Man, I’m just glad they won a game. That it was a blowout and Charlie Morton pitched a gem is just icing on the cake.
I’m not even sure what to say at this point. The Pirates are playing terrible baseball against terrible teams and losing in embarrassing fashion. It’s just sad to watch.
There’s no nice way to say this: Pedro Alvarez has been terrible this year. He’s been a bad hitter, he’s been a bad fielder (which was expected, but still), and he’s missed a lot of time with a quad injury. It has, overall, not been a pleasant experience.
But the people labeling him a bust are being way over the top.
Alvarez has had only 579 plate appearances in his career. That’s not even a full season yet. I know that this is an era where fans are told that every prospect is the next Babe Ruth and that they’re going to be the best ever, but the reality is that most prospects don’t start their time in the Majors out hot.
It’s particularly hard, I think, for Pittsburgh sports fans to grasp this. Pittsburgh is a city where Ben Roethlisberger comes in the year he’s drafted and turns a 6-10 team into a 15-1 team that makes it to the AFC Championship. It’s a city where Sidney Crosby comes in and immediately lives up to his “the next Gretzky” hype. It’s a city where Mike Wallace and Emmanuel Sanders have back to back great rookie seasons. And even in the case of a Pirates fan that’s not also a Steelers and Penguins fan, Andrew McCutchen came up and immediately performed well, as did Neil Walker last year.
Pittsburghers aren’t used to waiting for young players to develop. But the reality is that most baseball players don’t start out like Pujols or McCutchen. Most players have a pretty lengthy adjustment period when it comes to Major League pitching. In fact, even some of the greatest of all time have some pretty ugly starts to their career.
In an effort to prove a point, I started the hashtag on Twitter last night #PedroAlvarezBust. Basically all I did was look at players who have had good, great, or even legendary careers and pointed out that even those players sometimes didn’t start out so hot. The ones I pointed out all had starts to their careers that were just as bad or even worse than Alvarez, and they included such names as Ty Cobb, Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Barry Bonds, Robin Yount, Brooks Robinson, Ralph Kiner, Gary Sheffield, Roberto Clemente, and Reggie Jackson.
Tim at Pirates Prospects points out here that both Aramis Ramirez and Jose Bautista had slow starts to their careers as well, and the Pirates have been crucified over the years for giving up on both of them. And yet those same fans that do the criticizing now want us to give up on Pedro Alvarez, who has a chance to be the next Ramirez or Bautista.
It always amuses me how we can look back in hindsight and say what a team should have done, but during the time Ramirez and Bautista were here, everything that’s said about Alvarez now was said about Ramirez, and people were simply apathetic toward Bautista and his mediocre career. Now that he’s gone, Bautista’s 1520 plate appearances in Pittsburgh suddenly become insignificant and the team should have been more patient with him, and yet those same fans want Alvarez sent to AAA based on about a third of that sample.
Am I saying that because he’s started poorly, Alvarez is destined to be as good as those guys? Of course not. Some players start out poorly and never heat up. And some players start out red hot and never amount to anything. The point I’m making is simply that it’s way too early to say what Pedro Alvarez is. Maybe he’ll be a bust, and maybe he’ll become the greatest hitter of all time. It’s entirely too soon to say.
From this Trib article:
“We haven’t had a conversation with Joel about pitching two innings yet,” Hurdle said Friday. “What you’d be asking a guy to do is re-create himself in the middle of the season.”
Still, Hurdle did not rule out the possibility of Hanrahan becoming a multiple-inning closer.
“We’ve talked about stretching him out,” he said. “Maybe he can be a little more versatile with a little more experience.”
Yeah, OK, that all makes sense (sort of…Hanrahan was a middle reliever in Washington who routinely went multiple innings and a starter in the minor leagues, so it’s not like he’s incapable of going more than one inning), but it misses the point.
Nobody’s saying that Hanrahan has to be Goose Gossage and pitch three innings to close out the game. The argument people are making is that he should come into the game in the situations that the team needs outs the most. Once he’s got you out of the jam, put someone else in for the ninth if you don’t want to use him there. This stuff about multiple innings is a point that literally nobody is making, it’s just a giant straw man.
