The Pirates Told Us to Hold Them Accountable. So Here We Are.

Yo. Welcome to the North Shore Nine podcast presented by FanDuel. This is the NS9. I'm sorry. This is Bucco Brew powered by Defer Coffee and Tea. I'm your host, Anthony DiNardo. With me, we have Jim Rosati. And Jim?

Happy Monday.

I was wondering if you were going to say happy Monday or a different line today. But yes, happy Monday to you, DiNardo.

You don't deserve to lose your happiness on this Monday. So happy Monday.

I don't know. I feel like we all do. It was our decision to follow this team. So we deserve whatever unhappiness or happiness comes along with it. And you know what? We were happy not that long ago, DiNardo.

Yeah.

And now we are unhappy. Yes.

This is a rough show. This is a rough show because I'm not here to tell you, and I don't want to hear, like this team can still, they still have a chance. They still have a shot to make the playoffs.

They do. mathematically, this team is not out of it by any means, but this winter, we heard from Travis Williams. We heard from everyone.

All the accountability. again, period, full stop. Playoffs is what matters. We are going to be helping. We want you guys to hold us accountable, right?

Playoffs is the goal, period, full stop. That's where we are going this year. We have all the resources to ensure that we're there.

I'll try to swing his mouth. The money's supposedly there. Bob nutting. We have the people, the general manager we want ahead of this. That's Ben Cherington, right?

We have all the resources to get to the playoffs. That's the goal. They're currently what? Five and a half games out of the wild card.

Five and a half out of a wild card spot. Yep.

Four games under 500. There's more teams. They got to fight to get to the wild card than there are to get the last place at this point in time.

In the national league. Yeah. In the national league. My bad. But yeah, right.

That's where they're at right now. So yes, they still mathematically can't make the playoffs and this team still has a chance, but they're like on their very last chance right now.

This is where we're at today.

Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind too, when you see five and a half back, it's really more than that because if you tie Arizona, if you tie Philadelphia, if you tie these teams that you're chasing, you don't have the tiebreaker.

They lost that two weeks ago. Right. Right.

So you almost have, you have to add a game to all of these numbers. Like you can't just catch these teams.

You've got to beat these teams that you're chasing, which makes it again with how little of the season is left.

And there's still, there's still enough time to make it happen. But like you said, it's becoming the math is getting harder and harder and harder and harder.

And you're now getting to the point where you have to, you have to turn on the switch right now.

You can't lose a seventh straight series.

And then if you do, if you do again, I get the math is still technically there.

the eliminated graphic that gets put up by, talking baseball or whatever.

It doesn't officially get put up until the math says that you're out of it.

They aren't quite there yet, but you can pretty much stick a fork in them.

If they go to Miami this week and drop two or three, it's what little hope you may even have right now.

It's got to be gone.

Right.

that's why this Mets series was quite important because that it's not as important as it's August.

And this is a do or die series.

If you win this series in the playoffs, if you lose, you're out of the playoffs.

It's a big series in the sense of this team course at the time was like five games out of it, but they need to start making up ground.

And again, that's, that's the conversation that needs to be had.

They have to start making up ground, just breaking even right now.

Doesn't help.

And losing series certainly isn't helping.

And you have a team like the Mets who are the third worst.

they were, with the run out 52, they're 50 and 66 at the time heading into the series.

They just sold off.

Like you got Weaver from them, like whatever weapons they had to even be as terrible as they are.

They lost one Soto's out injured.

This is a beaten up bad team at your house, at your house.

And you dropped two out of three in a very crucial moment.

You lost ground when it's already nearing the, you can't, you can't lose ground moment.

So at this point in time, three games later, when the holes dug even deeper and there's less games to come out of, right?

It's again, five and a half out.

You're only better than the Reds by a half a game right now.

The Reds, the Mets, the Giants, and the Rockies in the NL.

That's it.

You got to beat the Nationals, the Cardinals, the Marlins, the Padres.

And currently at this point in time, the Phillies and Diamondbacks are tied.

Those are the teams that you have to beat and be better than.

Three of those teams improved at the deadline.

Two of them didn't.

And you've got to, you go to Miami, you face one of those teams this week.

Yeah, it's.

That Mets series was critical because that was, that was like the one team left on this schedule for a while, at least to the rest of the month where they just have zero aspirations whatsoever.

Because after this, you got Miami, then you got Boston.

Boston hasn't lost a game since, 2018, something like that.

You've got Detroit, who's fighting for a playoff spot despite trading Skubal.

Then you head to the West Coast, where the Pirates have always had issues.

Three games against the Dodgers, three games against the Padres.

Then you've got St. Louis for three games.

Why are those all so important?

Their place.

Yeah.

So it's like, it doesn't really get easy for this team again until like now.

The September schedule for this team is a little bit, it's a little bit better.

Like September, you get the Angels at home, you get the Giants at home, you get the Royals at home.

You've got some teams that you basically have to go eight and one in those nine games.

Right.

And I think the hesitation right now is like, we just, despite that, what has this team shown us that shows that they're capable of even doing something like that right now?

Well, they show us at times, each part during a certain time shows that they're capable, but they're not, they've never just show, they've never been able to show us that they're capable to do all that together at the same time.

like, at least for a stretch, like multiple, like this team, they've won.

