Kovacevic: How this GM's winning me over ... with or without the winning taken at PNC Park (DK's 10 Takes)

JUSTIN BERL / GETTY

JT Brubaker awaits a new ball after the Diamondbacks' Christian Walker sent the previous one into the left-field bleachers in the second inning Friday night at PNC Park.

All that was missing was one more hit, one fewer JT Brubaker gopher ball, and oh, maybe an all-out aerial assault on the Pirates Charities sign.

But otherwise, my goodness ... I'm not even sure where to start in underscoring what all made this such an uplifting Friday night at PNC Park. And believe it or not, that's not even counting the postgame extravaganza over the Allegheny River that saw drone-lit images of Roberto Clemente, other Pittsburgh treasures and, for the showstopper, Johnny Cueto's skyline-sized hand dropping a baseball, all part of a masterpiece of motorized light unlike anything our city'd ever seen.

Want to start there?

Cool. Me, too:

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And that up there, my friends, was just the Roberto and Cueto sequence that drew the most passionate ovations from the 16,444 who'd hung around after the Pirates' 8-6 loss to the Diamondbacks.

Oh, right. The Pirates lost. There was that, too. End three-game winning streak. End any warm-and-fuzzy resonance from the West Coast trip.

Or, maybe not.

See, JT Brubaker served up gopher ball upon gopher ball -- three home runs out of six runs, eight hits and a bunch of balls in his four-plus innings -- in a rancid regression to his 2021 form.

All three were raked, too:

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And that'd almost singularly define the outcome once the offense just kept battling in vain, highlighted by Ke'Bryan Hayes' three-run blast ...

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... in a ninth inning that'd then see Bryan Reynolds single to bring the tying run to the plate three times, only to get stopped there by old friend Mark Melancon.

Of Brubaker's performance, Derek Shelton observed, "It just shows he's not at his best when the ball is in the air that much." Which was akin to suggesting those drones should've fled for cover with every pitch.

Alas, it's held true for a century and a half that there's no overcoming awful starting pitching.

But on top of that, I dare say, there's no point overvaluing its significance to this particular team in this particular moment.

Hear me out within the span of this single paragraph, please: Losing stinks. But there's going to be a lot more of it the rest of this summer. There just will. It's a hard reality that there's still a negligible depth of talent at hand, and that's got to be recognized even as it's recognized that this could change with more prospect arrivals and/or more maturation from the kids already here. And within that, there can be very real progress.

That make sense?

Nah?

OK, try this with me ...

Roansy Contreras matters. He'll pitch the second game of this series Saturday and show everyone again why he matters.

Hayes, Reynolds and David Bednar matter. The latter wasn't used in this game, but the first two each had a couple hits.

The even younger, recent callups matter, including Jack Suwinski going 3 for 4 in this game, even if they continue messing up. 

Mason Martin will matter more. And Oneil Cruz will matter even more than that.

Now try this ...

Brubaker won't matter. He arguably doesn't matter already. He's 28 years old, he's won one of his past 25 starts, and he is who he is. Which isn't anywhere enough to be part of anyone's future.

Yu Chang doesn't matter. Yoshi Tsutsugo doesn't matter. Josh VanMeter and Jake Marisnick and the world's most complete collection of .100-hitting catchers ... none of them matters. 

It takes no more than a cursory review of the Pirates' superior play since the 18-4 embarrassment by the Cardinals two Sundays ago to see the non-coincidence of more young players arriving the very next day. They're the ones who rose up against the Rockies, then out in San Diego, then out in Los Angeles for that strikingly decisive sweep of the Dodgers. That span was mostly about the main three guys and the kids, up and down the lineup.

Thing is, they know this. All of them know this. And that, most fortunately, extends all the way to the top of baseball ops.

