit lead off tonight.
They decided to give Jared Triolo the most at-bats on their team today.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
It's inexcusable.
It's stupid.
It's right.
You can't explain that to me.
Like I said earlier, there is no metric.
There is no analytic.
There is no formula.
There is no gut.
There is nothing that justifies that decision.
Now, I don't know who makes that decision.
This is where I give Donnie grace.
Cause I think those decisions come from above, but if any party, if I'm this manager and you're telling me, I got to hit Jared Triolo lead off, I'm turning in my resignation.
Like I'm not putting my name on that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't want to sign that lineup card that has Jared Triolo hitting at the top.
And it's not the first time.
No, it's been a frequent lineup.
It's stupid.
Yeah.
Like you said, there's no feel of it.
There's no gut.
There's not an analytic that tells you that's a smart move.
It's stupid.
Yeah.
I'm going to verify here.
How many times has he hit lead off this year?
Yeah.
This is like the fifth time still that's five times too many.
Oh, that seems way too many.
And it seems like it's been more than that, but whatever.
It does.
I feel like they did it quite a bit last year.
They did it 27 times last year.
Yeah.
It's stupid.
It's wrong.
It's bad baseball.
It's bad managerial malpractice.
It's a, many of the things that this team does that shows that winning, they're not committed to winning, right?
Like, you know.
That's about all I got on the offense here.
I'll just sit here and complain all night if I'm, if we keep going.
He goes four and two thirds, ends up giving three earned runs, did strike out six.
Thought he was better than his last outing.
Still not great.
He was able to flip the curve ball in a good bit more tonight.
The fastball, I don't think had as much life as we've seen earlier in the year.
Did not look explosive, right?
Yeah.
Still too many balls.
Yeah.
58 strikes on 86 pitches.
You probably want to see him in the zone a lot more.
Like I said, I did like what he did with the curve ball.
He does need to, I think he needs to find that third pitch, something that he can just flip in there.
I think that can be a weapon for him as a, get a, get a head pitch.
Cause you're not looking for that early in account.
Yeah.
Especially.
Yeah.
Not from him.
If he threw a curve in the first three, two innings, when all he's doing is trying to throw, the first 10 pitches, trying to throw a hundred of each one.
he would catch people off guard all the time, but he's not a mature pitcher yet.
And I was thinking about that today.
Cause I think, Oh, he was drafted right out of high school, but that was in 2020.
Like he, what is he now?
25, 26, you know what I'm saying?
He, it's time to start maturing and focusing.
And, yeah, you, I don't know about you, but I still think he's going to figure this out and be a pretty good major league pitcher.
I don't know if the lengths at length is ever going to be there or the workload.
I think it's going to be a good, like 120 to 130 innings every year, but a lot of it's going to, it's going to come.
If there is baseball next year, it would be a big year for him because that second year off the injuries where, you really, you should feel more comfortable.
He has got to take a step forward, assuming baseball starts at the end of March and share, he needs to, he needs to take a legitimate large step forward.
Otherwise, and I think the pirates need to be looking for starting pitchers in the, in the off season anyway.
and I would include Maginski in that trade, if I were them, but otherwise, Jared Jones may have to go to the pulpit.
Cause 120 innings pushing it, I'd include them in any trade right now.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Well, we need just about everything, right?
Get me a good defensive player.
Get me a good bullpen guy.
Get me a starter, a part of it.
I understand he's not going to bring this back on his own.
but yeah, get me a right-handed hitting third baseman that can actually hit was, got a little pop that could play defense, whatever.
But yeah, I don't want Maginski on his team.
He, I know not part of the show, not part of this conversation, but he's a loser and we don't need more losers.
Agreed.
I'm going to talk to my agent and then I'm going to suck the rest of the season.
I love Doug.
just some stuff seems obvious to me and it doesn't seem obvious to our general manager.
I'm going to talk to my agent and I'm going to suck for the rest of the game.
it's like, I don't know if you're going to pout and, take time away and do all that other crap.
Well, you better come out and be good and, have not in either situation.
Oh, I feel like I'm just getting slap happy at this point.
It's just, it's not fun to watch.
It's not fun to end up to be in a spot where you should be playing meaningful baseball games and Jared Triola sitting lead off for you.