My recap last night was pretty harsh on Clint Hurdle for his usage of the Pirates bullpen in high leverage spots. It hasn’t been just me saying these things. For the past week and a half or so, there’s been a trend of everyone from Pirates bloggers and local media to national baseball columnists (namely Rob Neyer) criticizing Hurdle for his use (or rather, lack of use) of Joel Hanrahan.
There’s little debate that Hanrahan has been a master of his craft this year. Not only is he the best reliever on the team, I’d argue that he’s the best pitcher on the team and one of the best relievers in baseball right now. He’s been lights out all season, and watching him work is like watching a man among boys. He makes Major League hitters look like Little Leaguers.
Considering this, it makes perfect sense for Hurdle to want to save Hanrahan for use when the game is on the line. Typically, this means the ninth inning. The last thing you want to do is carry a lead into the ninth and let a team beat you because an inferior reliever was on the mound.
However, the ninth is not the only time that an ace reliever comes in handy. When, say, you have the bases loaded and no outs in the eighth inning, it only makes sense to turn to your best reliever to give the team the best chance to come out of the inning with the lead in tact. In that situation, it would make more sense to use the closer in the eighth and let someone else try to get the save in the ninth, because if lesser relievers are used there’s a good chance the closer won’t get a chance to come out in the ninth with a lead in tact. If whoever you lose in the ninth blows the game, at least you can say that you used the team’s best reliever when he was most needed. Hurdle, though, has made it a habit to let other relievers surrender the lead and then let Hanrahan come in after it’s been given up.
What gets me about people that make the “Hanrahan is the closer, he should only be used to close out games” argument is the lack of knowledge of baseball history that comes from that statement. The idea of a closer is a relatively new one. Goose Gossage was one of the earliest closers, and even he didn’t really fit the mold of what we would today call a closer. He often entered games in high leverage spots before the ninth and would pitch 2 or 3 innings. Managers today aren’t likely to leave relievers out for multiple innings unless they’re the long guy (usually just a bad starter) because we understand more about how overuse causes injury now, but the point is more about when Gossage entered than how long he stayed.
As far as I can tell, the idea of a true “closer” that only enters the game in the ninth to finish it is an innovation that only goes back to, at the earliest, the late 1980s. And yet in that short time it’s become so enshrined in baseball convention that when Tony LaRussa brings in his closer in the eighth or when Mariano Rivera used to come out before the ninth, it was considered a revolutionary move.
Prior to this modern era of bullpen management, it was more common for teams to have a “fireman” or “stopper” than a closer. They were the bullpen aces. The guys that would come in when the team was in a real jam to get them out of it. And in fact, the Pirates had one of the best stoppers in the history of the game in Roy Face.
Face led the Majors in saves three times: 1958 (20), 1961 (17), and 1962 (28). Those numbers show that saves were clearly not a valued statistic when Face played. If you can lead the Majors with 17 of something besides triples or errors, it’s something that people don’t really care about.
In 1958, Face pitched in 57 games, going 84 innings. In 1961, 62 games for 92 innings. In 1962, 63 games for 91 innings.
Those numbers demonstrate that Face was clearly and frequently brought into situations not only in the ninth inning (though he also led the league in games finished four times), but whenever the team needed him to get outs. They used him as their best reliever, and let someone else work with the bases empty. Face was considered one of the best relievers in the Majors, led the Majors in saves three times, but was considered too important to save for late in the game when the game was on the line now.
Face was such a key component of the Pirates 1960 World Series team that he was – aside from Roberto Clemente himself – perhaps the most written about player in the excellent David Maraniss biography Clemente. He got the team out of several jams that season allowing them to win games that would have otherwise been in jeopardy. He was arguably the most valuable pitcher on the team, and yet he notched just 24 saves that year. That’s “good third closer for my fantasy team” value in today’s world, but certainly not “the game’s premiere reliever.”