I asked Ben Cherington before this game, out on the field, if a successful trip like the one his Pirates just had could have an impact on the entire organization, if everyone throughout could walk a little taller. And I've never been more impressed with one of his responses:

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"I think the impact is for the guys who are on the field, the guys who do it on the field," he'd reply flinch-free. "And sure, if players who were on that road trip hadn't played in those environments before, contributing to winning against good teams in an environment they hadn't experienced before ... I think that's where the impact is. Beyond that, no, we just ... we just need to keep getting better at everything."

At which point he motioned toward the visiting dugout.

"We're playing the Diamondbacks tonight. And they're a team that's playing well. And their pitching has improved. So turn the page and get ready for this game."

I tried a second time, asking what he -- just the GM and nobody else -- thought of those outcomes.

"I thought it threw off my sleep schedule," he'd reply with a slight smile before again going super-serious. "No, I thought that ... look, admittedly, we've got a lot of young players out there right now competing and playing hard and making mistakes ... because there were mistakes made, we made mistakes in those games. But we also came back and kept playing hard and executed enough to beat a good team. And of course it's good and feels good. But you've got to celebrate that and turn the page really quickly and play the Diamondbacks tonight."

Let me add some context here: Cherington and I have had more than one dialogue about the importance of winning at the Pittsburgh level to the overall process, and it's never been an area on which we've seemed to agree. 

To my view, the Pirates building up all kinds of positive feeling would only accelerate the learning, the improvement and the confidence of teachers and pupils alike that they're doing the right thing, and they're doing it toward a real goal.

To his view, as best I've been able to discern, the Pirates need to be coldly focused on "doing the things that lead to winning," as he'd later describe it here, citing as an example the organizational emphasis on pitchers "filling the zone"  with strikes. And as he'd further acknowledge, if there are players in the fold who can't do those things, then they get replaced by players who can. But the emphasis holds.

He's watching a different game than we are.

And I'm not sure he's wrong. I've never been sure of that. Because I've never encountered anyone quite like him. Intelligent. Driven. But above all, focused and undeterred. He gets that Shelton and the players on the field are at one level of this broader operation, and that he and his staff at another, and he doesn't get swayed by results in one direction or the other ... unless there's a setback in some methodologies or general philosophies.

That, by the way, is how he'll get himself into trouble by referring to "encouragement" about elements of the Pirates' performance on the same day they'd be blown out by two touchdowns. As he'd put it two days later in trying to explain that remark, "We want to win. We’re competitive. But we’ve also got to try to help each other compartmentalize that, show up the next day, focus on the stuff we can do to control that progress."

He liked stuff that most of us can't see in part because, candidly, most of us couldn't care less.

And conversely, as his above assessment illustrates, there just might be more that he didn't like about Los Angeles than he let on, while we see only the hugs and handshakes.

In the present, I'm grateful for this candor but also for the context. The easy, lazy response to the question I asked would've been to pump tires that were already overfilled. He didn't. He chose to keep looking, realistically, at the long road ahead. And what'll be needed to succeed when the junction matters.

In the interim, we've all got a dynamic three-player core in place, a few other young pieces, a process with a really smart guy overseeing it and, not to forget, super-awesome drone-lit sky bonanzas:

• Not to dismiss L.A. here. Far from it. 

As Cherington himself stressed, the outcomes alone do have a collective impact on "the guys who do it on the field."

Shelton spoke of the same when I brought it up with him beforehand:

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"I think it definitely plays into it, you know, the confidence, especially when you're dealing with young players," he replied. "I mean, we're dealing with a young group of players who went in, you know, to a place that had 50,000 people in it and performed really well. And even before that, we went into San Diego, and you know, they're a packed house and we played well there and we could have won two of three there. So I think playing well makes them carry themselves that way. It just gives you confidence."

Chris Stratton saw that much the same when we spoke: "I mean, the Dodgers are probably the best team in baseball. So anytime you can go toe to toe with them, and even pull the series off like we did, you have to be a little more confident in yourself. Yeah, I was just really proud of our team as a whole. But the bigger thing, I think, about that whole road trip was that we played really good baseball. And I just hope it continues."

• It actually did in this game, if conveniently setting aside Brubaker. 

