RECAPPING THE WEEK THAT WAS
What a horrible week it was for your Pittsburgh Pirates. They went 2-5 overall and started an eight-game roadtrip by dropping three-of-four games to the Reds who they were ahead of in the division. The latest loss was a doozy as Mitch Keller recorded six outs and gave up seven runs in a 10-2 massacre that dropped them back under .500. The season is on the line every day at this point and they went from tied for the third wildcard spot on Monday to 3.5 back and behind four teams by Sunday afternoon. Plain and simple, the Pirates dropped the ball. And we’re still waiting for Ben Cherington to be “aggressive” at the deadline which runs out at 6:00PM today.
With the trade deadline under 10 hours to go, the Pirates have their worst playoff chances of the season:
The Pirates playoff chances at 22.3% per FanGraphs literally their lowest odds all season. If it wasn’t hilarious, I would cry. They couldn’t have picked a worse time to have a bad week. And what a bad it was. Like on Tuesday when they rallied from six down to tie it and force extras, only to watch the offense not be able to drive in more than one run in three innings to lose in 12 innings. Or on Wednesday when they couldn’t touch Eduardo Rodriguez for eight innings and were blanked 3-0. Or how about Thursday when the Pirates couldn’t score off the Reds bullpen and got walked off in the 9th 3-2. Or Friday when Paul Skenes had got hit around for five runs and seven hits on 100 pitches in just four innings, the Pirates offense still rallied to take the lead only to have the bullpen blow it and then a mindblowing play when Nick Gonzales literally didn’t want to throw it to first to end the inning that would have preserved a tie game. Then later in that same game as they’re about to lose, Ryan O’Hearn injuries his quad, has to be helped off the field and lands on the IL for probably 6-8 weeks. Then after bouncing back with a win Saturday, they come out on Sunday and Keller throws BP and puts the Pirates in a 7-0 hole that they were never getting out of because Chase Burns mowed them down for nine strikeouts. Even Ke’Bryan Hayes took Keller deep! And late in that game their reliever pickup Camilo Doval is welcomed to Pirates land by giving up a home run to Tyler Stephenson.
They sit at 56-57 and now we wait to see if Cherington will still buy and somehow try to fill all the holes currently on this team. What started off as such a promising season has reached a frustrating level this past week as the team can’t seem to do anything right.
Pirates Acquire Doval
Cherington did make one trade this week to try and improve this bullpen when he traded Yankees reliever Camilo Doval and cash for two minor leaguers catcher Omar Alfonzo and OF Luis Cruz. On the surface does this trade improve the bullpen? Yes. Doval is a proven talent who’s succeeded as the closer for the Giants and has a year of control. But he’s struggling this season with a 4.54 ERA and a -0.8 bWAR. Yes, his splits away from Yankees Stadium are a lot better, but I just don’t love acquiring a guy that the Yankees are willing to trade away. The Yankees are headed to the playoffs and going for a division title, if they felt Doval is one of their top guys to help them do that in the pen then they would have held onto him. But instead they deal him for a lottery ticket and a minor league catcher. Pirates didn’t give up much, but that’s the point. The Yankees wanted to deal this guy.
Doval improves the Pirates pen which isn’t saying much, but if this is the only move then it doesn’t move the needle. If Cherington continues and picks up a legit relief arm today then it makes this deal look better.
NEWS & NOTES
Rain Delay?
What was up with that “rain delay” with no tarp on Sunday in Cincinnati? With the Reds up 7-1 in the 4th inning, the umpires halted the game to allow for the groundscrew to attempt to fix the infield after playing baseball in a steady rain for four innings already. No tarp came out and the players were told to stay in the dugout and after about 15 minutes of waiting, Don Kelly had enough, started talking to the umpire about playing in these conditions. And the umpire ejected him! It was Kelly’s 5th ejection this season and he leads MLB in ejections now. This was a first for me, a no-tarp rain delay and then a manager ejection during it. The rain stopped like a half hour later and they finished the game. I’m not sure why they didn’t just tarp it, wait for the rain to stop and then resume. Bizarre stuff. Here’s the video from Platinum Key and Kelly’s presser about it below from SNP:
I’m with Kelly on this, tarp the thing and let’s resume in 40 minutes when it’s clear and they can get the field ready for play. Hey, but thank goodness Chase Burns was able to get through five innings and get his win…
And then there was this tarp incident where they tarp crew just ran right into the players at home plate after the benches cleared in Cleveland:
I know we’re usually in a drought at this point in August, but a little rain instead and it’s like no one knows how to act across MLB.