If Face pitched today, he’d sit in the bullpen and wait for the ninth inning while lesser relievers blew leads, kind of like Hanrahan this year.
Look, I’m sure that Clint Hurdle is a great person. He’s very personable, it seems like the players like him, he has his players’ back, and he has some awesome sayings. If I met him in real life, I’d probably like him a lot. But he is terrible at his job title.
The Pirates were up by two runs in the eighth inning. Daniel McCutchen, obviously struggling, quickly loaded the bases without recording an out. Rather than turn to Joel Hanrahan (or, if you’re sympathetic to the “closers should only come out in the ninth for the save” argument, you could insert the names Jose Veras, Chris Resop or Tony Watson there), Hurdle burned through the low-leverage “use while behind” relievers. He brought out Jason Grilli and Joe Beimel, neither of whom could get an out. It wasn’t until Beimel walked in the tying run that the lightbulb went off in Hurdle’s head to bring out a reliever that’s been somewhat reliable at getting outs this year. Jose Veras quickly retired the first three batters he faced, but all it took was a ball in play and the go-ahead run crossed the plate.
To add insult to injury, Hanrahan came out to start the ninth, closer video playing at PNC Park and everything, and got three easy outs.
Yes, the burden lies on the players to execute when called upon. But the burden also falls on the manager to call on the best players for the situation, which Hurdle failed miserably to do. InClementeWeather on Twitter gave two hypotheticals that I think sum the situation up well. Usually I hate using other sports as examples because it’s an apples to oranges comparison, but in this case I think it’s apt.
This would be different if it were just one game. But it’s not, and bullpen management is not Hurdle’s only fault. From running into outs on the basepaths to ridiculous amounts of sacrifice bunts, Hurdle has routinely killed rallies for the Pirates. All managers are pretty bad tactically (aside from a few like Acta, Maddon, etc.) but Hurdle is extra bad. Today was just the latest example.
When the Cubs hit their fourth homer of the night, I just turned the game off. They weren’t done hitting homers, either.
Derrek Lee can’t do this all by himself.
At least Pedro Alvarez doubled. Of course, he also struck out twice, so that continues to be a problem.
It’s starting to feel like the same old Pirates.
The Pirates are now 11-14 in blowouts in 2011.
Over at WHYGAVS, there used to be an Andy Van Slyke quote in the header that I think is particularly apt here. Long time readers of that blog are very familiar with it, and the quote is “Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do is eliminate the Grand Canyon.”
Right now, the Pirates are definitely in a valley. They’ve lost 8 of their last 11 games, including the opener against the Cubs, where even two homers from the recently acquired Derrek Lee wasn’t enough. They’ve gone from first place to one game over .500 and 5.5 games back. Even with several series against the NL Central leaders in front of them and the ability to largely control their own destiny, Baseball Prospectus has the team’s odds of making the playoffs at just 1.1% This valley is made even more depressing by the fact that it’s coming off of several peaks that the Pirates haven’t seen since 1992.
Maybe the Pirates will spend another year in the Canyon, finishing with another missed postseason and worse, another losing record. I’m optimistic they can finish the season with at least 82 wins, but it’s hard to point to how they would accomplish that right now.
But let’s take a step away from the ledge. Let’s talk about expectations.
Be honest with yourselves: This year in Spring Training, you thought the Pirates would be out of it before now, didn’t you? If not, you’re a big optimist and I respect that. But the majority of fans were anticipating another losing season and elimination from contention before the All-Star break.
All anyone wanted to see this season was progress from the players that might make up the core of a competitive team. We wanted to see Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker, Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez step up. We wanted to see steps forward from James McDonald and see if Charlie Morton could rebound from a terrible 2010. We hoped for continued progress in the minor leagues, another strong draft, and a light at the end of the tunnel. Nobody expected to be out of the tunnel yet.
On that front, the team hasn’t disappointed. Sure, Alvarez has had a bad season, but there’s still time for him, and even if he doesn’t turn it around the club has someone exciting to turn to that came in under the radar in Alex Presley. If he can keep it up, the Pirates will have a formidable outfield for years in Presley, McCutchen and Tabata, with Starling Marte there to pick up the pieces if one of them falters. That’s an enviable position.
Neil Walker is showing that 2010 was no fluke and he really did just take longer to bloom than some prospects. In July, he hit .366/.404/.485 and he continued to hit yesterday. He’s shown increased discipline, cutting his strikeouts every month. He’s already drawn more walks than he did all of last season. He’s only three homers from matching last year’s total. Walker is firmly establishing his position as an everyday player.
Jose Tabata still hasn’t flashed the power potential that scouts once drooled about, but he’s made up for it with his ability to get on base, his outfield defense, and his plus speed. Besides, he’s only 22. There’s still reason to think he’ll show more power.
Andrew McCutchen has been great. There’s no qualifiers here. In every phase of the game, he’s excellent. He’s improved his hitting numbers and is becoming one of the best hitters in the game. He’s improved his defense and is becoming one of the best defenders in the game. If there’s any criticism at all, I’d like to see him running more. He’s got the speed to steal 30-40 bases a year, but he’s a little too cautious.
James McDonald has some issues with going deep into games, but it’s only his second full season as a starter and he’s thrown more innings this year than any other. Despite this, he’s actually improved in the second half, striking out more than a batter an inning and limiting walks. There’s some concern about his ability to keep the ball in the park, and as a fly ball pitcher his ceiling will be limited, but there’s no reason to think he won’t be a solid starter for a while.
Charlie Morton is an enigma. He’s had some bad starts lately and has been more inconsistent than he was earlier in the year, but he’s clearly improved on his 2010 disaster. Anecdotally, it seems like he’s relying less on the sinker now and trying to get too creative with his secondary stuff and that’s getting him into trouble, but I don’t have any data to back that up. One of the biggest questions of the second half will be Morton. It remains to be seen if he’ll always be erratic and unpredictable or if he’ll ever straighten himself out, but this year has shown that the ability is there.
In the minors, Matt Curry started the year so hot that he jumped two levels, and after a slow start in AA he’s starting to mash there as well. Starling Marte has stayed strong in AA, and the reports on his defense are starting to say that he may even be a better defender than McCutchen.
After some rough starts following their promotions, Rudy Owens and Justin Wilson are starting to look strong in AAA, Brad Lincoln has looked good both in AAA and in his one spot start with the big club, Matt Hague has been dominating AAA pitching since June, Jameson Taillon has looked good in his pro career, and even Gorkys Hernandez – who many had written off as dead – has started to turn it on. Speaking of players who were written off as dead, Robbie Grossman has rebounded from a bad 2010 to become one of the most intriguing players in the system with a .290/.429/.426 line and the ability to draw walks seemingly at will.
From this draft class, the Pirates have already added a high upside player in Alex Dickerson, they’ll add Gerrit Cole later this month, and the chances are looking good that they’ll sign Josh Bell – an especially important sign since he was seen as a prime talent that teams passed on because they were afraid he wouldn’t sign. Even if Tony Sanchez never improves on his disappointing season, it’s hard to call this year on the farm anything but a success.
So, is this season in an ugly valley? Yes. And maybe we’ll spend another year in the canyon. But we’ve also seen the highest peaks we’ve seen in a long, long time, and for the first time in a long time it looks like the chopper is coming to airlift us out of here.
Sometimes, a lot can go right in a game, and you still lose. That was the case in this one, as Derrek Lee homered twice, Pedro Alvarez had two hits and a nice play on defense, Andrew McCutchen had a hit and a walk and Neil Walker had two hits, but the Pirates still lost to the Cubs 5-3. Not much more you can do about a bad outing from the starting pitcher. This is not an encouraging loss, and the Pirates are probably going to need to take the rest of the games from the Cubs and take the series from the Padres in order to stay relevant.
This is just a quick and dirty post about some trends I’ve noticed lately, a prediction here and there, and some things the team needs to do to stay competitive in August and September.