The Pirates scratched out runs in each of the first three innings to outdo the first of the three home runs Brubaker allowed, a two-run shot by Christian Walker, but he kept watching them fly until getting the hook in the fifth.

And even after Arizona pulled ahead, 8-3, on two more home runs off Yerry De Los Santos in the seventh, by Jake McCarthy and the second of the day for Alek Thomas, the Pittsburgh ninth opened with a Tucupita Marcano double -- he's batting .320 with a .986 OPS through 25 at-bats since his recall -- and a Tyler Heineman walk. And again, after Hayes' home run and Reynolds' single, the crowd stood, chanted and cheered in a way I haven't heard at this place since ... yikes, 2019?

Would've really been something, on top of all the postgame fare.

Focus on who/what matters.

• Brubaker had a 2.63 ERA in May, mostly by manufacturing ways to keep the ball from clearing fences. And he's shown he has the raw material to get people out when they aren't hitting home runs off him. But then, they do a lot of that, and it's a heck of a bugaboo to be carrying around.

He won't come out of the rotation, but here's further betting Oscar Marin won't find a fix.

• Speaking of Marin and fixing pitchers, I had a good talk with Mitch Keller on this day. He sounds as if he's going to stick by that sinker that he basically taught himself a couple weeks ago. Learned the grip, began messing around with it in long-toss and applied it well enough the other night in L.A. that he ... well, he didn't command much, but he got by.

It'll be to his credit if it works. That's my point. This was 100% his initiative.

• Hayes was a home run in the making all night, swinging belligerently throughout. Great to see, given his restrictions all through 2021 with the wrist.

• Don't dare pronounce Reynolds out of his season-long slump, no matter what's witnessed in any small sample size. Every time it looks like some hey-he's-back moment, he'll corkscrew himself into the ground and flail. What a strange season he's having.

• Daniel Vogelbach was back from the IL after missing exactly 10 days to a strained hamstring, and he'd go 1 for 2 with two walks and ... my goodness, that was a struggle. Just watching him run was a struggle.

The corresponding move sent VanMeter to the IL, retroactive to Thursday, with a fractured left ring finger. And for whatever reason, it took until nearly 20 minutes before first pitch for all this to be sorted out, resulting in a ridiculous delay in delivering a lineup card. Not the first time the Pirates have done that this season.

• Thanks, as ever, for reading my baseball stuff.

For what it's worth, this was how the day began here:

photoCaption-photoCredit

DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS

PNC Park on a gorgeous Friday afternoon.

THE ESSENTIALS

Boxscore
Live file
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
• Scoreboard

THE HIGHLIGHTS

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THE INJURIES

10-day injured list: OF Ben Gamel (hamstring), RHP Heath Hembree (calf), OF Jake Marisnick (thumb), 1B Yoshi Tsutsugo (lumbar muscle strain), Josh VanMeter (finger)

60-day injured list: OF Greg Allen (hamstring), RHP Blake Cederlind (UCL), RHP Nick Mears (elbow surgery), Kevin Newman (groin), Roberto Pérez (hamstring, out for season)

THE LINEUPS

Shelton's card:

1. Ke'Bryan Hayes, 3B
2. Bryan Reynolds, CF
3. Daniel Vogelbach, DH
4. Michael Chavis, 1B
5. Rodolfo Castro, 2B
6. Jack Suwinski, RF
7. Diego Castillo, SS
8. Tucupita Marcano, LF
9. Tyler Heineman, C

And for Torey Lovullo's Diamondbacks:

1. Daulton Varsho, C
2. Josh Rojas, 3B
3. Ketel Marte, 2B
4. Christian Walker, 1B
5. David Peralta, LF
6. Pavin Smith, DH
7. Jake McCarthy, RF
8. Alek Thomas, CF
9. Geraldo Perdomo, SS

THE SCHEDULE

Middle match is Saturday, 4:05 p.m., and it's another Roansy Day. He'll face another righty, Zach Davies. Chris Halicke will have it covered.

THE CONTENT

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