Pittsburgh Pirates Week in Review 6/1 – 6/7

The Pittsburgh Pirates struggled once again, going 2-4 this week. The team now sits at .500 after a hot start to the season. The club is 31-31 on the season and with three teams in front of the Pirates in the NL Central, things are not looking good.

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. The good, the bad, and the ugly for the Pittsburgh Pirates. That’s the theme of this series – shout out to the Italian man himself,  Francisco Cervelli, for the inspiration. Let’s jump into the week that was!

The good and the bad sections will be self-explanatory, looking at both the good and the bad of the week. The ugly will simply be a section that covers all of the other random notes of importance from the week.

The Bad

The Pirates are a hot mess right now. Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin. There are so many things going wrong and almost nothing going right for the club. The sad thing is, “going wrong” is quite the understatement. A better phrase may be things are “catastrophically imploding at random”.

Every time Hurdle seems to solve one problem, two more arise.

Tyler Glasnow pitched well last week? Too bad, he is going to give up four runs this week and then two other bullpen pitchers are going to fall apart as well. Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon seem to finally be calming down the starting rotation? Great, but then four straight games follow where the starting pitcher is pulled before the sixth inning. Gregory Polanco has one good game and everyone freaks out. Just kidding, as he follows up the good game going 2 for 15 this week at the plate.

Alright ,I’ll stop ranting and try to make some sense out of this mess. Just know that I will not be able to cover all of “the bad” from this week, but I will try to hit the most dire topics.

The first major problem surfacing for the Pirates is their NL Central opponents.

The Pirates have now lost six series in a row and are sitting at .500. This might not be a problem if the Pirates were in a different division, but the team is in the most competitive division in Major League Baseball. The Brewers, Cubs, and Cardinals will finish this season with playoff-level competitive records, so the Pirates cannot afford to falter for a stretch of series.

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Unless the Pirates turn things around immediately, I could easily see Neal Huntington hedging his bets for future seasons and making this year’s club noncompetitive down the stretch with trades.

A one-sided team cannot be successful in the long run, only a balanced club will be able to weather the bumps and bruises of a full baseball season. Right now the Pirates are a one-sided team. Their offense puts up runs more often than not, but offense alone will not win you enough games (take the Dodgers series as a prime example). Almost every pitcher on the Pirates staff is getting beat up right now. Reversing this trend needs to be Clint Hurdle’s and Ray Searage’s main priority.

In the starting rotation, the coaches need to start by figuring out what is plaguing Trevor Williams. The last six starts for Williams have been in stark contrast to Williams first six starts on the season. The first six starts saw an ERA of 2.29, 9 earned runs, and 5 games where Williams pitched six or more innings.

Since then, Williams has pushed his ERA up to 4.18, given up 24 runs, and has only pitched six innings twice. Recently, Searage has been able to help both Jameson Taillon and Chad Kuhl find consistency, so, hopefully, Williams is next on the list.

In an attempt to find anything positive about the Pirates’ bullpen, I will say that they managed to ruin less games than last week. Nevertheless, the pen was responsible for two of the four losses this past week and was barely able to hold onto the game on Wednesday. The bullpen pitchers that were pitching well, Richard Rodriguez, Tyler Glasnow, Steven Brault, and Kyle Crick, all gave up runs this week in a big way.

Michael Feliz has now given up runs in six straight games, pushing his ERA well over 6.00. He needs to be optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis or placed on the DL with a ghost injury.

Felipe Vasquez does not look healthy either. Even though he picked up a save on Wednesday, he still walked two batters and did not look comfortable on the mound at all – leaving multiple breaking balls right over the heart of the plate. If I was Hurdle, I would be looking for every opportunity to give Vazquez a long stretch of days off until the Pirates figure out what is wrong with him. I honestly believe Vasquez would have been on the DL a week ago if other bullpen pitchers were pitching well.

The Pirates’ offense is not without its woes either. After seemingly heating up, Josh Bell has drastically cooled off. Bell is now only hitting .237 on the season with four home runs – production well below the Pirates’ expectations and Bell’s capabilities. Over the last 14 days, Bell is hitting .214 and has an OPS of .486. The Pirates need consistency in the four-spot of the order, especially if they are going to be relying heavily on their offense.

One has to wonder if the Pirates’ bench needs to be reworked. Elias Diaz, David Freese (at least until Jung Ho Kang returns), and Austin Meadows are keepers, but Adam Frazier and Sean Rodriguez are dead weight at their current production levels.

Rodriguez is hitting .167 on the season with an insanely high strikeout rate, and Frazier is hitting .237 and is having a hard time finding at bats. With the current four outfielder system the Pirates are running, I would look to option Frazier to Triple-A Indianapolis where he can play every day and get hot. Rodriguez is a big part of the locker room chemistry for the team, so Huntington and Hurdle will have to weigh whether that is enough to save Rodriguez from the inevitable DFA that is coming.

Polanco had one good game last Thursday and everyone freaked out. Then he went 2 for 15 this week and continued to strikeout during very important at bats. The strikeout on Tuesday with runners on first and second prevented the pitch-hit single that followed from scoring any runs. Probably changing the course of the game. It’s one example, but the trend of poor performance is there. He needs to be sitting more often. Period.

The Good

Austin Meadows collected the NL rookie of the month award for May. That is awesome, I mean the kid didn’t even play for half of the month. Quoting the above article,

"Meadows hit. 409 in 13 games last month, with four home runs, three doubles, one triple, seven RBI and three stolen bases. His slugging percentage of .795 was the best among National League rookies with at least 25 at-bats."

And we have to ask ourselves why Hurdle is sitting the NL rookie of the month and All-Star performing Corey Dickerson for Gregory Polanco every other day. We may never know. Not only is Meadows performing well on paper, he is also coming through with clutch hits – including this blast from last Saturday against the Cardinals in the ninth inning.

Jameson Taillon and his new-found slider have produced a small string of good outings. Taillon has struck out 19 batters over 19 innings during the three game stretch while only giving up six runs. Even though Taillon himself would not be pleased with these numbers, he has looked much better on the mound and could be starting stretch of quality outings.

The All-Star game ballot is now open and fans have the chance to vote their favorite players into the 2018 All-Star game. The Pirates have at least two players that are well deserving of your votes, Corey Dickerson and Francisco Cervelli. Dickerson is hitting .323 on the year and is towards the top of the list for best batting average, most hits, and best strikeout to at-bat ratio in the NL. Cervelli is arguably the best catcher in the league this season and is hitting .275 with a .930 OPS, 9 home runs, and 35 RBIs. Both of these players deserve to visit D.C. this year for the Midsummer Classic.

The Ugly

The MLB draft was this past week and I actually love some of the players that the Pirates picked up. The draft goes 40 rounds and the complete list of players that the Pirates drafted can be found here. Of note is the Pirates’ first round pick, Travis Swaggerty. MLB.com says this about Swaggerty,

"[Travis] reached double figures in homers and steals as a sophomore in 2016 and continued to impress with Team USA during the summer, with some scouts considering him the best position prospect on the squad. He performed well during the Jaguars’ scout day during the fall, recording a sub-6.5-second 60-yard dash and hitting a 400-plus foot homer. Swaggerty is an on-base machine thanks to his speed (which earns well-above-average grades from some evaluators) and patient approach. A left-handed hitter, he does swing and miss a bit much for a player with a leadoff profile because he can get overly aggressive at times, especially against breaking pitches. Though he didn’t go deep in 64 at-bats with wood bats on Team USA, he packs some sneaky power in his athletic frame and could produce 20 or more homers per season in the big leagues. Swaggerty also uses his quickness well to steal bases and track down balls in center field. He throws better than most players at his position — his fastball reached 92 mph when he was a high school pitcher — and his makeup is another positive in his favor."

Travis joined the broadcast crew during one of the games against the Dodgers and impressed me with how mature he sounded. It should be noted that the two high school pitchers the Pirates took in the 2nd and 3rd rounds were widely considered good finds as well.

Remember this play all the way back in 2011? I do. Jerry Meals made a bad call at home plate and seemingly the next day, the Pirates started their slide out of playoff contention and eventually a below .500 record. The reason I am resurfacing this painful memory is to make the point that morale matters in baseball. A team that is meshing well together, believes they can win every game, and has fun day in and day out will win ball games. A team that losses these key components can end their season in a blink of an eye.

Blown leads by the bullpen during important divisional games can have the same impact as Jerry Meals terrible call. The Pirates need to stop this streak of losing games because of poor bullpen outings and need to win this upcoming series against the Cubs. The team has enough talent to be good this season, but it takes more than talent, it takes heart. And right now these devastating losses are slowing the heartbeat of this Pirates team.

Next: Pirates & Braxton Ashcraft Agree To Terms

That’s all for this week. Feel free to comment below with suggestions or ideas, and like always, let’s go Bucs!

The Pittsburgh Pirates week ahead:

June 8th – Pirates @ the Cubs 2:20

June 9th – Pirates @ the Cubs 2:20

June 10th – Pirates @ the Cubs 2:20

June 11th – Pirates @ the Diamondbacks 9:40

June 12th – Pirates @ the Diamondbacks 9:40

June 13th – Pirates @ the Diamondbacks 3:40