The same sorry names made up most of the same sorry lineup for the same sorry reasons.
And by the time the Pirates were finally put down by the Marlins, 6-5, on this overcast, underwhelming Sunday afternoon at PNC Park, the same blank faces roamed about the clubhouse as if hoping to avoid wooden stakes, the same stone silence emanated from Major League Baseball's most sparingly used sound system, and the setting seemed no less stoic in the manager's office, where Derek Shelton, Ben Cherington and some staff gathered to discuss ... oh, probably the manipulation of yet another player's service time, if I had to guess.
It's awful. All of it.
I have no idea how anyone willingly watches this season at this stage, particularly now that it couldn't be clearer that the people in charge don't care about it in the slightest.
Please don't even attempt to argue that point. It's quite literally inarguable.
When the starting lineup's littered, loss after loss after loss, with the too-old, too-hopeless likes of Yoshi Tsutsugo and Josh VanMeter -- because hey, maybe there's a GM somewhere who's been lobotomized within the past month and might want to acquire one or both before the trade deadline -- it's inarguable.
When Tsutsugo's the DH and he's slotted to bat eighth, it's inarguable.
When VanMeter's batting second, where all analytics advocate putting the team's best bat rather than its worst, it's inarguable.
When Roansy Contreras is wasting his and everyone's time pitching in Indianapolis despite having done quite well in Pittsburgh, in a transparent attempt to ensure he'll be paid less money 3-4 years from now -- don't ask me to explain Super-2 arbitration, but that's the outcome -- it's inarguable.
When one of the roster's few capable hitters, Daniel Vogelbach, gets traded to the Mets in what might legit be a promising return in big reliever Colin Holderman, and that reliever, fresh off 15 dominating appearances in New York, gets demoted right away to the minors for the curiously specific targeted span of 15 days, coming across as more service-time manipulation -- it's inarguable.
When Jack Suwinski gets reasonably sent back to Indianapolis after 14 rookie home runs here were followed by an 0-for-29 nosedive, but one can also envision that Suwinski could bat 1.000 for the next two weeks -- he homered twice Friday against St. Paul -- and still not be brought back until his own Super-2 status gets cemented -- it's inarguable.
When Roberto Perez goes down early with a season-ending injury, and Cherington's response at catcher -- a position that impacts not only the lineup but also, for crying out loud, all of the pitchers -- is to roll out the current revolving door of whoevers -- it's inarguable.
And when all of this crap's playing out on home soil -- and say what one will about attendance, but 15,188 people did pay to watch this one -- it's both inarguable and offensive.
Don't do the micro, my friends. Never think about the last bad move or bad call. That's letting them off the hook. Always go macro.
That's been my concern with this management for quite a while now, and it's only growing. Yeah, of course I grasp the benefits of service-time manipulation. And I'm positive I grasp as much as any reporter in the country how the Pirates have to seize upon every advantage available within Major League Baseball's grossly imbalanced economic structure.
That's not the concern. Rather, it's that I can't picture these guys flipping the switch when the time comes. I just can't.
I like them. I believe in the overarching objective. I swear I do. But in three years of covering this management, the one and only time I felt as if the game being played in front of them was a priority came May 30 in Los Angeles, when Shelton, maybe sensing how eager his young group was to beat the billion-dollar Dodgers, strikingly allowed David Bednar to take an extra inning to close it out even though he'd hit a pitch count of 50. And even then, by the time the team flew home and had a lot of fans all excited, it was Cherington who essentially rained all over the achievement.
What if that's just his DNA? And Shelton's, for that matter?
Losing's a wholly miserable experience, for almost any coach, manager, GM, executive I've ever covered. Mike Tomlin becomes a monster. Mike Sullivan becomes the creature that's about to eat that monster. Jim Rutherford becomes ... damn, like Galactus landing on Earth to devour us all. Those are cap sports, I know, and not the same situations. But I could go right down the line with the Pirates, including Clint Hurdle and Neal Huntington, and I'd see them exalt with victory, fume with losses, albeit in their own ways.
This ... I have no idea. And I can't imagine a more damning sentiment I've ever shared about anyone in such positions.
JUSTIN BERL / GETTY
Mitch Keller pitches in the first inning Sunday at PNC Park.
• Mitch Keller, so strong of late, was solid again with six innings of three earned runs, five hits, seven strikeouts and no walks. And he did so in the face of maybe the majors' premier pitcher, Miami flamethrower Sandy Alcantara, who'd also go six innings with two earned runs, two hits and 10 strikeouts.
"Try to not think about the matchup too much, but he started an All-Star Game, so it's kind of an elephant in the room. He's a really good pitcher," Keller would say afterward of Alcantara "I thought our guys did a really good job keeping us in the game and allow myself to keep us in the games as much as possible. It was a great game. Just fell a little short."
In 10 starts since being placed back in the rotation May 31 after a brief bump into the bullpen, Keller's got a 3.51 ERA. In his past three starts, he's conceded a total of four runs.
Story of the year for this team so far. Good for him. Can't be easy to rise above all that ambivalence.
• OK, I'll finally say it: Credit to Oscar Marin, not only for Keller's comeback but also for the steadiness of JT Brubaker, Jose Quintana and Zach Thompson. Heck, if management prioritized 2022 over counting beans far into the future, Contreras could be part of this, as well.
Either way, it's been a good summer for the pitching coach.
• Not so much for the hitting coach, Andy Haines, who can't possibly be instructing his hitters anything at all beyond the launch-angle, swing-for-the-fences approach.
I mean, good luck explaining these whiffs by Diego Castillo and Kevin Newman to close out the ninth and strand the walk-off run at second base:
In addition both third strikes being well below the zone, it's obvious no adjustment had been made at any point of either at-bat. Castillo, in particular, looked like he was trying annihilate the ball all the way to Aspinwall.
I don't care if those were reincarnations of Ralph Kiner and Willie Stargell up there, a hitter's got to find a way to just make contact, to shorten up, to not swing out of the shoes. All that matters is that runner reaching home.
I asked Shelton, a former hitting coach, if the launch-angle approach has stripped away his ability to instruct hitters to adjust when they've got runners on second and/or third:
"Yeah, I mean, the difference with second and third there is you’ve got the best pitcher in baseball on the mound," Shelton replied, referring to Alcantara. "That guy’s electric. I don’t know how many pitches he had at 100, but he’s throwing 100. He’s throwing a changeup that’s probably as good as anybody in the game. It’s challenging. ... So, the initial part of that question, yeah, I mean, to make contact it is important. Off this guy, it’s extremely challenging because he’s coming at you with multiple weapons."
Eh. Not really what I asked since I never brought up Alcantara, but he's free to answer as he pleases.
I asked Ben Gamel a similar question, from the broad perspective and not just this game: Can hitters still shorten up?
"I think it kind of depends on who you ask, but yeah, situationally. I think the game pretty much always tells us what we need. People get lost in launch angle, and pitchers are really good. For me, launch angle is a contact point. If I catch a ball where I want to, it's gonna go. If not, it's, you know, not gonna go."
The eyes don't lie: These players have one approach, one swing, one way to either get a hit or make an out.
Imagine the team that's smart enough to swing this pendulum back to where it belongs.
• Speaking of situations: Castillo's at-bat in the ninth, illustrated above, came at the expense of Jason Delay. Although Delay's work is a small sample size, he'd been batting .385 against right-handed pitching to Castillo's .153, and it doesn't take Bill James to dissect that this was a terrible decision that deserved the doom that followed.
I wanted to ask Shelton about this, too, but the PNC Park elevator from the press box didn't seem to be arriving, so I took the steps the whole way down, arrived a couple minutes late and, to be candid, wasn't sure if anyone else had already asked.
Whatever. Not as if anyone's losing sleep over it.
• If Delay's such a wonderful story, slashing .333/.385/.500 in his first 14 big-league games at age 27, then how, I dare ask, should we categorize the story of how he was nearly cut from Indianapolis' roster just a month ago?
On June 10, after Delay had been idle for 13 games down there, he was told by manager Miguel Perez that his services basically were no longer needed, that he could stay as the bullpen catcher if he'd like. That prompted Delay, understandably, to consider getting out of baseball altogether.
And now he's here and productive?
Which wizard made that initial decision?
• Bednar lost the game in the 10th, but he did so, as Shelton correctly observed, on "a flare and a flare." No big whoop. Pitched Saturday night, too. He's fine.
• Oneil Cruz is a terror ...
... but so far, only if he's allowed to be. And I'm beyond convinced that, before this 99.4-mph Alcantara fastball was bashed against the back fence above the Clemente Wall, Miami's ace had made up his mind to go right at his fellow Dominican with nothing but heat. You know, mano a mano.
Not a great idea with Cruz. Feed him the slow stuff, and he'll still flail. Until he figures it out.
• Had a quick talk with Bryan Reynolds after this game. He expects to be back in the lineup "in the next couple days" and with no rehab stint. That sounds ambitious for someone who's been out two weeks with a strained right oblique, but it'd sure be welcome.
• They can't get another year to do this crap. They just can't. And that might mean forcibly flipping the switch from the very top, and that's not at all Bob Nutting's personality, which is yet another concern. Maybe the greatest of them.
• Thanks for reading my baseball stuff. And thanks again to all those who came Downtown for our eighth anniversary over the weekend.
JUSTIN BERL / GETTY
The Marlins' JJ Bleday steals second base ahead of Oneil Cruz's tag in the second inning Sunday at PNC Park.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
• Scoreboard
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• 10-day injured list: OF Bryan Reynolds (right oblique)
• 15-day injured list: RHP Chase De Jong (knee)
• 60-day injured list: OF Canaan Njigba-Smith (wrist), RHP Blake Cederlind (UCL), RHP Nick Mears (elbow surgery) RHP Max Kranick (elbow), C Roberto Pérez (hamstring)
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
1. Kevin Newman, 2B
2. Josh VanMeter, 1B
3. Ke'Bryan Hayes, 3B
4. Ben Gamel, LF
5. Cal Mitchell, RF
6. Greg Allen, CF
7. Oneil Cruz, SS
8. Yoshi Tsutsugo, DH
9. Jason Delay, C
And for Don Mattingly's Marlins:
1. Joey Wendle, 2B
2. Miguel Rojas, SS
3. Jesús Aguilar, 1B
4. Avisaíl García, DH
5. JJ Bleday, CF
6. Bryan De La Cruz, RF
7. Jesus Sanchez, LF
8. Willians Astudio, 3B
9. Jacob Stallings, C
THE SCHEDULE
It's out to Wrigley but only for a couple -- Monday night and a Tuesday matinee -- before boomeranging right back here for four with the Phillies. The opener against the Cubs pits Jeff Brubaker (2-8, 4.10) against Adrian Sampson (0-1, 3.40). Alex Stumpf has that trip.
THE CONTENT
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