Kovacevic: How Nutting can (finally) do something right ☕

Bob Nutting could cure cancer, cut off climate change and create an unprecedented air of harmony in our nation's politics, and he'd still be a pariah in Pittsburgh. He's the most lost of all lost causes in our city, and I can't conceive of any way that could change.

With one possible exception: He could clean house.

Saving face is no reason to replace a front office, and Nutting, for whatever anyone chooses to think of him, isn't the type to do that. But the coldest, ugliest fact of his dozen-year stewardship of the franchise -- yes, colder and uglier than the payrolls -- has been an astonishing lack of accountability. Because over all 12 years, other than firing Dave Littlefield a few months after taking control from Kevin McClatchy, the number of significant moves made to the front office equals ... one?

Yeah, if you can even count it as one, Greg Smith was quietly demoted a couple years ago from assistant general manager to special assistant to the GM.

You know the gig ...

This will be the ninth season out of 12 under Nutting, Frank Coonelly, Neal Huntington and Kyle Stark that the Pirates will have missed the playoffs. This will be the eighth losing season out of those 12. This will be the 19th season PNC Park has existed, and its next new flag will be its first.

And right now, they're in the midst of one of the most miserable stretches of baseball seen in these parts for three decades: The latest loss, 9-7 to the Brewers last night at PNC Park, was the 19th in 23 games since the All-Star break.

It's an epic embarrassment in its own right.

Nutting's done nothing. Coonelly's done nothing. Huntington's done nothing other than to scratch out a business card.

Any company that lacks accountability, both positive and negative, lacks the structure to succeed. And the will to succeed. Because what happens over time -- especially an extended period like this -- is that all concerned realize, maybe even subliminally, that they're here to stay, no matter the degree to which they fail. Comfort sets in. Complacency. And the failure takes even deeper root.

Nutting values loyalty almost as much as a dollar. This wouldn't be the way it was with Littlefield, as those two were never close, and Nutting didn't like anything he did from the moment he took over. This would be cutting the cord with men he sees as lifelong friends. People he's trusted and people who've trusted him.

At the same time, Nutting's first and foremost a businessman, as those closest to him will attest. And what's happening right now -- no, really, what's been happening for a dozen years but for one magical October night in 2013 -- is bad for business. The brand's being dragged through the mud like at no point in the franchise's 133 years. The owner's name might as well be the mud through which it's being dragged. And at the same time, the two most important contracts of Nutting's tenure --  the local TV and stadium naming rights deals with AT&T SportsNet and PNC Bank, respectively -- are about to come due, only magnifying the muddy effect.

People here are nervous. And they're nervous unlike any phase I've detected since Stark's 'Hoka Hey' stupidity a few years back. They're worried this current team could keep losing and losing. That's why, strikingly, they kept all those veterans at the trade deadline. That's why they're keeping Mitch Keller and Ke'Bryan Hayes in the minors rather than acknowledging any kind of rebuild.

Maybe -- maybe -- it's because Nutting will finally take this one facet of his stewardship seriously.

Again, if he does, it won't win him many, if any friends in this city. That ship hasn't sailed so much as it's been sunk. But it could at least theoretically begin, however slightly, the process of washing away the worst accusation of all. The one, of course, that Nutting doesn't care.

Fire them all, Bob. Start over. Just like 2007.

In a setting where the best any Pittsburgher can hope for is the sale of the team, that's a hell of a second-best.

• I'm going to keep repeating this until either the circumstance changes or my head explodes: They aren't choking. They aren't quitting. It's simply that they aren't talented enough.

But suggesting that they're giving up is a lazy catch-all that really ought to be reserved for people no longer watching the games.

Ask Elias Diaz:

Elias Diaz, the potentially tying run, strikes out and then breaks his bat in anger to end the 8th and the rally. #DKPS #Pirates pic.twitter.com/PxT12Knel6

— Matt Sunday (@mattsunday) August 6, 2019

• On Sunday, in his weekly media session at PNC Park, Huntington spoke the following: "We have Mitch Keller pounding on the door to get an opportunity in our rotation. The challenge is: Who do you clear out to put him in that rotation?”

Trevor Williams, Joe Musgrove, Chris Archer and now, again last night, even Dario Agrazal, have all been awful. The fifth starter, Steven Brault, is returning tonight after a month lost to shoulder soreness.