I don't think they've won five games in a row or if they did, it was early, but like, that's the problem.

Yeah.

Again, recently, I can't speak to this, but their MO has been, they won't lose a bunch of games in a row.

They're better than that.

They're resilient, but they haven't been able to win a bunch of games in a row.

They've just been that team that hovers right around the 500 mark, give or take a few games.

they can, they can string off two or three wins, but that's it, but they'll never allow to, more than two or three losses.

And that's because they can't ever do everything together at the same time to be successful.

Yeah.

The offense is great, but then the bullpen falls apart or the starting pitching falls apart or they face a left-hander.

And that's when the loss, the losses start creeping up.

They can't, sustain the win streak.

So they literally just have to face a lefty and it ends at whatever streak they're on.

Right.

So like, that's part of the problem.

this team has the tools to go off on a, on a streak, but they seem to not be able to do it consistently together in that way.

And a big part now is the bullpen does look good.

The starting pitching looks terrible.

Bubba Chandler is looking strong.

Skenes isn't.

Jared Jones now is back to looking bad past two starts.

When he was the dude, Braxton Ashcraft is a coin flip.

Carmen Wojcicki is now in the starting rotation.

And that didn't go well his first time back.

You just don't know what you're getting in the starting rotation.

And then, and then, like you mentioned, you face a lefty.

Well, it's lights out.

Sean Minaya, as assumed, looked like a Cy Young candidate last night.

So did Zach Thornton two days before.

Yeah.

Yeah.

they had the righty and they just pounded them with nine runs.

Yeah.

It sucks because like two weeks ago today, they were in a great spot.

They had just beat Arizona.

They needed one more win that series to clinch the season series against them.

We talked about how important that diamond back series was because of the tiebreaker implications, right?

So they win that first game of that series, their playoff odds jumped to, 47%.

They're the third, they're the sixth most likely team in the national league to make the playoffs with six spots at that point.

Arizona's playoff hopes plummeted according to post-season odds after that day.

Since then though, it's just been, it's been a disaster.

It's been an absolute disaster since that day.

They win that game on that Monday.

Then they lock, they drop the next four games, four games to drop below 500.

Then they go on another four game losing streak after alternating wins and losses.

And now, you end this series with a loss.

So yeah, you go from, you were, you were three games over 500 at that point.

You were 55 and 52 that was not necessarily the high water mark of the year.

The high water mark was a little bit earlier at the end of that Cleveland series when you were four games over, but now you're, you go from four games over 500 to four games under 500 in a three week span.

And it's, yeah, it's dire.

It's just, it's, I don't know whether any other way to put it.

it's dire right now.

The diamondbacks have been playing well.

The Padres are playing well right now.

The Padres are a game out and they're five games over 500, a spot.

The pirates haven't been in at all this year.

So you got to think, Hey, if there were five games over 500, be a lot better.

No, there's still not even in the playoffs at that point.

They gotta do even better.

Like this team that you're probably looking at 87 wins is what you need, which means you gotta go 29 and rough math here, 29 and 13, the rest of the way.

That's winning two thirds of your games.

More than that.

It's winning more than two thirds of your games.

Yeah.

I guess there's 42 games left.

Yeah.

right, man.

Like that's, I said, it's technically possible, but that's hard math to climb based off.

How do you do that?

Yeah.

Based off what we've seen out of these guys.

Yeah.

how Paul Skenes is going to have to start eight.

Those games.

There's what one in seven, two and six.

Cause the pirates can't win with Paul Skenes on the mound.

Right.

We'll be pitching this series against the Marlins.

We'll see what happens there.

But that's just the reality of it.

Again, like mathematically, are they in it?

Absolutely.

Is there still technically a lot of baseball left?

Absolutely.

if they run off a string of games here that they're playing well.

And again, like they got to face the Marlins.

That's a team ahead of them.

Again, that's why this upcoming stretch is so important.

The teams at the face, they're starting to play some of them.

They're going to be playing the Marlins.

Like you said, next, well, that can tighten up that gap.

That can start making the Marlins crawl down as you creep up.

They have to play the Dodgers.

Well, they're not catching the Dodgers.

That's nothing, but that's important.

Because again, you can't, you can't lose that series.

If the Padres are winning or, whoever, because you still have, you still have to gain ground.

You have to be grading, gaining some ground here.

Unless you're going to decide to sweep the Marlins and then later sweep the Padres or something.

But that's probably likely not going to happen.

So again, because it is baseball, but then, right.

Like you're going to be facing the pot.

Like this month, you're facing the Marlins, the Padres and the Cardinals.

Three teams that are ahead of you.

You have to take care of business there.

You have to start climbing ahead of them.

So yeah, like you must take two out of three on those ones.

Cause those are like division games.

This point in time, those almost double now.

Cause every game you lose, that's you're down and they're up.

You win it, you drop them, you gain.

Yeah.

It's just, it's a shame.

Cause I feel like we've had, we've had the same message now for a few weeks and the team just hasn't responded.

Hasn't responded at all.

Three of their last 13.

That's what they've won.

Three of the last 13.

Oh boy.

For the podcast listeners.

Yeah.

it's a cool.

I put up the playoff odds there, but yeah, that yellow line that represents the pirates.

It's just straight down and to the right.

7.9% playoff odds right now.

According to fan graphs, lowest it's been all year.

