"Believe me, we're that team from the first half. What you saw was real."
That was Steven Brault. On my final day in Florida this past spring, I'd been asking a few of the Pirates why anyone should take them seriously in 2020 when, even after they'd flirted with contention through a fun first half, they fell flat on their collective faces. And to be honest, I wasn't expecting much. If anything, maybe a little contrition over the epic collapse that followed.
Nope. They all sounded like Brault.
"We're a good baseball team," Bryan Reynolds would tell me that day. "We know that. We were out there and felt it."
"I think we're actually a lot better than that," Josh Bell would tell me. "We were missing some key guys, a couple got hurt, we never really had Greg ... I always think of what more we could've done."
Gregory Polanco, he meant. And I could list a bunch more.
Anyone can say anything, of course, especially in the spring. But, as Brault brought up, I did see it. And I did think it was real.
It wasn't so much the standings, though there was no shame in being a game under .500 at 44-45, and 2 1/2 games out of first place in the Central. The whole division was dragging at the time, and even the Pirates' win total came with ominous advanced warning signs, among them a minus-36 run differential that would soon be fulfilled in the worst way. That facet always had me doubting in actual contention.
But the other stuff?
The bats, the bop, the promise of some of the pitching, the very surprisingly solid glovework?
The camaraderie, the comebacks, the cool under pressure, the support of sagging teammates?
Yeah, I was buying. I've covered more than my share of losers with the Pirates, individually and collectively, and none of that was around. Again, there was a clear and present danger, particularly in the calamitous middle relief and, to boot, it was only going to take an injury or two to pour a tanker's worth of fuel on the process, but the core of what was occurring was wonderful.
At which point, of course, that tanker showed up in the form of a few extra-painful injuries, coupled with the woeful underbelly of the Neal Huntington/Kyle Stark farm system finally being exposed, and it all went up in flames.
But here's what I extract from that, and I won't apologize if it sounds pollyanna-ish: Those flames burned away all that was the very worst in this organization, while leaving behind only what was best.
Huntington, Stark, Frank Coonelly, all of them needed to go. It took ferocious prodding, but Bob Nutting figured that out.
Clint Hurdle, for totally different reasons, needed to go. He's too proud to have maybe seen this for himself, but he'd moved too far over onto the complacent side, falling for Huntington's silliness about settling for mediocre results provided the right intentions were behind them.
Ray Searage, again for totally different reasons, needed to go. The pitchers still on this staff will swear by him as a human, but it couldn't have been clearer from multiple conversations this spring that he'd long since outlived his usefulness to their careers.
Felipe Vazquez needed to go ... well, straight to hell for what would have him thrown behind bars. But, excellent as he was at his job, he also was robustly unpopular with teammates, as the big San Francisco fight powerfully illustrated. Don't ever be deluded into thinking things like that don't matter in a team setting.
Startling Marte ... didn't need to go ... and yet, as I wrote on the day he was traded, he was the one who wanted out. He'd hinted as much to me in New York a week into that collapse, and he followed through once the season was done. I wouldn't lump him or anyone in with Vazquez, but he wasn't about to help if forced to stick around.
See where I'm going here?
No, it's not to suggest Keone Kela and/or Jarrod Dyson will replace those two. I don't think that'd be fair to either.
But everyone else?
I could see upgrades, possibly significant upgrades among them.
I've started to see Cherington make decisions that were the polar opposite from some of Huntington's models, as well as deeper traits that'll serve him and the franchise well. Most encouraging: His pursuits, the pieces he chases, are high-ceiling types, not players to plug holes. If he swings and misses, so be it, but he's at least swinging. I like it.
I'm getting to know Derek Shelton and appreciate, within that, why his players are swearing by the guy. They feel like he gets them, like he respects them and, in turn, like they'll have to succeed to keep that respect. It's a neat dynamic, and one that's not at all like it was under the Papa Bear Hurdle. 'Shelty,' as they call him, is just another baseball junkie right in their midst.
I'm looking forward, more than anything about the coming season, to learning more about the impact Oscar Marin, the new pitching coach, will have on his staff. Add up every positive syllable spoken in Bradenton about Cherington, Shelton, then everyone else in uniform, and you still wouldn't touch all the praise heaped onto Marin.
"That man," Joe Musgrove told me, "is going to change a lot of our careers for the better."
Musgrove, Brault, Trevor Williams and Mitch Keller, more than anyone, will decide how 2020 goes.
Which brings me, at long last, to an actual point: I'm not ruling out anything for the 2020 Pirates in a 60-game season that'll leave 16 teams standing for the playoffs.
Come on, you knew that's where this was headed, right?
Yesterday saw Rob Manfred and Tony Clark come together -- in person, not coincidentally -- to form what Manfred would powerfully describe as a 'jointly developed framework' to play ball this summer. To anyone who understands labor law, that's the beginning of the end, meaning in a good way. Those two men are authorized to singularly negotiate for their sides, and their 'framework' won't be discarded. The tough part's over.
The tough part includes:
• 60-game season
• July 19-Sept. 27 schedule
• Geography-based alignment
• 16 total playoff teams
• Universal DH
For the Pirates, all of that's a plus.
The shorter schedule mitigates their greatest shortcoming, meaning the lack of depth left behind by Huntington/Stark. Fewer games equals fewer innings of consequence for Clay Holmes, Dovydas Neverauskas and, wow, I mercifully can't even remember some of those names anymore.
Don't get me wrong: Musgrove, Brault, Williams and Keller need to stay healthy. Same for Derek Holland, the certain fifth starter. And that's doubly true if somehow further negotiations add doubleheaders into the equation. But being a staff horse in a 60-game schedule will mean taking the ball all of a dozen times. That's it. Holland's 33, but no other starter's older than 28. That'll help.
So will the geography aspect, with neither league's Central Divisions exactly overloaded with talent. And the expanded playoff field. And the DH, too. A recent talk I had with Shelton focused on the lack of pop at the bottom of his order, and he rightly pointed out that a DH would help the Pirates match other teams' lineups on that count alone.
And hey, as long as I'm citing 2019, those Pirates were 29-31 at the 60-game mark and, as such, would be on the fringe of playoff qualification in the proposed format. They also were a season-peak 24-20 at the 44-game mark, which, just for fun, would put them into super-serious contention in the proposed format and make for that rarest of all things in these parts: A relevant September.
Get it done, gentlemen. The last thing anyone at the top of the baseball structure ever considers is what's good for places like Pittsburgh, but this is rare air in the works.
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