Did Someone Say Bullpen Help?
I’m just saying…
If we aren’t going to win this month and compete for a wildcard spot, give me entertainment in the form of Craig Kimbrel.
Weird Scoring Decision
Just putting this out here to why I nerd out about stat and rule oddities like the following, but I used to do some official scoring in the California League, Frontier League and the Woodbat Prospect League for the Slippery Rock Sliders! Anyway, in Friday’s 8-7 loss to the Reds, Pierce Johnson came on to pitch the 8th inning for the Reds. He gave up three runs to give the Pirates a 7-5 lead. That’s a blown save. But then in the bottom of the 8th inning, the Reds scored three and retook an 8-7 lead. Pierce Johnson was now the pitcher of record staring at a win. Emilio Pagan came on to pitch the 9th and he shut the door for the Reds 8-7 win. So Johnson gets the win, Pagan earns the save, right? Well, not here. When I saw the winning pitcher was Pagan on Saturday morning, I was stumped for a minute. Had to look it up and there is a rule called “Brief and ineffective” that gives the official scorer a chance to use discretion and hand out the win to another pitcher and that’s exactly what the OS did here…
You don’t normally see that applied and I can’t remember an instance off the top of my head where I recall it happening, but because Pierce Johnson got two outs but gave up three hits and surrendered the lead, the OS felt he didn’t deserve the win for being ineffective and gave it to Pagan. Again, no one really cares about this but I find scoring decisions like this ons fascinating. Also, that MLB Scoring Changes account on Twitter slaps if you’re into things like this. The person who runs that account is doing God’s work.
Skubal to the Dodgers
I guess I should talk about this trade. I don’t have a major problem with the return, it was light for sure. Skubal is a rental coming off arm problems, but I’m sure the Dodgers will still sign him to a bajillion dollars in the offseason anyway, but what I have a problem with is the Tigers. They’re closer to a playoff spot than the Pirates are (2.5 games compared to 3.5), they’re closer to first place in their division (5.5 games compared to 14). And their run differential of +63 is the best in their division! Two teams ahead of them, the Twins and Guardians, both have negative run differentials. And they’re healthier than the Pirates. What in the hell are the Tigers doing selling? They should be looking to add relief arms as well and go for it. Sure, they could still make the playoffs as they called up Max Clark and he’s off to a great start, Kevin McGonigle is up and hitting well, they could still do it but they don’t think Skubal in their playoff rotation would be an asset? Absurd. Baseball is so broke that even with trades, the Dodgers still end up with the best players and at bargain trade prices. Folks are sick of it and it’s 100% justified. The trade set off a frenzy all over the Internet:
I’m 100% with Adam here. It is absolutely shameful by the Tigers to sell in that position. And hey if you want to trade your players go for it, but don’t trade Skubal unless you were blown away by a trade. And there’s no one I’ve seen that was blown away by that offer the Dodgers gave up. I’d be furious if I were a Tigers fan.
Innings Mark
Now that we are into August, I wanted to talk about the innings that our three young arms are at. That’s Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler and Jared Jones.