And you can see, you can see where they were, right?

That was that Monday win against the diamondbacks.

Since then their playoff odds have dropped 40%.

It was 47.6% on that day, two weeks ago.

It's dropped 40% since then.

Meanwhile, the Padres are way up.

Diamondbacks are way up.

Phillies are holding steady where they're at.

But yeah, it's.

And I guess go back to that.

If you don't mind.

Yeah.

Just like, just like maybe some added perspective, just visually looking at this chart.

And again, for the podcast, this is, I apologize.

But yeah, this is the, this is a graph chart showing the playoff odds and, over the, over the course of the season.

And that drop there is immensely steep.

And like, I guess when I compare it to any other team, it's probably closest to the Phillies.

It wasn't that large of a drop off, but it was very steep early on the season.

And I guess the diamondbacks also had a pretty big drop off that took much more time to get there.

Anyways, the point I'm making is also look how long it took for them to get to where they are today.

Like to climb back up.

But it wasn't, it wasn't like they got right back up there.

That's again, like what the pirates have to do that drop.

Did you see right there?

Like that quickly almost has to be a complete reverse.

It almost has to climb at the same pace back up to where it is.

Like, that's what they have to do.

They don't have the luxury of saying, Hey, we have a hundred games left.

We need to make up five and a half games here.

They have 42.

That's why it's basically swapped spots with the Padres, right?

Like the Padres three weeks ago were at 7%.

And the pirates and Padres have just completely swapped where they're at.

So, but the Padres also are on the outside looking in like they're still not quite there.

So that's the thing you got to look at with that.

it's, they had an opportunity.

If they would have just won that Arizona series, I don't know what would have happened afterwards, but it would have gone a long way.

That's for sure.

Cause like you say, which is a very good point.

They are five and a half games out, but they can't just be five and a half out because those teams are the tiebreaker.

So they have to be at least six.

They got to be better than the Diamondbacks and the Phillies.

There are two teams that are in the wildcard at this point in time.

Also Padres to their debt.

They're the Padres on the season series there too.

There you go.

The only teams you can't tie are the teams that sold that are ahead of you, which is the Marlins, the nationals and the Cardinals.

Yeah.

It's a very tough hill.

Do we want to tell everyone about the sponsor of the show?

Sure.

Let's do it.

Cause I need some coffee.

Defer is a family and employee owned and operated business.

They believe that coffee and tea are one of life's simplest and most accessible pleasures.

And when enjoyed thoughtfully, can open your eyes to the here and now they have five locations across the city of Pittsburgh, including the flagship in the heart of Pittsburgh's historic strip district.

Don't forget to stop by Defer's new location, downtown Penn Avenue, right across from the Benetton, grab a cup and fuel up on your walk.

The PNC park mobile ordering is available.

Check out their Instagram for more details and Jim, as always, let everyone know how they can save themselves 30%.

Yeah.

Go to the defer.coffee, put in promo code NS930, when you check out and you'll save 30% off your entire order.

As long as it's your first order.

but yeah, whatever your first order is 30% off.

So make it count by in bulk.

I know we had one person earlier by like.

16 bags of coffee with that first order.

Yeah.

I reached out there like, Oh, this is working.

Yeah.

Someone bought a lot.

Yeah.

But good stuff.

anyways, man, like what is next?

What is, what is next?

And I say this too, like it's too early to truly be talking about this.

So I don't really want to go in to this too much in this, in this aspect of it's like they're out of it and jobs are gone.

But this again, this is what Travis Williams has said and put out there that they are accountable.

It is playoffs full stop.

This isn't the fan saying whatever they want to say and feel.

And this came from the source's mouth.

This came from the president of the pirate president.

Yep.

He said it.

You need to be, we need to be accountable.

Coming from last year when they fired Shelton, Ben Cherington said, I'm more responsible.

He stayed there.

They're there.

And if this is going the direction that it seems like it's going right now, also, I'm not sure.

we're talking 87 wins.

I'm not sure.

Again, there are four games under 500.

I'm not so sure that like 500's in play this year.

That's just the reality of where we are.

And I'm not like, can they make it?

Absolutely.

They can make that too.

I'm not here to say that they won't, but they're not right now.

A hundred, 20 games into the season.

They're not.

And they haven't since his tenure began in seven years.

And I just feel like these past four years have just been a complete stall.

Like you can debate on the improvements.

We certainly did.

We thought they should have been better earlier on or whatever, but regardless at any point, four years ago, they're essentially the same team as they are today.

Which is, you can look, you can look two years ago that 2024 team and granted that 2024 team was probably overachieving.

We had less aspirations for that 2024 team, but that 2024 team and this 2026 team were in the exact same spot at the deadline, like the exact same spot.

That 2024 team maybe even had a little bit of a leg up at the deadline in terms of, how in it they were on paper.

This team's a lot better, right?

You look at the total war, all that.

It's a lot better.

The problem with this team is war and things like that can be completely undone with a bad bullpen.

we saw those mid 2010s pirates teams, the, like the shark tank years, those teams were able to overperform because they had such a shutdown bullpen.

Yeah.

Right.

You can, you can steal a few, a handful of games, one run games where typically you're going to end up being around 500 just on average on one run games.

But if you have a shutdown bullpen leans, excuse in your favor a little bit, same thing applies.