Prediction: Derrek Lee will hit, Ryan Ludwick will not.
This will give equally annoying ammo to both the people who think that the Pirates do everything wrong by enabling them to point out Ludwick as “another failed acquisition by Neal Huntington” while sweeping Lee under the rug and the people who think that Huntington can do no wrong by enabling them to point at Lee and write Ludwick off as an acquisition to fill a short-term need that will probably be benched when Jose Tabata and Alex Presley are healthy.
The Pirates did the right thing at the deadline.
Despite the prediction I just made that Ludwick will not hit well in Pittsburgh, I think the Pirates did the right thing this year. Yes, they could have further stocked up for the future by trading Paul Maholm, Joel Hanrahan and whoever else for what would probably be a decent haul of prospects. And yes, they could have (theoretically, at least) sold the farm to bring in someone like Hunter Pence to go for it all this year. They chose the middle road instead, opting to be buyers but without giving up anything significant in the process. And I think that’s the right thing to do.
The chances of the team making the playoffs are probably slim, but at some point you become a contender simply by having been a contender up to that point in the season. It’s not time for the Pirates to completely lose sight of the future, but the picture is starting to come together in the big leagues – Jose Tabata, Neil Walker and Andrew McCutchen are all in the Majors and playing, respectively, solid baseball, good baseball and excellent baseball. Pedro Alvarez is in the Majors (though having a tough year, more on him later.) There’s some solid pitching in AAA in Justin Wilson, Brad Lincoln and Rudy Owens, and even if the current rotation falls apart like sabermetrics says it should, some combination of those three plus Ross Ohlendorf can make some solid additions. A lot of talent may be in A ball right now, but pitchers like Jameson Taillon and Gerrit Cole are projected to move quickly through the system. Players in AA like Starling Marte are probably not too far away themselves. Maybe it will be another year or two before everything comes together, and there will probably be some busts along the way, but it’s time to shift gears from full on “rebuild mode” to “balance the needs” mode, as the future is no longer some nebulous “eventually” and now looks to be something that will happen pretty soon.
The Pirates acquisitions of Lee and Ludwick are somewhat similar to the Reds acquiring Scott Rolen in 2009. Maybe it didn’t make total sense for them to be buyers that year, but it was time to shift gears, and the Rolen trade helped them do so. Maybe the Pirates won’t sign either of these players to an extension like the Reds did with Rolen, but the comparison is still apt, I think.
Pedro Alvarez needs to hit.
Alvarez has looked really bad since his return to the Majors. That’s bad news, because he looked really bad before his injury as well. Yes, he homered two days ago, and that’s nice, but he’s still hitting only .138/.242/.276. For comparison, that’s worse than what Chase d’Arnaud was hitting, and he was deemed so bad that the team opted to call Alvarez up out of a need to replace him. Yet for some reason, you can’t say this to Pirates fans without them saying something along the lines of “Well, the results aren’t there yet, but he’s looked good at the plate.”
Wishful thinking. He has not looked good at the plate. Since being called up, he’s struck out in 45% of his at-bats. In no universe is that good. And yet my Twitter feed seems to think that 100% of his plate appearances are “good ABs.” Strikeouts will always be part of Alvarez’s game. He’s a power hitter. I get that. But he can NOT strike out this much and have success in the Majors. Even Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn, Drew Stubbs and Carlos Pena – all players that strike out a ton, but are still valuable – have a better K% than that, by a lot. Yes, he’s faced good pitchers. But you know what? All MLB pitchers are good pitchers. If he’s going to be the player the team needs him to be, he needs to hit even against the great ones.
The amount that Alvarez has been striking out is the same problem that’s de-railed plenty of promising power bats in the past, such as Chad Hermansen, Ian Stewart, Brad Eldred, Chris Davis and Jeff Clement. If he wants to avoid joining those ranks, Alvarez has to put the bat on the ball more. He has NOT looked good since coming back up, and it’s time to stop pretending he has.