Jacob Gonzalez is finishing the game off and you got Henry Davis in his sub 600 OPS hit nine for you.
It's not against a left-handed pit.
He's right-handed mind you.
And he hasn't had a pitch against a left-hander in like a month or 19 at bat.
Something ridiculous.
it's just absurd.
I don't know how, well, I do.
We're the Pirates.
Our owner is Bob Nunning.
Our president is Travis Waves.
And our general manager is Ben Sherry.
There was a span there, right?
In April, early May that we thought this team might be good.
The offense was kicking, you know.
But then it, man.
Early May is bad for us.
Last year, we had to fire Derek Sheldon this year.
Oh, that was good for us.
Yeah.
But, we didn't, it's not exactly like we sprung forward.
We were so bad that we had to fire Derek Sheldon, I guess is what I was saying.
This year, we were pretty good.
And then Paul Keens became human.
Mitch Keller became much, I don't know, much less than human.
bad.
Right.
Jared Jones came back and Carmen melted down and Jared wasn't all that.
Bubba wasn't all, it went.
Paul Keens decided that he was going to become an average pitcher.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He just decided to, you know.
I'm so tired of these questions.
It's been fun.
It's been so fun.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of Carmen Mlodzinski, Don Kelly says that Lake Bachar will get to start tomorrow, which usually means Mlodzinski is going to follow him up in the bulk role, which I agree with that.
So we don't, one, I don't want to give Carmen Mlodzinski any starts and make him happy.
Right.
And two, he can't start because he sucks.
And yeah.
And we might get four outs out of him, because right here, he'll get, an inning and a third, three runs.
and then some, gosh, I just got to figure this out.
Post game comments.
Yeah.
Or talk to his agent and his family.
Yeah.
And the people in his corner.
I've never wanted a player to demand a trade more than Carmen Mlodzinski.
Can the fans demand a trade of a player?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
We're going to demand for a trade.
Worth a try.
Yeah.
come on, let's start it.
Well, let's hire the planes.
Sell it to you.
Trade Mlodzinski.
Doug, just to run through the rest of this, because I don't even want to talk about the rest of this.
Yohan Ramirez ended up giving up an unearned run because Jacob Gonzalez can't throw the ball across the diamond.
Neither Gonzalez can throw a baseball or field a baseball.
It's super fun.
Did you see that thing?
before he let go of it, you knew it was going to be.
I thought it was going to be into the stands.
he was, golly, every bit of his form was, that was terrible.
Terrible.
It was, it was bad.
The shortstop play and that entire side of the infield watching them this entire season has been nightmarish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It really has been rough.
Ke'Bryan Hayes for all his flaws and I'm glad he's not here.
He sure did spoil us at third base.
He sure did.
And since there is an opener tomorrow, FanDuel doesn't quite have a lineup yet.
However, just to show how far the Unmighty have fallen, the Pirates are now for an over under of 79 and a half wins.
They are minus one eighty eight.
So all the money is on that under.
Oh, yeah.
You're seven, folks.
You're seven.
You're seven.
Right.
Exactly.
Any last words here, Doug?
I don't want to talk.
No.
Yeah.
I'm just I'm going to climb into bed and cry myself to sleep.
I think that's all.
And if you didn't get enough of us.
I'm too numb.
I'm too numb now.
Yeah.
the season's been over for six weeks or so.
Not my first rodeo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is a very familiar place.
I feel at home.
Yeah.
The drive for 72.
Right.
Hey, if you didn't have enough of this today, we'll be back with you guys tomorrow.
I'll be here for all three games of the St. Louis series.
So and I will be here with Doug tomorrow.
Thankfully, I have a golf outing in the morning.
So I'll have a little lubrication in me to maybe complain some more about how tomorrow goes, because I'm sure we'll have some great defense, some great hitting.
Some great pitching.
Yeah.
Great.
Open games have been our best option other than Braxton and Ashcraft.
So.
All right.
Appreciate you all for hanging out.
Come back with us tomorrow and hang out some more.
Love you guys.
Like, subscribe.
All that fun stuff.
We're out of here.
Peace out.
Absolutely.
Let's go Bucs fans.
All right.
That wraps up this episode of North Shore Nine.
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Comments· 0
If Jared Jones doesn't take a big step forward next year, should the Pirates move him to the bullpen?
No comments yet — be the first to weigh in.