If you've got a bad bullpen and this team had a bad bullpen for April, May, June, and July four months.

And that bad bullpen costs them at least a handful of games, maybe more, but let's call it, let's be conservative and say it costs them five games.

There's your five games that you're back right now, right now on the flip side, you had, other problems against left-handed.

Starting pitching, the starting pitching itself, isn't really holding up as well as you'd like it to be.

Your ace is pitching nowhere near like an ace and it's resulting in a team that is underperforming this team, the team shouldn't be this bad.

You got a Cy Young award-winning pitcher.

You've got, you added a couple all-stars to your lineup offensively.

Offensively, this team is playing really well still just not against lefties.

And so like on paper, this team shouldn't be this bad, but it is because the bullpen put them in this position early on.

And now when the other things are starting to scuffle a little bit, I talked about it on the show Friday.

Like they didn't win those winnable games early on to give them the luxury to lose games right now.

Like they don't have that luxury.

They lost too many games early on that they should have won.

So now they got to win almost all their games.

That's the position they put themselves in.

And it's a difficult position to be in.

And yeah, going back to whose fault is it?

It's a little bit of everybody's fault, right?

Like if you want to blame the players for playing worse, yeah.

Paul Skenes deserves a lot of blame personally, just for this, right?

Paul Skenes is not the guy that you needed him to be this year.

And he has cost you games.

You want to blame Nick Gonzales's defense by all means, go ahead and do it.

Right.

But also where would this team be without Nick Gonzales's bat?

I don't know.

But if you want to go ahead and blame him for that, go ahead.

If you want to blame, if you want to blame, injuries, you can blame injuries.

Team offensively is lost.

And they went through a pretty big stretch of just losing its studs.

You can, you can blame injuries.

You want to blame Don Kelly, blame Don Kelly.

Like there's plenty of blame to go around for who did this.

Ultimately though, it falls on the blame of Ben Cherington.

He's in charge of this roster.

and as of right now, the team that he put together has not won enough games to be a playoff contender.

You want to go higher than that?

Travis Williams, team president, blame him too.

The team needed to add at the deadline.

They apparently didn't have any money because they didn't do it.

Or you would have thought they would added somebody to help the team offensively against left-handed pitching or to add to the starting rotation, which Ben said a few times earlier on in the year, he would love to add to the rotation.

None of that happened.

I don't know.

Maybe if Travis could have gotten more fans to ballpark or something, I don't know.

But whatever it is, they didn't have money to do it.

Blame Bob Nutting.

Obviously he's the head of the entire operation.

He accepted failure for the last six years.

This is year seven of it.

I have a call longer than that, but yeah.

He's accepted failure for a long time.

there's plenty of blame to go around.

I think if they don't make the playoffs, you're going to see people's jobs be lost.

And that's what it should be because they made it quite clear to us in the offseason.

We need to make the postseason this year.

That's our goal.

Period.

Full stop.

That's our goal.

And now does Bob Nutting have the courage to do something like that?

Because I don't know.

I could see Bob falling into the same trick like, oh, well, it was a good team.

The offense was good.

We got Konnor Griffin locked up for a long time.

If there weren't for the injuries, we would have been better.

Tough shit.

Like, that stuff happens.

You don't go through a season where everything happens the way it's supposed to.

That's the thing about baseball.

It's 162 games.

Shit happens.

You got to be prepared for it.

And this team wasn't prepared for the shit that could happen over the course of 162-game season.

Those are the facts.

everyone's involved.

Everyone is involved.

And that's why, like, what Travis William said is true.

you have to hold all of us accountable.

And that's all of them.

Everybody.

It's not one person that has more blame than the other.

They are all involved in this.

They all have to see this through.

Again, we gave plenty of credit to Ben Cherington this offseason.

He did what we didn't think he could do.

Was it enough?

We weren't sure.

We weren't sure.

But, like, kudos.

this is what you needed to be doing.

And you did it.

And this team has a chance.

Let's go play it out.

And ironically enough, the stuff that he added was brilliant.

It's the stuff that was already here that fell apart.

And was that because of the pitching coach, the new hiring?

I don't know.

You can put part of that on that, I'm sure, too.

again, the blame gets spread far and not thin.

It's far and thick to everybody.

All parties involved.

And that's why the thumbnail has the pitcher here.

Travis Williams, Ben Cherington, and Don Kelly.

How much blame does Don Kelly have?

this all goes around.

This needed to be, especially the way this offense did perform.

Right now, third.

I'm sorry.

The third or fourth most in runs.

But they're one of the two.

They are currently third in runs in all of baseball.

The fourth best OPS in all of baseball.

Like, that's what Ben did to this offense.

Could you imagine a year ago being told that Ben will have the fourth best OPS next year for this team?

Oh.

Well, playoffs aren't the floor.

We're talking World Series now with this pitching staff.

Right?

Especially what's coming up here.

It's everybody.

It is everyone involved.

And, I want to give credit here to Matt Geica.

I saw this on Twitter the other day.

And, I didn't really interact with it.

But I think this sums up.

This is well put.

And, of course, Matt, great writer.

No surprise.

But he says, Cherington is better than his predecessor at building a productive and cohesive development system.

And that's something we talked about.

Early on, we weren't sure about the development.

But, honestly, at this point in time, when he was dubbed the pitching factory for how long, now we're seeing the hitting come along.

