Kovacevic: Take the bat from Sean-Rod already

By Dejan Kovacevic

Jun 23, 2018 • 7:20 pm

11.7K

There's no way this particular Saturday at PNC Park could have ended with anything but a Sean Rodriguez strikeout, and so it did for the 27th out of the Pirates' 7-2 loss to the Diamondbacks. Belt high. Right down Grant Street. Just watched it go by, then stood silently as Gary Cederstrom rung him up.

He'd go 0 for 4 with two Ks, another awful error, sarcastic chants of 'M-V-P!' from the bleachers when he'd bat and, undoubtedly unbeknownst to him, countless terrible things being done to the bobbleheads bearing his likeness amid the most unfortunate of promotional giveaways.

No, I'm serious:

Outside PNC Park. Sean Rodriguez bobblehead heads are being kicked down the street. pic.twitter.com/IJi9G3p9lE
— Zach Frailey (@ZachFrailey) June 24, 2018

We have 9 Sean Rodriguez bobble heads. This is Clint Hurdles dream lineup. pic.twitter.com/6JaYqLafd9
— Ian Weir (@WokenIan) June 23, 2018

We are at PNC so we got Rodriguez bobbleheads.
My son's box got wet during our escape when the rain came.
As we were walking back to our seats, the box broke, the bobblehead fell out, and it also broke.
Perfect commentary on Rodriguez: broken down and all washed up.#Pirates
— Clair (@gottaluvya) June 23, 2018

Let it mercifully be over.

There's no need to wait on Jung Ho Kang, even if he's got seven hits in his past four games with Class AAA Indianapolis. If he isn't ready, Jose Osuna, Adam Frazier and now second base prospect Kevin Kramer are. All would be an upgrade, both immediately and toward the future.

So stop this. Stop it right now.

Look, I get it. Sean-Rod is a legit tremendous human, as well as a legit leader in this clubhouse. Both are as true now as two weeks ago as two months ago as two years ago when he was part of the Pirates' playoff teams. He's always played the game the right way. He's always practiced his craft with impeccable professionalism on and off the field.

It isn't easy letting those guys go. It'll be one of the toughest talks of Clint Hurdle's career, I'll bet.

But it's far worse watching them suffer like this:

That was a relay home, believe it or not.

"The ball was somewhat wet," Rodriguez explained of the first-inning sequence that preceded the game's two rain delays. "My hand was probably more wet than anything, just from standing around. I tried to palmball it, but I didn't even get my fingers over the top and just pushed it."

It was his fifth error in his past 25 chances -- read that again -- for a player who only recently was lauded as the most sure-handed on the roster, probably the most painful sign of how badly he's hurting as he lugs that .149/.276/.281 line into the field with him. Which is what happens when everything's falling apart.

Sean-Rod also tipped his cap to Arizona's Zack Greinke, who tiptoed around two rain delays for six innings in which he allowed only two soft singles.

"He keeps finding ways to dominate," Rodriguez said, "whether it's keeping guys off-balance or keeping them leaning in a certain direction."

All of that's accurate in the moment. But this isn't about a moment, and it isn't a coincidence.

Since the deadly car accident in January of 2017 that hospitalized him, as well as his wife and children, he had to have his left shoulder reconstructed. That cost him nearly half the season with the Braves, the team that had signed him out of free agency -- two years, $11.5 million -- in the offseason. After only 15 games with them, the Pirates reacquired him and the full remainder of his contract ... only to find out he had nothing left.

His full slash line for 2017: .167/.276/.295.

His full slash line for 2018: .149/.276/.281.

One hit in his past 20 at-bats, with half of those by strikeout.

He's done. It's sad to say, but he's done. He can't help the Pirates, and they can't help him by keeping him around.

Stop it already.

TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, STANDINGS, VIDEO

• Until Saturday's scene, what had bugged me the most about the Rodriguez scenario was that he's been scapegoated for the Pirates' overall failure. News flash: A team doesn't lose 23 of 33 because one guy is terrible.

• Similarly, faulting Hurdle for Rodriguez being in the lineup is missing the Amazon rain forest for the trees. The real issue with this team is that it's performing way, way below its own reasonable expectations offensively. And that applies to almost everyone on the roster.

Want to hear a real problem?

The Pirates had been top-five in the majors six weeks into the season and, even though they were facing some lousy opponents, they took care of their fair share of fine pitchers. Well, they've got one extra-base hit and have struck out 31 times in the first three games of this series against first-place Arizona. They've scored nine total runs in the past five games. And since that nine-games-over-.500 high in early May, they've averaged a pathetic 3.6 runs per game.

That gets hitting coaches into trouble, particularly when there's a broader issue with genuinely talented hitters like Josh Bell and Gregory Polanco badly underperforming. Because that reflects on multiple levels of development and, at the major-league level, on the instruction of both Jeff Branson, the actual hitting coach, and Hurdle, who's long been the de facto hitting coach.

That's a real problem. Because that's wasting real assets on a broader and more damaging scale.

• Joe Musgrove couldn't locate his fastball. He mostly left it up, the Diamondbacks mostly clocked it, including these back-to-back doubles by David Peralta and Chris Owings:

To Musgrove's considerable and competitive credit, he tore himself up over it in assessing, "Overall, my fastball command was borderline embarrassing tonight. Everything I threw was up in the zone, above the belt, leaking over the middle. I wasn't able to stay over the edges very well. So, that doesn't make for a very good day."

I asked if, when he loses it with the fastball, he abandons it or just keeps pounding:

Yeah, a young starting pitcher lost it a little with his fastball command. Musgrove lasted four innings -- five runs, seven hits, three walks -- because, as Hurdle confirmed, the second rain delay of 56 minutes was too much. But otherwise, there isn't all that much to analyze. The kid's got dynamic stuff, and he's made of tough stuff, as well. Just needs to stabilize.

• The game was a colossal bore from the Pittsburgh perspective, and it was impressive how many of the 21,121 paying customers stuck it out to the finish. But even a bummed-out baseball fan could appreciate Greinke's amazing eephus-level curveballs that barely clocked 67 mph on the gun and seemed to fall from the charcoal clouds overhead.

Watch this overlay of a Moran at-bat from the awesome @PitchingNinja account on Twitter, one of a standard fastball, the other of a 69-mph curve:

Zack Greinke, 89mph Fastball and 69mph Curveball, Overlay/Slow.
Nice example of pitches that don't tunnel. ? pic.twitter.com/yvLjyOQ20o
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 23, 2018

Pinpoint location, identical delivery and unfair variance of velocity.

Greinke usually tries no more than one or two of those in a game. This one saw 12, though he noted that the last of those was crushed to the fence in center by Austin Meadows for a long out in the sixth inning, "so maybe it was running out of steam."

• Don't blink, but here come the bleeping Reds, winners of six in a row and getting grand slams from their starting pitcher: