MILWAUKEE -- There's bad luck, there's the worst luck, and then there's Andrew McCutchen's luck of late:
Sal Frelick went AIRBORNE! pic.twitter.com/I7ZbYux9qB
— MLB (@MLB) May 15, 2024
I mean ...
"I don't know," he'd tell me after the Pirates' 4-3 loss to the Brewers on this Tuesday night at American Family Field. "I don't even know what to say anymore."
Nor should he. He's been shooting lasers all over creation for a month straight, he's barreled up the ball at a rate that's double his career norm and, as Derek Shelton replied when I'd brought this up in the afternoon, "He just keeps finding gloves." Like the spectacularly sprawling glove of Milwaukee's center fielder, Sal Frelick, on that gem above to end the eighth inning.
Earlier, Frelick robbed Jared Triolo, as well. And Triolo'd be robbed once more, leaving him shaking his head almost as hard.
"We've got some guys," Shelton would observe upon citing both Cutch and Triolo, "who are a little snakebit."
No question. That's wholly legit.
In the smallest of sample sizes.
See, here's the thing: For any and all problems these Pirates might have at a specific snapshot in time, they'll always boomerang back to the biggest of all being that ... collectively, they can't hit.
As in, they'd manage three whole hits in this one against four Milwaukee pitchers, headed by Joe Ross.
As in, they'd work one whole walk despite those pitchers throwing a combined 56 balls.
As in, they'd strike out 13 times.
As in, they'd generate the entirety of their evening's offense on three swings by Oneil Cruz, Nick Gonzales and, of course, Connor Joe ...
Another night, another Oneil Cruz extra-base hit
— Platinum Ke’Bryan (@PlatinumKey13) May 15, 2024
109.7 MPH exit velocity, .880 xBA pic.twitter.com/EtRETXxB8m
THAT ONE'S GONZO!!
— Platinum Ke’Bryan (@PlatinumKey13) May 15, 2024
Nick Gonzales just DEMOLISHED this baseball
103.3 MPH exit velocity, 396 feet, HR in 29/30 ballparks (except for Camden Yards) pic.twitter.com/m0z8vHZRXS
Connor Joe with ANOTHER home run, this time in the Top of the 9th with 2 outs
— Platinum Ke’Bryan (@PlatinumKey13) May 15, 2024
100.4 MPH exit velocity, 380 feet, HR in 29/30 ballparks pic.twitter.com/7tQzGDpSpS
... while achieving nothing more than a solitary baserunner -- Joe walked -- among all the rest.
Oh, they'll bust out occasionally, as with the five home runs in the bizarre Paul Skenes debut game Saturday back home, or the three home runs here Monday. But it never builds momentum. It never morphs into something more, something that comes with consistency.
Know why?
Because ... collectively, they can't hit.
We can fret and fuss over any hitter's fortune or lack thereof, or whether or not enough hitters can unearth their innate clutch-iness in certain situations. We can also pick nits about a particular pitching performance, a defensive gaffe, a baserunning lapse or, as I rolled out yesterday onto the biggest-picture outlook I've got, the caliber -- and care factor -- of the management at hand. And in those moments, it'll feel like fair game, if only because there's fresh information in baseball with each new day.
The undercurrent, though, stays as solid as bedrock. In a bottoming-out kinda way.
Since the Pirates' 9-2 start, they've now gone 10-22. For real. Across Major League Baseball, only the Angels' 9-23 in that latter span has been worse. And within that span, they've been a mid-level operation in most facets -- albeit a bit up with the starting rotation, a bit down in the bullpen -- while these have been their offensive rankings among the majors' 30 teams:
• Batting average: .203 (29th)
• On-base percentage: .279 (30th)
• Slugging percentage: .326 (29th)
• OPS: .605 (29th)
• Runs per game: 2.97 (30th)
• Home runs: 29 (17th)
• Strikeouts: 293 (25th)
There's nowhere to hide from it. Individually, on a typical night, half of Shelton's lineup sits below the Mendoza line. On this night, that was Cutch (.193), Jack Suwinski (.172) and Triolo (.197), whose 0-for-3 here added to ongoing 0-for-10 and 2-for-28 stretches and, by all rights, should've had him back in the minors if not for Ke'Bryan Hayes' back injury. And lest anyone forget, Rowdy Tellez is at .178 with one home run in 119 plate appearances.
I don't have the answers for what's in-house. Cutch, again, is swinging very well. Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds look stronger of late. But Hayes wasn't showing pop when he was healthy, and I can't see Jon Nunnally taking Ben Cherington's call to return. (I'm joking, but not really.) Cherington plainly doesn't want to promote any of his top hitters from Class AAA Indianapolis -- Ji Hwan Bae's crushing a 1.005 OPS, for example -- judging by his remark over the weekend that "the way to get better here is for the players here to get better and improve and perform more consistently." And there's no trace of an outside move on the horizon.
So, basically, I guess this is it. They'll keep running the same players out there, including Tellez, as Shelton reiterated before this game. They'll keep pushing the same passive approach, as applied through Andy Haines' instruction. They'll keep hoping -- and maybe not more than that -- for results in a minor-league system that's seen top hitting prospect Termarr Johnson plunge off a figurative cliff with Class A Greensboro at .172 with one home run and four extra-base hits in 136 plate appearances, and, now, as a bonus, has Henry Davis off to a 3-for-19, seven-strikeout start with Indianapolis.
That's a No. 4 overall pick and a No. 1, by the way. Pedigree galore. Production within Pittsburgh's system ... gone.
Yeah, my friends, I'm tired of this topic, too. But tell me, please: What's the path around it? To pretend it doesn't exist, as both Cherington and Shelton seem to prefer, at least when it's broached publicly? To trust their army of advanced analytical aces that, oh, yeah, it's comin' like a freight train? To just wait it out, like they're trying to run up the baseball gods' pitch count?
Want to see the nuttiest stat of all?
The Pirates' record when they score four-plus runs: 16-3
The record when they score fewer than four: 3-21
And for further context, there are 21 teams in the majors that average 4.0 or more runs per game, while the Pirates rank 26th at 3.74.
It doesn't feel too crazy to consider that simply giving a crap -- acknowledging the principal problem and putting forth the best effort to address it, up to and including whatever change would be necessary -- could account for that critically missing quarter-of-a-run, does it?
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