I've never been a proponent of symptomatic analysis. Not in life, not in sports, certainly not in this particular line of work.
Don't just describe how someone sneezed. Tell me why they sneezed. Tell me about the allergenic, hygienic conditions that might have conspired to make it occur.
Similarly, don't just describe how bad the Pirates are, how this guy's batting .190 or that guy's getting creamed out on the mound. Tell me why they're as bad as they are. And dig deep. Deeper than the 25th man on the roster, deeper than some struggling child in the bullpen, deeper than Josh Bell not homering much, deeper than Starling Marte occasionally spacing out, deeper than Clint Hurdle's mind-numbing yanking of Jameson Taillon, deeper even than the demonstrably failed drafting and developing that's brought about this glaring lack of talent.
And yeah, dig deeper than payroll, too.
Dig this deep:
“We entered the season with the optimistic belief that we had those traits of teams projected to win 78 to 82 games and could exceed that and be one of the teams that was in a postseason battle."
Honest to God, those words emerged from the mouth of a big-league professional sports general manager Sunday afternoon.
From Neal Huntington, of course.
And that, my friends, is how deep this goes.
Because that spectacular quote, spoken to reporters at PNC Park as part of the GM's weekly press gathering, exposes for the first time in a public setting that these guys -- Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Huntington -- actually think like this. They actually think this is acceptable. They actually think it's something other than sickeningly dishonorable to enter a season expecting to win 78-82 games and hoping they can do better, while at the same time not spending a single penny in free agency to address that hope.
This isn't parsing on my part. Trust me on that. I've heard this sort of thing spoken internally for years, and I've reported on it for just as long. All this quote did was bring it to the surface for everyone to see and hear.
Condensed to its subatomic formation, here it is: Their business people think that winning isn't paramount, their baseball people think that winning is largely the byproduct of luck and, as a result, neither end does anywhere near its best to enhance the chance of actually winning.
That's it. That's all the analysis I'd ever need to offer about this front office. And, until those guys are gone, this organization as a whole.
• How do people think things like that, much less express them with conviction?
The environment at 115 Federal has become increasingly insular. Everyone's dressed alike, talks alike, at the risk of dramatically over-generalizing. It's all a strikingly similar, dissent-free feel. In contrast, around the Steelers and Penguins, it's just a lot of normal folks, speaking their minds, being critical, saying whatever they feel. There's less and less of that around the Pirates -- and at all levels of the organization -- with each passing summer. They're more like stormtroopers patrolling the Death Star.
Those are the people telling Nutting, Coonelly and Huntington that it was OK to follow a 98-win season in 2015 by trying out a rotation of Jon Niese, Jeff Locke, Francisco Liriano, Ryan Vogelsong and converted reliever Juan Nicasio.
Those are the people telling Nutting, Coonelly and Huntington that Joe Musgrove and Colin Moran, promising as they've been, are fair value for Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole.
Those are the people telling Nutting, Coonelly and Huntington that ESPN and multiple other outlets, including this one, were wrong in assessing the Pirates as being the worst of all 30 teams when it comes to drafting/developing.
This was Huntington's reply when our Lance Lysowski asked Sunday if player development is part of the problem: “I’m ultimately accountable for everything. Some of the moves I’ve made haven’t worked the way we anticipated, but there is a 'we' in this. We know that we need to figure out a better way. But ultimately, again, this is a club I’ve put together and I’m accountable for it. We’ve got to assess how we got to this point.”
What the hell kind of answer was that?
Complete denial. That's what that is. In the face of overwhelming evidence.
Yeah, those stormtroopers are the ones telling Nutting, Coonelly and Huntington how smart they all are and how dumb all the rest of us are.
And heck, maybe we are, because here I am, still typing about it.
• There's no hope in this scenario. Other than sweeping change, all the way to the top. And I don't see hope on that front, either.
• You want hope? Let's talk about our city's teams that care. Plenty of hope to be found there, more than enough to compensate.
• The never-ending notion that the Penguins still need/want to make some big trade this summer probably won't lose steam until more of the NHL's bigger moving parts find new homes around the league, particularly Erik Karlsson. And even then, if Karlsson winds up in Tampa Bay as part of some NBA-style super-roster, the notion will probably find new life via purported urgency for Jim Rutherford to match it.
It won't happen. It shouldn't happen. But most important, it pretty much can't happen.
Barring some massive exchange of salaries, there isn't a major trade or free-agency acquisition to be had. And there's been no -- absolute zero -- indication from within that any such move is in the offing. Including from my conversations with Jim himself, and he's got a terrible poker face, I might add, when he's after something big.
This is a really good team as currently constituted. Moves are fun, but that doesn't make them right.
• I just want it on record somewhere that no one jumped out at me at the Penguins' development camp quite like Jan Drozg, the skinny but swift Slovenian winger. Serious hop with this one. I mentioned this to Rutherford, and he replied, "I like him a lot."
• It's been more than a dozen years since I've cared about anything John Tortorella says, and I'm not about to reverse that now.
But the Blue Jackets as an entity?
It's been 18 years in the NHL for the Columbus franchise, still without a solitary playoff series victory and only four playoff appearances. The Blue Jackets couldn't be less relevant if they no longer existed. That's not exaggeration for effect, mind you: The California Golden Seals, Kansas City Scouts, Cleveland Barons and Atlanta Thrashers existed for 21 combined seasons with three total playoff appearances, zero victories. Essentially the same impact on the sport.
More via the spoken word:
• We're exactly a week away from the NFL's deadline for the Steelers and Le'Veon Bell to sign a contract that would avoid the activation of the franchise tag. I think it'll get done. I think partly because Le'Veon himself blurted it out -- he'll do that, you know -- but also because they haven't ever been all that far apart.
He's now set to make $14.5 million this coming season on the tag. He played last season for $12.5 million. At one point before last season, he was offered $60 million over five years, or an average of $12 million. He isn't nearly principled enough -- no one is -- to leave $14.5 million on the table this fall, or even a small portion of that. So he'll either play for that amount plus have additional guaranteed money well into the future or he'll play on the tag again and risk Vontaze Burfict rendering the rest of his career moot.
• Some things are just meant to be: Jack Lambert turned 66 on Sunday. He retired 33 years ago. His birthday is the same as that of the Steelers as a franchise. They were born in '33.
• Not all of the summer sports scene is a bummer around here: The Riverhounds' rather thorough 1-0 victory Sunday up in Ottawa has them within a single point of Cincinnati for first in the USL's Eastern Conference:
ALL the angles on @hughrob13's goal. #OTTvPGH pic.twitter.com/IB6ujxtPzK
— Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC (@RiverhoundsSC) July 8, 2018
Bob Lilley's done exactly as Tuffy Shallenberger hoped when bringing him aboard, and probably more. They're 9-1-7 overall, they're by far the best defensive team in the league with only seven goals allowed in 17 matches, and they've gotten superb play from so many individuals that it's hard to single out anyone, even though I'll do exactly that with the running maniac Christiano Francois, who's become Lilley's heartbeat on the pitch.
Imagine -- and that's all I'm suggesting here -- the Hounds getting one crowd bigger than the Pirates in the next couple months.