RECAPPING THE WEEK THAT WAS

Awful August
The month of August hasn’t been the Pirates best month. In fact, it’s been their worst month along with June. They’re 10-14 and not just the record, some of the performances from their better players have been less than ideal. Here’s some player’s numbers in August:

Spencer Horwitz
.159/.237/.174, 17 wRC+

Bryan Reynolds:
.237/.317/.301, 74 wRC+

Carmen Mlodzinski
11.1 IP, 12.71 ERA, 5.38 FIP

Jared Jones
16.0 IP, 7.88 ERA, 6.40 FIP (4 starts)

Horwitz came off the IL after his hamstring strain and has been horrendous. With how off his numbers are compared to the rest of the season, you have the wonder if the hamstring injury isn’t lingering and still giving him problems. That’s a concern. Did they rush him back because of how bad the offense was? Who knows, but they need to figure it out. Mlodzinski has been awful as well since returning to the rotation and getting starts when Mitch Keller hit the IL. Then there’s Jones who’s going through a rough stretch. All told in after this 10-14 stretch, the Pirates sit in fourth place at 65-70 on the off day and 7.5 back of the Padres in the NL wildcard hunt.

Speaking of Mlodzinski, I’ve seen enough of him starting and getting numerous chances to once again show everyone he’s not a starting pitcher. Just bring up Khristian Curtis or Wilber Dotel or Hunter Barco or Antwone Kelly in September and let them start and move Mlod back to the pen. And then in the offseason, it’s time for the Pirates to have a come to Jesus meeting with him. Sit Carmen down and ask him if he wants to have a solid and long MLB career as a back end reliever ala Andrew Miller or does he want to try the starting thing somewhere else. And if he wants to keep being a starter then you trade him elsewhere and he can go find himself in the rotation there, but that option has to be over in Pittsburgh. And if he’s ready to be a shutdown weapon out of the pen when the team needs him then we’ll keep him and he will pitch when the team needs him and he’ll need to be a model teammate and citizen in that pen and clubhouse. If not, that’s fine. Trade him to Colorado or Kansas City or Washington, wherever, just somewhere else where he can go and cosplay as a SP.

Rafael Oh My
Rafael Flores did something last week that’s never been done in Pirates franchise history before. And I was at the game! Last Wednesday afternoon at PNC Park during the rubber match against the Tigers, Rafael Flores pinch-hit for Henry Davis with one out in the 7th inning and he clubbed a solo home run to cut the Tigers lead to 3-2. Flores stayed in the game to catch and he came up in the 9th inning with one out and belted another solo shot to tie the game before Brandon Lowe won it two at-bats later. Flores became the first Pirates player to enter the game after not starting and hit two home runs in franchise history.

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Kinda crazy that someone never came in early from an injured player and hit two home runs or anything like that. Just goes to show you when you go to the ballpark even after 100+ years of history of the team and the game, you still may see something that’s never happened before.

Flores now has six home runs in 73 plate appearances and has a 154 OPS+ and he’s making a run to be one of the mainstays for the roster next season. Alex Stumpf talked about this as well and Flores’ bat in this episode of OffBeat last week…

Astros Fire GM
The Astros are 66-66, but currently tied for first place in a shit AL West this season, but that didn’t stop the organization from canning GM Dana Brown…

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It’s a curious move as Brown was in the middle of his third season and had two winning seasons and then are right in the hunt for the playoffs this season. Now, I’m not going to talk too much on this because I don’t know the situation in Houston that well, supposedly there were rumblings that he was clashing with ownership and that could be one of the main drivers to why he was let go, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s striking when a team does this and they’ve been successful recently overall with winning seasons and playoff appearances. They don’t accept mediocrity and actually hold people in charge accountable.

When will it be our turn for the Pirates to actually hold Ben Cherington accountable? Alex Stumpf talked about if the Pirates can afford to wait on Cherington in an episode of OffBeat this week:

Team’s Records:
Dana Brown: 240-214 (.529)
Ben Cherington: 429-574 (.428)

Brown had the Astros headed for possibly their second playoff appearance of his tenure and yes their division is down this year, but Cherington’s 7th season is nearly over and we will likely have zero playoff appearances and zero winning seasons.

With this season going into the gutter recently, I see a lot of fans say the silver lining with another failed season is that Cherington will definitely be fired at the end of it. I’m just not that sure that’s going to be the case. And that’s not me saying Cherington deserves another season. He doesn’t. He has failed year after year. He 100% deserves to go. I just don’t have faith in Bob Nutting to follow through and make the move that needs to be done. The buzz the Pirates had from the first part of the year and the good vibes from the Brandon Lowe, Mason Montgomery deal, I believe has given Cherington enough positive equity in Nutting’s head that he will give him another season. The Pirates may have talked a big game with period full stop from Travis Williams last offseason, but at the end of the day, I don’t have faith that they will make the tough decision.

NEWS & NOTES

Innings Update
There’s been so much talk this season about limiting Bubba Chandler, Braxton Ashcraft and Jared Jones’ inning totals this season with two of them in their first full MLB season and the other is coming off major UCL injury and surgery. I wanted to update everyone here in the final week of August to see where we stand.

Ashcraft: 155.1 IP
Chandler: 131.0 IP
Jones 68.0 IP

I think we’re in an OK spot with a month to go. Ashcraft is at the highest total and has blown by his career high in innings a while back, but to be honest he’s been pitching better and more efficient recently. A good amount of his innings has been low stress and he continues to show no effects from the high inning total. They can get creative with some of the young arms that have been up and down from Triple-A, but I think they’re waiting for Ashcraft to show them any sign of slowing down. Let me tell you. If he keeps pitching efficiently and low stress, let him go and see where he ends up.

As for Jones, there’s a bunch of data that show how many innings you should throw when you recover from the surgery he had and I had marked in there around 100-120 innings which I thought was doable. He’s at 68 plus the rehab starts he had at the beginning of the season gives him another 18.2 innings so he’s at 86.2. He’s basically going just give innings max in his starts so four more starts puts him around the 106 mark which I think is the sweet spot to where they preferred him to be this season.

And Chandler threw 131.1 innings last season between Indy and Pittsburgh so he’s right around where he wants to be with a typical increase of maybe 30-40 innings, he’ll pass that career high but won’t exceed that year-to-year increase so I think he’s fine as well.

They’re in a pretty good spot overall. That said, they also have Khristian Curtis, Wilber Dotel, Antwone Kelly and Hunter Barco that could all come up and make starts over the next month. Maybe they skip a start or two or go a 6-man rotation or boot Carmen from the rotation (please) and start one of them. Rosters expand to 28 on September 1 so I’m sure we’ll see a couple of these arms up to help spread things out. They have options for sure if they decide it’s needed, but honestly throughout the season the Pirates haven’t seem too concerned with limiting Bubba, Jones and Ashcraft’s innings so we’ll see what they do down the stretch here.

THIS WEEK

The Pirates took the first two in San Diego and started making folks believe again just to get shut out on Wednesday and fail to produce a sweep. As good as this team looks one or two days, they are just incapable of building any momentum and allergic to going on a run. They have an off day Thursday which the bullpen needs and then they play in St. Louis to finish off this nine-game roadtrip. Folks keep wanting to believe they’re about to hit that run and save the season, but don’t talk to me about it until you get back to .500 and pass the Cardinals in the standings. Year 7 and we’re still chasing the Cardinals in the division who weren’t really going for it in the offseason and sold at the deadline. Fun.

The only thing in doubt for this team over their last 27 games is if they will make it back to .500 and who will get fired, if anyone, at the conclusion of the season.

We Have an App!
Don’t forget we have a new app! If you haven’t downloaded the new North Shore Nine app, change that today! You can correct that wrong by downloading it here. The app has live Pirates scores, all of our videos, podcasts, blog articles from Neil and I and you can earn points to become a top fan to win monthly prizes, live chat throughout the day and during game. Come join the NS9 community and let us know what you think of the app. We listen to all the feedback.

That’s all I have for The NS9 Report this week. Let’s see how this team finishes out the long roadtrip.