Like, development actually is something you could probably hang your hat on.

They've done a, we haven't seen it all through yet.

But currently, at this point in time, it seems like the development has gone pretty well.

It's taken them a while to get to the point that they're at.

But it does seem to be trending in the right direction, at least.

I'm not here to say, like, put a stamp on it.

This team can develop talent.

But it seems to be trending in the right direction.

Yeah.

But also, to his point, he says that he's better than his predecessor.

And that's something that Neil, they didn't do well on.

We talked about that quite a bit.

The drafts never produced much.

Right.

He didn't do a good job developing.

He is worse than his predecessor at filling in the gaps on a major league roster.

And that's basically where we're at.

Because, like, you're talking about, like, you have Paul Skenes.

you've got Konnor Griffin.

You've done well on developing a lot of these guys, this talent that's here and such.

How is this team this bad?

Neil did a fantastic job putting parts together.

That's why the teams were good.

Because it wasn't, like, developing.

he had the stars that they're pretty much already in place, like, with Cutch and such.

Like, it wasn't a whole lot of development.

It was a lot of slew.

Like, the moves that the trades for the bullpen.

It was a lot of, like.

That's like the David Freezes of the world.

like.

Who can I add to bring in to make this team better?

Yeah.

That's where Ben seems to be lacking.

Because it's almost like every time he brings in someone, they turn out to be the worst they've ever been.

Yeah.

I think he did a good job of addressing this bullpen at the deadline.

But.

Yes.

Again, it was.

At that point, it was too late.

Like, it was just.

The deadline was.

Was too late this year.

They pushed that deadline back to August 3rd.

You wonder if that deadline had just been, like, four days earlier.

Because by the time the deadline rolled around, there were three or four games out of the playoffs.

I don't know if that would have made much of a difference at all.

Probably not.

But.

Like.

Not adding to the bullpen until the end.

And you go back to that draft pick that they traded in early July.

Yes.

They decided to use that pick to trade for a more plug-and-play option at shortstop with Griffin out.

And in a potential long-term acquisition in Jacob Gonzalez, they decided to go that route as opposed to, let's fix this bullpen right now.

Like, Brooks Raley was on the table for that pick, apparently, right?

Like, Brooks Raley wouldn't have fixed the bullpen, but he would have made it a lot better.

Like, he would have added someone to that back end of the bullpen that you could trust.

So, they made that decision to wait for the bullpen.

And, how many games did they blow in July?

Because of the bullpen.

we saw at least two or three.

And who knows if it would have still been two or three or if it would have been one or two instead.

But it would have put them in probably a little bit better position.

But then also, like, Jacob Gonzalez came out and hit a couple bombs.

I don't.

It's one thing or the other.

The fact that this bullpen just completely collapsed off the bat, though, that was the main problem of this team.

And Ben Cherington didn't do enough this offseason to address that.

He didn't do enough this offseason to shore that part of the team up.

He relied on a bunch of guys who were waiver claims, who had shown promise a little bit here and there.

But, they weren't consistent performers.

Right.

He relied on a group of guys like that, and they failed miserably.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

It's like, it's just, it's unfortunate because when the trade happened, and I got a lot of flack for this.

people did not like what I was saying on that trade show.

But it was, it was exactly for this reason.

Like, do I believe in Jacob Gonzalez?

Maybe.

Maybe.

But he's a rookie.

He's going to have his rookie struggles.

Like, you needed some certainty here.

Like, this season matters.

And this bullpen is the biggest problem there is.

This team can, it can sustain what it's doing without Connor.

Like, and again, like I said then, like, no shade of Connor.

Also, this team needs Connor back.

I'm not saying Connor is expendable.

But this team's offense is, they've been one of the best without Connor.

They've been one of the best without O'Neal.

Like, this has the next man up type of mentality.

Like, they've been doing so well offensively.

The bullpen's the biggest struggle.

And they decided to go that route.

And again, I'm sorry, I get what you're saying.

But Jacob Gonzalez, since coming over, has a 658 OPS.

Like, he's batting .222, getting off base .232, solely because they hit by pitch, not because he actually took a walk.

He's yet to walk in a Pirates uniform.

He was hit by a pitch.

So he's batting .222, .232, slugging .426.

Yes, the power has definitely showed up.

But a 658 OPS.

okay.

He's played good defense.

He has.

But is that what was really needed for this year right now?

Was that, was that the best?

Again, that's what it came down to.

Like, the trade was fair.

Again, I said then, I say now, like, the trade was fair.

I'm not saying Ben got fleeced by any means, right?

Like, that's not where I'm going with it.

The trade was an absolutely fair trade.

But the means of what you acquired just didn't make a lot of sense at this point in time.

Like, you need, especially then, you absolutely needed bullpen help.

And you decided to go this route.

That didn't help.

Here we are.

No, it didn't help at all.

When it came to that particular issue, like, we went through what you could trade that pick for.

And we were all under the agreement that you trade that pick for a reliever.

And they just, they didn't do it.

They brought Eisert back, but he has not been effective.

He's in the minors right now.

Earth the team more than helped.

Yeah.

he's in Indianapolis.

I do like Jake.

Again, I don't think we need to spend a lot of time talking about that trade.

But it was, like, that was an opportunity to address the bullpen earlier.