My God, the challenge. Imagine the tumult that would result.

This man is the National League's most tenured GM.

• Huntington's failed at plenty, but props abound for Bryan Reynolds. There's no way any Andrew McCutchen trade should have come up a winner in this environment, but Reynolds and Kyle Crick for Cutch makes up for a lot of -- not all -- mistakes.

Really hope you can read this extra column I wrote from this game focusing on Reynolds. He's something.

• Other baseball thoughts are over on my game file, in addition to a Morning Java that Matt Sunday and I did from there:

• The Steelers are right back to practice out at Saint Vincent today. They're paid really well to play a child's game, so no one should pity them, but I'm here to tell you, six weeks of combined training camp and preseason is way, way, way too much.

I asked Javon Hargrave a couple days ago, after the night practice at Heinz Field, how he was doing. This was the unsolicited response: "I just can't wait for the season to start. I mean really start. This is the grind, man, you know? It's tough right now."

Appearing to catch himself, he added, "I feel like we're getting better. It helps. I know that much: It helps."

Too much is too much. Roger Goodell wants two more regular-season games. The players want less camp. Surely adults can work this out.

• The backup QB battle won't begin in earnest until Friday night, when the Buccaneers are in town for the first of those preseason games, but let's not pretend Mason Rudolph doesn't have a head start on Josh Dobbs.

In addition to finding and nailing receivers all over the field, Rudolph's performed a lot closer to game reality in that he's moved the ball much more quickly. Dobbs often will take advantage of quarterbacks still being off-limits to tackling and try to extend every play. He's doing so primarily because he's waiting for a receiver to become glaringly open. Rudolph isn't. He's making the right read and hitting it.

I like Dobbs. I'm not about to punt on his potential. But he's being lapped.

• Confession to make here?

I'm 6-2, and I'm not at all comfortable interviewing an NFL team's future franchise player on defense who's that much shorter than me. Devin Bush is listed at 5-11, and the Combine figure was 5-10 1/2, but I'm not buying either of those. On top of that, I'm not buying the listed 240 pounds. He appears significantly lighter.

I could be wrong. I didn't measure or weigh him. All we did was talk a while Sunday:

But I'd feel remiss if I didn't share.

• Someone, somewhere please doubt that JuJu Smith-Schuster is a No. 1 receiver in the NFL. Please do that. Write it down, too. Indelible ink. Fold, save, and let's compare notes sometime this winter.

• One area in which JuJu's already No. 1 is popularity on his team. That couldn't be clearer from the way fans scream and squeal with his every glance their way from a practice setting.

What I've appreciated most about JuJu's fan interactions is that it's so easy to see that he's enjoying making them happy. His reactions, his smiles, his laughs follow theirs. His joy comes from theirs. That's neat. With Antonio Brown, he treated such situations as if they were ego-feedings. He wanted to see, hear and feel the adulation so it could make him feel all of that.

• Anyone seen the circus lately?

• Every year, before every season of every team I cover, I pick one player to break out. To rise well above his previous status and to do so for the first time. And, if I didn't already make that obvious from my column yesterday, that player is Terrell Edmunds.

I like a lot of what I've seen of Donte Moncrief and Diontae Johnson as Ben Roethlisberger targets, I believe Bush won't take as long as Edmunds to stand out as a rookie, and I, unlike the Nation as a whole, am keeping guarded faith in Bud Dupree. But Edmunds needs only to get his hand on the ball to cross into special territory, and he's eminently capable.

• Bud told me he's getting 15 sacks, by the way. I gave him a chance to take it back. He wouldn't. So, 15 it is.

• So glad Jim Rutherford clarified what he, Mike Sullivan and the Penguins mean when they say they want to be 'harder to play against.' I've heard this regularly from Sullivan and his coaches, but Rutherford going on the record, as he did yesterday with Dave Molinari, should help at least correct the nature of roster debates, if not necessarily settling them.

I don't agree -- at all -- that Alex Galchenyuk will contribute to that cause, but I'm totally on board with the core cause: Fight for the puck, then fight to keep it.

• Still another six weeks till training camp, the roster's close to set, there's barely any movement anywhere in the NHL, and the only local conversation is whether or not cap room can be cleared for Marcus Pettersson?

Damn, I miss talking hockey.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY