DETROIT -- This miserable Michigan weather forecast permitting, the Pittsburgh Baseball Club's 132nd season will begin at 1:10 p.m. with Jordan Zimmerman's first pitch to Adam Frazier.
The same season will probably end with Josh Harrison employed elsewhere.
But in the interim, for however long that lasts, even after he popped off about the Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole selloffs, expect to see nothing less than his extraordinarily energetic self.
"It's baseball, man," J-Hay was telling me earlier this month in Bradenton. "You know me. You know what I'm all about. Baseball is my everything. I'm going to give everyone everything I've got, just like I always have."
He burst out with a singular laugh.
"It's not like I've got some other gear."
He really doesn't.
I'm not writing this to emphasize any potential drama related to his departure once it happens. In the same year Cutch and Cole are sent out, sorry, but the biggest headline fonts have already been worn out. J-Hay's a two-time All-Star, but he'd be the first to attest he shouldn't share a sentence with his best bud, in particular.
Still, there's much to be said for the importance of intangibles within the seemingly individual sport of baseball. They matter. Not as much as talent, but they matter. And if J-Hay had demonstrated so much as a single lazy stride down the line or hadn't laid out for every grounder his way, that largely unspoken leadership he brings to the collective would have been lost and, with it, a whole lot more could have unraveled.
From there, at least from this perspective on the clubhouse, David Freese and Sean Rodriguez, both of whom also popped off one after the other, have an easier time doing their own leadership thing. And Ivan Nova with the starters. And Felipe Rivero, in his own fun way, with the relievers. And Francisco Cervelli with his own all-around vibrancy. It wasn't immediate, to say the least, but it's taken place steadily over the course of the spring.
Look for Freese to rise up the most in that regard. He's Papa Bear now, and he seems plenty comfortable with that.
"We have high expectations of ourselves in here, as a group and as players," he was telling me regarding leadership. "It's up to all of us to work together to make sure we live up to those."
I should throw in a more mature, more authoritative Jameson Taillon, as well. He was elected to be the players' representative to the union on one day I was there and, after giving a brief interview about that afterward, he apologized as he had to bolt because "I've got to get some work in." He's incredibly intelligent, he's well-spoken, and he's been through enough setbacks in his career after being a No. 2 overall draft pick to be relatable to all.
Cutch was never a leader, as I'd written all through his Pittsburgh tenure, not in the vocal sense. If anything, he'd fall even more silent the more he was surrounded by such types as A.J. Burnett, Russell Martin or Neil Walker. But the void left by his presence, his stature -- for instance, a rookie would watch everything he'd do with awe -- that still requires a replacement.
It's happening ... not by committee, but more through natural selection. And those veterans still left behind deserve at least a measure of applause for behaving as they have, both when they popped off and then with their professionalism that followed.
• Clint Hurdle has a rich history of not buying into some of the front office's garbage, though that's faded in the past couple years. I firmly believe he'll need to get back to that to retain that same level of respect he's long had in that clubhouse. The players don't need to trust management, but they need to trust their manager.
• On this potential opening day, a painful reminder of this organization's No. 1 problem for a decade now: Barrett Barnes, the outfielder who was the Pirates' top signed pick in the 2012 draft, was cut yesterday. I'd heard good things about him while he was in Altoona a couple years ago, but injuries hurt his development, and that evidently was that.
Lots of teams cut their top picks. The baseball draft is much more of a crapshoot than those of the NFL, NHL or NBA. But the fact remains that, within the baseball context, the Pirates are the worst.
• I'm not making a record prediction for reasons laid out in my season preview column this morning, but I'll go this far: Milwaukee takes the Central. The rotation still isn't overwhelming, but they could rake before ponying up for Christian Yelich. My man Bernie Brewer's in for a dizzying summer.
• World Series pick: Yankees over Dodgers. And hopefully, that'll be the outcome for the next billion years until Rob Manfred and Tony Clark realize baseball needs a salary cap.
• Mike Sullivan hasn't made many mistakes behind the Penguins' bench, to put it mildly, but I can't help but wonder if these revamped defensive pairs are a bad idea.
No, I'm not blaming the pairs for the debacle here a couple nights ago. That was an abysmal blame-everyone-except-Hornqvist effort. (Rule No.1 of hockey analysis: Never include Patric Hornqvist in any criticism of effort.) If the team performs at the same level tonight in Newark -- or any night anywhere -- it's going to get embarrassed.
At the same time, I'm seeing nothing in the very early going to support the idea that, chiefly, Kris Letang and Jamie Oleksiak make each other better. Letang will be Letang, but all that's done is leash up Oleksiak, who's far more effective when he's deploying that rare combo of size and speed on the rush. Brian Dumoulin, on the other hand, has learned over the years when to go and when to drop back.
I get it. A change was welcome. But not all change works.
My suggestion: Put the pairs back to the norm, but make sure Jacques Martin rolls all three evenly at five-on-five. Lessening the burden on Letang was probably the principal goal of the change, anyway.
• Another thought: Get Olli Maatta more involved. There were times over the season's first half when he was best of the group, and his chemistry with Chad Ruhwedel should never have meant a cut to third-pair ice time.
• Best news to emerge all week from the NFL meetings in Orlando: Ban using the helmet as a weapon.
I never understood why some aspects of using the helmet were OK and not others. Most obnoxious was the 'defenseless' concept in which the referee was required to determine in a split-second whether or not the defender was capable of avoiding the helmet hit. As if the regular action of the sequence weren't enough to track.
The best rules in sports are black-and-white. Remove the judgment. Someone gets hit with a helmet, flag thrown.
And please, no angst over football turning soft. The toughest of the tough are great pure tacklers.
• I'll respectfully reserve comment on Jeff Capel's demeanor until getting to meet him myself, which I look forward to doing this spring. But it sure seemed from afar that this press conference went about a billion times better than the last one, and that's a testament to all involved at Pitt.
• Heather Lyke's earning all her huzzahs for the hire. Plus, one has to admire the confidence of any administrator who can say something like this: "Hiring a head coach is the most important thing that I do, I think, as the leader of the athletic department, and it’s something I think I do really well. It’s about building genuine relationships with people and getting to know, first of all, why do you coach and why do you want to come to Pitt? If you can’t answer those two things in a real, genuine way, then it might not be the right fit."
That's tremendous. Get candidates who want to come to you, not the other way around.
It's well past time for far too many Pitt fans and alumni to ditch that nonsensical inferiority complex, and that goes double when it comes to football. It's a great university with great athletic history in the greatest city on the planet. Act like it.
• By the way, Lyke also discussed for the first time her various reasons for firing Kevin Stallings, and she confirmed that those went beyond the 0-19 ACC record, notably his failure to perform expected tasks. I reported all of that exclusively five weeks ago in Friday Insider, also including the first mention of Pitt pursuing the reduced buyout. That report resulted in much grief aimed this way about the caliber of sources, trying to stir stuff up, etc.
All I have to say is that our next meetup will be in Oakland at the O, and you're buying all the fries.