And they didn't take it.

That's what that was.

And you look at, like, how much of an upgrade was, is Gonzalez over Triolo at short?

Slight upgrade, probably.

I like Jacob Gonzalez.

But I also would have liked the bullpen arm probably for a month longer.

Like I said, Ben, like, I, again, like, I don't.

I hate Jacob Gonzalez.

And for that trade, like, that, I, it seems like a good trade.

Like, the Pirates have an absolute chance of being the team that says, oh, we fleeced you.

But you have to be, it's, like, to be fair to Jacob Gonzalez, like I am to every rookie.

I do like to push guys.

But also be fair to them.

Like, rookies do struggle.

That's part of the development.

You have to afford Jacob Gonzalez the opportunity to have his struggles this year and to develop still.

Like, every rookie.

That's part of the process.

This team couldn't really afford to trade and use that draft capital to get a guy who's going to struggle this year, as he should.

They needed to get some certainty.

They needed to get a guy that's going to say, hey, I'm here to help.

Let's go get some dubs.

Anyways.

To not spend a lot of money.

No, to go back to the original premise here.

If this team doesn't make the postseason, Travis Williams got to go.

Ben Cherington's got to go.

And quite frankly, Don Kelly and the entire coaching staff has to go.

I think you clean slate.

Everybody's gone.

And you start a new, and the new guy comes in and he's, he, that's the one thing about this job is I think it is going to be pretty attractive.

Like you can come in with Paul Skenes.

You can come in with Konnor Griffin locked down for a while.

You've got, you've got an okay core that's built, but like you said, you've got to, you've got to put the finishing touches on this thing.

And Ben wasn't able to do it.

Yeah.

And Travis, God, he should have been gone years ago.

Don't even get me started there.

Like Travis should have been gone years ago.

So, yeah.

But a few things with that said, I'm going to start off with this point.

Will they get fired?

I don't know.

there's been enough smoke around how important the season is for jobs.

And Bob's done it before he cleaned house.

Now he, it took him a while.

It was, it was very hesitant.

Hurdle got, removed the last game.

And then it was, what are we going to do with Frank?

What are we going to do with Neil?

We'll find out.

And it wasn't until like the middle of the off season.

He decided, yeah, you know what?

We're going to switch over, which is completely unfair to Ben Cherington at that point in time too.

and everyone, but that's well, but again, like, it seemed like Bob operated because he was embarrassed.

Like, that's what it seems like it takes for Bob to say, all right, I'm going to finally fire you guys.

I'm going to finally not put up with this anymore.

Cause I'm embarrassing.

The thing about this season is it's not an embarrassing season.

Honestly, like, yeah.

Like this is a very unfortunate, this is very disappointing, but it's not embarrassing.

Bob was embarrassed last year.

Not this year.

So you could certainly see everyone keeping their jobs.

But also with that being said too, you're right, man.

Like I agree with everything you said.

If it were me, obviously I'm cleaning house also.

And there's 30 GM jobs in the entire world for MLB.

There's so many people that are like, oh, no, one's going to come here.

Oh, you're not going to get, you're not.

There's only 30 of them.

If you want a GM job, there's only 30 of them.

And it's not like all 30 open up every single year.

And people at that level of any job, they have an ego.

You're not there because you don't think you're the shit.

Ben Cherington has an ego.

I'm not saying that in a bad, in a bad manner.

Of course he has an ego.

I can fix this part.

You're telling me I get Paul Skenes and I get Konnor Griffin and I get Oneil Cruz and I get Bryan Reynolds and I get, I get Ashcraft and Bubba.

Ben sucks.

I'm so much better than him.

I can absolutely do this.

And with me having those tools and those things and me taking the Pirates to the playoffs.

Oh, I'm definitely getting the Mets job.

That's how I'm getting there.

Yes.

Yes.

People.

I don't want to hear.

Oh, I'm not taking the Pirates job, but Bob's.

Yeah.

I'm sure no one wants to work with Bob.

But you know what?

There's been plenty of promotions.

I got that.

I don't really care for who I'm working for, but you know what?

This is going to help out my career.

So I'll put up with it for now to get to where I want to be.

Anyways.

That's what is sad is to like that person is going to win with Ben's people.

But this goes back to Matt's point, which I think is very true.

Ben has done up to this point now, as we see a pretty damn good job on developing and building and putting things in place.

He just, for four years, hasn't been able to do pretty much any better than what he's done.

That, like, that's what's, that's what I think is the most damning thing about this.

Like in 2023, he had a 469 winning percentage.

2024, 469.

Last year took the step back at 438.

And right now he's at a 483.

It's not much whole variance in like this past four years.

You're just stalling right now.

Yeah.

I don't know what to add.

It's not getting better.

It's not getting better.

And this was the year to go.

I don't know how much time you can give a guy.

Like, I get that it looks better on paper.

He did.

He's the developing development side seems to be trending in the right direction.

But at the end of the day, it's about wins and losses and seven years.

Seven years where you couldn't get out of fourth place in the NL Central.

When you saw the Cardinals, the Cardinals have rebuilt their team in.

Eight months.

we've seen all these teams in the Central rebuild this decade.

Every one of them.

Except maybe the Reds.

The Reds just do dumb stuff all the time.

Non-stop.