Ashcraft
Career max: 118.0 innings (2025 between Triple-A Indy and Pittsburgh)
This season: 127.1 innings
Chandler
Career max: 131.1 innings (2025 between Triple-A Indy and Pittsburgh)
This season: 104.2 innings
Jones
Career max: 132.2 innings (2024 between Triple-A Indy and Pittsburgh)
This season: 70.2 innings (between Pittsburgh and rehab starts)
We have two months left in the season and 49 games left. I figured they wanted Jones around 100-120 innings this season coming off UCL surgery. They’ve kept him on a strict 75-pitch count that limited him to 5 or 6 innings each start. I think they’ll be fine with him staying below 120 innings this season. Chandler I think it’s reasonable to think they would increase his total to 150-160 and he should get somewhere around there in the regular season. But Ashcraft has already blown past his career max. I’m interesting to see if they limit him or skip starts and how exactly they would even do it. The problem with these three and the innings limits is Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller, who were supposed to be your two horses you could rely on, are struggling right now. Skenes hasn’t been efficient for most of the season and labors around 100 pitches in five innings most outings recently. And Keller is getting knocked around the park and probably shouldn’t start again for this team if they’re trying for the postseason. So that’s problem number one, how do you even limit these guys’ innings? Who’s starting for this team? You could go back to start Carmen Mlodzinski to help give these guys a break, but then you weaken the bullpen.
And here’s the second problem, let’s say you’re able to manage the innings and get these guys right where you wanted their inning totals to be and you make the playoffs. Who the hell is pitching in the playoffs? The dirty little secret has been out for quite some time with this team, it’s not just the bullpen that’s a mess but it’s the rotation too. The only SP you can rely on currently—Ashcraft—is already past his career high in innings and probably will skip some starts over the next two months. It’s just another problem this team has as they spin their tires toward the finish.
THE UPCOMING WEEK
The Brewers and the House of Horrors
Now the Pirates continue right on from Cincinnati and head north to Milwaukee to face the Brewers for four games with no off day in this stretch of 17 consecutive games. The last time we saw the Brewers, the Pirates swept them in PNC Park to close out the first half. Since then the Brewers just went back to smoking teams again and are 69-42 and 6.5 games up on the Cubs. The only positive I see is we’ll miss Jacob Misiorowski as he just pitched Sunday. Every time the Pirates have dropped below .500 in the past three months, they’ve responded right back so we’ll see if that’s the case and if any other reinforcements will be coming with the trade deadline.
The Pirates will also return home this weekend to face the Mets for a three-game series. It’ll be the first time we’ve seen the Mets since opening the season there back in March. Hopefully a Mets reliever or two will be pitching for the Pirates against them this weekend.
Trade Deadline
Obviously this week’s talking points will be the trade deadline, the moves Cherington makes, if it was enough, if he should buy or sell at the deadline. As for me, I think you still have to buy and Cherington has said that. You don’t get many chances to be this close to a postseason berth come August so go ahead and make something happen. This team is clearly talented, all season their floor has basically been .500 or one game below it and then they always bounce back. They’re about to get healthier too. Horwitz just returned, Evan Sisk is on rehab and should be back any day, Oneil Cruz is eligible to come off the IL on August 8 and that’s a big one you need. And Konnor Griffin could be sometime in September. Go get another reliever and maybe a starter, welcome Sisk back and this bullpen will be much improved. Alex Stumpf talked about this on this morning’s episode of OffBeat which you can watch here:
I agree with Stumpf here that they can’t afford to punt at the deadline. With that said, I think Cherington has to make moves with obviously this year in mind, but for next year as well. Similar to the Doval deal, I think you get players that have an extra year or two of control. You need to improve this bullpen now, but this is a great time to improve the bullpen down the road as well. A lot of fans on social media are so worried that Cherington is going to panic buy and mortgage the future on some foolish acquisition. I’m not worried about that at all. If you can trust Cherington for one thing, it’s that he will never overpay for anything. He would drive 20 minutes down the road to save three cents per gallon on gas. It’s not in him to overpay for anything. He’ll go conservative, acquire a couple intriguing players that could be good or was good at one point and keep the farm mostly intact. And that’s part of the problem, I’m more worried about him doing too little than too much. But we will see, the deadline is in just a handful of hours.
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That’s all I have for this week. Hopefully they improve the active roster today and put together a better week than that awful, awful week we just experienced. And Jim Rosati, please never go to another series in Cincinnati again, okay?
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