Pittsburgh Pirates Week in Review 6/15 – 6/21

The Pittsburgh Pirates rebounded slightly this week going 3-3. The team won their first series since May 16th against the White Sox. With the All-Star break quickly approaching, the Pirates will need to continue to win if they want to avoid a trade deadline fire sale.

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 Good

The Pirates bounced back this week, beating the Cincinnati Reds in a three-game series and went 3-3 overall. Most of this success was driven by the starting rotation. Three of the six games saw the Pirates’ starter going at least six innings. Ivan Nova, Chad Kuhl, and Trevor Williams, each had a game where they went six innings and gave up zero or one earned runs.

Out of all of the games, I was most encouraged by Williams start on Tuesday where he went 7 innings with 7 strikeouts and zero earned runs.

During Tuesday’s start, Williams had complete control over his pitches, matching his strikeout and innings pitched records for the season. Over the past month and a half, Williams has been struggling to make it deep into games. His previous eight starts only saw two outings that made it through six innings. Hopefully, this start is a sign of Williams getting back on track.

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Another sign of encouragement is Tyler Glasnow’s strong pitching out of the bullpen. Glasnow threw five scoreless innings this past week.

Over his last 11 relief appearances, Glasnow has only allowed the opposing team to score on two separate occasions. Glasnow’s 4.28 ERA is inflated by two bad performances towards the beginning of the season. Right now, Glasnow is pitching with a high level of control and confidence, and Clint Hurdle is rewarding him with higher leverage pitching situations.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Gregory Polanco did have a better week, going 5 for 15 at the plate. In addition, he did drive in two important runs, and is starting to hit the ball harder. Recently, Polanco has adjusted where he stands in the batter box. Instead of crowding the plate, he has moved back – allowing his longer swing to make solid contact over the inside/middle of the plate, while still being able to reach the outside edge.

Source: http://www.espn.com/mlb/player/hotzones/_/id/32950/gregory-polanco

The above image shows Gregory Polanco’s batting average in each zone over the past two seasons. It is easy to see that Polanco’s weakness is the inside pitch. Moving off of the plate could help solve this problem – so it will be interesting to see if Polanco’s new adjustment will help in the long run.

The Bad

Even though I commented last week that I love Corey Dickerson’s approach at the plate, I do have to bring up that he has only one RBI since the start of June. Dickerson’s batting average for June still looks decent at .276, but the RBI hunting has fallen off. This combined with Josh Bell’s well documented struggles has weakened the middle of the Pirates’ lineup.

A solution to the lineup problem is moving Colin Moran up in the order. In fact, Clint Hurdle has done just that recently. Moran has been the epitome of consistency. He hit .303 in April, .268 in May, and .265 so far in June. His .250 average with runners in scoring position is not eye-popping, but I love the consistent approach that he brings to the plate every single at-bat.

Staying on Dickerson related topics, he is taking a few days off for a family issue and the Pirates are recalling Adam Frazier from Triple-A. Frazier has still not found his touch this season and is hitting .200/.273/.300/.573 in at Triple-A – numbers way below those of an average Big League player that is called up. I understand that Frazier has Big League experience, but the move shows the lack of quality depth the Pirates currently have in the infield.

Sean Rodriguez played in his first game on Thursday since June 12th, and only because Jordy Mercer left with a possible injury. It is pretty clear Hurdle has lost confidence in him. I doubt that Hurdle has any more confidence in Frazier. This will leave the Pirates with two bench players that really don’t add any offensive statistics to the club and will barely be used by the manager. Hopefully, the Pirates will look to other options in the near future.

In a recent MLB.com interview with Neal Huntington, the Pirates’ GM stated:

“We’ve had more conversations about adding players at this point in time than we’ve had about subtracting players.” He also made multiple other statements during the interview about how the Pirates will be looking to make a playoff push this year.

Why is this comment in the bad section? Because I believe it is a lie.

One, the Pirates have not shown a willingness to add in past seasons when they have been in a similar situation. Two, the Pirates just had an opportunity to add relief pitcher Kelvin Herrara from the Kansas City Royals for a very small prospect cost, but chose not to. If the Pirates were truly looking to compete through adding players, they would have at least tried to add Herrara to sure up the team’s biggest area of need, the bullpen.

Actions speak louder than words. Huntington and Nutting talk a lot about adding players and competing, but until they actually act on those promises, this fan base will continue to not show up to PNC Park. Huntington’s quote has already been well circulated in the Pittsburgh sports media and will continue to haunt the Pirates’ management. Actions may speak louder than words, but words can still do damage.

The Ugly

Steven Brault is a really cool dude. Before Tuesday’s game, Brault sang the national anthem and absolutely killed it. Check out the tweet below for yourself if you don’t believe me.

To be fair, Brault was a vocal performance major at Regis University in Denver before he was drafted. But, this is still one of the coolest stories of the season so far. On top of pitching and singing the National Anthem before games, Brault is in a band called the Street Gypsies (Soundcloud link here) and produces the IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) podcast with Trevor Williams (Podcast link here). I highly suggest listening to an IHMO podcast or two – they are super relatable and always give my wife and I a good laugh.

Intentional Talk from the MLB Network interviewed Brault during Wednesday’s rain delay for almost 14 minutes. Check out the interview video below if you are interested in learning some more about Brault!

One thing that the Pirates have improved this year are the in-game interviews with fans during the TV broadcasts. Rob Incmikoski does a great job at interviewing the parents of many of the players and often interacts with random fans as well. Tuesday’s game was no exception. During the sixth inning a pop-up foul ball exploded a beer can and Incmikoski was there to interview the fans afterward.

Also during Tuesday’s game, I spied another hilarious fan interaction. In the 5th inning, Gregory Polanco successfully stole 2nd base, but then was called out after an umpire review. As the umpires were on their headsets talking to the play reviewers in New York, two fans right behind the umpires put on their own fake headsets and started mocking the review process. They did a fabulous job – looking perplexed and confused, flipping a coin to decide the outcome, and ultimately portraying annoyance at how long the process was taking.

I bring this up because the MLB has a problem this year. Game attendance is dropping for almost every team. One factor that many believe contribute to the attendance drop is the length of MLB games. Games are getting longer, and the MLB has failed to shorten the average game time over the past few years (even though shortening game time has been a focus for the league). The average game time for 2018 is 3 hours and 4 minutes – up 10 minutes since 2010. I wonder if waiting 4-5 minutes per replay is really worth it for the MLB in the long run. Just an interesting thought.

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 22nd – Diamondbacks @ the Pirates 7:05

June 23rd – Diamondbacks @ the Pirates 4:05

June 24th – Diamondbacks @ the Pirates 1:35

June 25th – Pirates @ the Mets 7:10

June 26th – Pirates @ the Mets 7:10

June 27th – Pirates @ the Mets 7:10