But everybody else has seemingly done a better job of rebuilding their team in a quicker amount of time than Ben Cherington.

Yeah, if they don't make the postseason this year, and I think the one, like Don Kelly hasn't really had a whole lot of time.

He's the one guy where you could say, okay, maybe you retain him.

But that also, that just doesn't, I, if you're going to bring in a new GM, like you gotta, you gotta just let him get his guy.

And so that means everybody's got to go.

Because I do think Don Kelly, as much as, like, maybe there are some managerial things that he still needs to learn from a, from a feel standpoint.

I think he does do a good job of getting these guys to play hard and not give up and get the best out of them.

Maybe not necessarily in-game managerial decisions, but I do think, I think he does a good job of getting his guys to not give up.

Which is, like, 80% of what a manager does.

A lot of these decisions are made by the front office.

there's game plans put together and things like, of that, of that sort.

But, yeah, if you're going to clean house at the top, you really have no choice but to let those new people come in and get their guys in everywhere else.

And that's where, that's where just everyone loses their job.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Again, Don Kelly is part of this also.

There's certainly some responsibility to be shared to him.

Everyone involved.

Overall, I don't think Don Kelly is as big as a problem.

I know a lot of people like to say that he is because ultimately the players have to perform and they're not.

I do think he does well on those things.

And again, those things are the ones that matter to me the most.

I know a lot of people will go to, in-game stuff.

And I think that's the least of the manager.

They've done a great job being resilient, knowing their identity, knowing what they are, not getting too high, too low, all that stuff, keeping, how do you keep a team together for 162 games?

Like, that's where, like, that's where, that's where Joe Maddon excelled.

That's what got him paid.

It wasn't because he was the greatest in-game manager either, you know?

Yeah.

So at any rate, I think Don Kelly has done a fine job.

But I also said, and to be fair to him, I don't know if he's the guy for this year.

Like, I just felt, I think he will be a great manager one day, is I think what I said, or a good manager, a good manager one day.

I think he'll be a manager and probably a good manager, but they might want to just maybe get someone that's not been here.

It's a complete outsider.

Might be the best decision for this team.

And they didn't.

And it is what it is.

Again, like, I don't, I'm not here saying Don Kelly was the bad choice, but he just might not have been the right choice.

Yeah.

To be fair to him and the, and the org.

I don't know.

I don't, I don't think this team is where they're at because of Don Kelly.

I don't, I don't think that's, that's fair to point them at.

I think the team is where they're at because of a lot of things that have happened over the course of this 162 game season.

And he just happens to be in charge of the guys on the field.

But yeah, I don't think it's fair to the next GM though, to be like, Hey, you've got to have this guy as your manager too.

Like that's not fair to them.

Like that person gets to pick their guy.

There's no one in this organization that has, that should be a calling shots from the new GM.

I'll laugh at you and say, buddy, you don't deserve to tell me who I'm picking.

Yeah.

Right.

I just want to add this here too.

Just something out there.

GMs who have had seven straight losing seasons and have come back for an eighth.

Cam Bonifay for the pirates, Chuck Lamar for the Rays, Rick on for the white socks who did in his eighth season, finally have a winning season, which was the 2020 fake season.

And that's it.

That's it.

That's it.

Other guys came in for partial seasons.

So they finished the year, losing, but that was because of the previous GM, right?

They got fired in season.

That's like Dayton Moore.

He was one of them.

buzzy, the boss, the bossy of the Padres.

There you go.

Like part of this also is like, there's just not much precedence of a GM coming back.

Four and eight season after never had Chuck Lamar.

Obviously that was an expansion team.

Those teams never did well.

We all know about our good buddy, Cam Bonifay.

yeah, that's interesting.

So it's only happened three times before like full.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And one time it led to a season over 500 in the year eight.

Yeah.

Which again, was the white socks for the 60 game season.

Now, like I will say this to keep things fair.

All those, they were terrible the entire time.

Most like they weren't getting, they weren't close.

Like Ben is right now.

I will say that they were just awful.

Like they just, they, the reason they got the seven was just absurd.

They probably shouldn't have made it to four or five, but there you go.

Yeah.

you look at, I guess the white socks in 2016 had a C a similar season to the, they had, they went through like a 73, 76, 78 when span there, but yeah, not, they,

they haven't, they weren't, they weren't very good.

But 2020, yeah, 10 games over 500 in that short season.

And then also 2021, they won the AL central.

Interesting.

Well, they kept Derek Shelton longer than most managers get kept, who lose as much as he did.

I think he was, I think, I don't know if there was anyone who was kept longer than him with a lower winning percentage in major league history, actually.

we'll see.

I just, I feel like the comments made this off season though.

Right.

Like that's.

Like, if you don't make the post season this year and then you just act like everything's okay and we're just going to run it back.

So you were just, you were just lying the whole time.

Like the, does the, do those words just mean absolutely nothing then?

And part of it is the words accountability have meant absolutely nothing.

Like we shouldn't be shocked.

They got to win some games, not something they need to win a lot of games, a lot of games.

And it starts with Miami.

Yeah.

I keep saying it and it's never been more important and well stated until now.

Like you, every series is a playoff series for you at this point in time.

You can't afford to be a good way of looking at it.

Like you have to win every series going forward.

And if you don't, your season's probably over.

So they have the Marlins, the Red Sox, the Tigers, Dodgers, Padres, St. Louis.

San Fran, Angels, White Sox, Cubs, Milwaukee, Royals, St. Louis, Tigers.

So you have 14 series remaining.

You either got to win all of them or sweep a couple and that affords you to lose a couple.

Like that's your choice right now.

You can't, right.

You can't even win 10 out of those 14.

That's not enough.

You got to win them all or you got to sweep a couple and then that affords you to lose a couple.

That's where they're at.

And just like, realistically, this isn't just two guys behind a mic, just blowing smoke.

That's where they're at.

You have to win two thirds of your games.

And a series is three games.

You have to win every series, basically.

And as I am looking.

You basically got to go on the run that the Red Sox are going on right now.

Like, not quite that.

Not quite that.

but you got to, like you said, you got to.

You're in the postseason right now.

Winning you advance.

Losing you're out.

I was just thinking, yeah, there's no four game series remaining.

They're all three game series going forward, too.

Which also is a good thing because that, like this team, it was also unfortunate.

Like, this team was a team that needed a day off like no other.

And they had their bad stretch when they had no days off.

Was it 17 straight games?

So, that sucked.

More than that, yeah.

So, at this point in time, they'll have some days off to, recoup and get back into things and break away from baseball.

So, yeah.

All three game series coming up, 42 games.

And you have to win basically two thirds of your game.

So, you have to win every series unless you sweep.

That can afford to go one and two.

But that's probably the bare minimum.

So, here we are.

So, buckle up.

Playoffs has begun.

All right.

We done?

I think this question, Dippy's saying that as a much younger generation of a fan, I think he's asking about Cam Bonifay's tenure.

I don't want to talk about that.

I'll say this about Cam.

I feel like he tried.

Like, Cam Bonifay tried.

He just, he didn't have the reason.

At that point, those payrolls were like $30 million, too.

He just, yeah, it was bad.

It was bad.

Yeah, that was not good.

That was a much different bad.

That was an aggressive bad.

Aggressive to some degree.

Aggressive for Pirates culture.

Is that fair?

Yeah, he had that freak show team in seven.

That was fun.

It was a fun team.

But they had no business being where they were supposed to be.

We'll never forget.

He also didn't draft very well.

Very poor.

Very poor at drafting.

The Yankees had the 2017.

The Pirates had the freak show.

Yeah, Cam Bonifay drafted the NCAA home run leader and made him a pitcher.

It didn't work out.

No.

And then Dave.

And then Neil.

I'll bet.

Dave Littlefield did a better job than Cam Bonifay.

Mm-hmm.

But, yeah.

Also, interesting.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, yeah.

I think it's time to roll.

Make sure you check out this morning's Offbeat.

Alex did an outstanding job, recapping the series and laying out where things stand right now.

So, I think he did a good job cooking this team.

He didn't hold anything back in his show this morning.

So, make sure you check that out.

And, yeah.

Check out yesterday's post-game show with me and Doug if you haven't yet.

Yeah.

Off date today.

So, no post-game show tonight.

But we'll have another Offbeat tomorrow.

And then we'll be back at it with post-game shows this week.

I'm actually going to Miami tomorrow morning.

Oh, yeah.

That's right.

For work.

And so, lines up with the Pirates series.

So, that worked out okay.

So, I'll be at the games tomorrow and Wednesday.

So, I'll have live post-game shows from there.

But, yeah.

Should be.

We'll see.

We're either going to be celebrating the continuation of the Pirates' chances.

Or, NS9 Live Thursday will be a eulogy, maybe, perhaps.

We'll see.

I can't believe the Rosati curse ended the 2026 Pittsburgh Pirates season.

Yeah.

You know what?

I'm not taking the blame for this one.

You're part of it, too.

The whole house of accountability.

Jim Rosati is inside that house, too.

If the Pirates don't make the playoffs, Jim gets fired.

Fired.

10 and 9.

10 and 9 with me in attendance.

He's like, I'm going to quit.

I don't care.

I'm good with it.

I'm tired of this shit.

All right.

Yeah.

Tune in tomorrow.

Let's start getting some dubs, guys.

Let's try that.

We need them.

Let's go 10 and 13.

The Pirates on FanDuel right now.

Plus 1,800 to be the sixth seed.

Plus 1,800 to be the sixth seed.

Yep.

There you go.

Sixth best.

But that's what they need to be.

That's what they need to be.

That's what we're striving for right now.

But damn.

All right.

Take that for what it is.

We'll be back tomorrow.

Download the app.

Check out the website.

Cool stuff.

And we'll see you guys later.

How's that?

Yeah.

Appreciate you all.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for listening.

Like the video.

Subscribe.

All that good stuff.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Bye-bye.

All right.

That wraps up this episode of North Shore Nine.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

Whether you're listening on the podcast or catching us on YouTube, if you enjoyed the show, please give this video a thumbs up.

And don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already.

It really helps us grow.

And if you're listening on the podcast, a quick review goes a long way in helping others find the show.

Plus, be sure to tell a friend about us.

There's always room for more here in the NS9 community.

And for those looking to support us a little more, consider joining our Patreon, become an MVP member, and get exclusive perks while helping us continue to bring you more of the Pirates content you love.

Thanks again for all your support.

And Let's Go Bucs.

We'll be right back.