PIRATES

Bottom of the sixth. Two outs. No one aboard, nothing doing, as ever, for the Pirates' pathetic offense on this partly cloudy but somehow not at all sunny Sunday afternoon at PNC Park.

Bryan Reynolds in the box. The roster's erstwhile best hitter.

Aaron Civale's on the rubber for the White Sox. Owner of a 5.30 ERA, second-highest among all Major League Baseball starters.

A 3-0 count, to boot.

At which point ...

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Reynolds took strike one. Then strike two. Then fouled one off. Then another. Then another. 

And then ...

Oh, my. Letter-high sinker, set on the proverbial tee. Right through it. 

With that, he stripped off his batting gloves and, one at a time, whipped both into the grass.

"Everybody's working hard," he'd tell me a lot later of that moment. "It's just not translating."

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I don't want this lost in translation: The players deserve a bunch of the blame for all of this.

For being blown out a third consecutive day -- the final here was 7-2, and the aggregate for the weekend was 27-7 -- by the American League's worst team.

For losing 11 of the past 12.

For being 39-61 at the 100-game milepost, a pace for precisely 99 losses.

For being so pathetic offensively that even the occasional Civale on the pitching schedule can cruise through a solitary unearned run and three Charmin-soft hits over six innings.

For struggling so much on the mound of late that, if it's not Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, Dennis Santana or David Bednar out there, it's been an outpour for the opponent.

Oh, there's blame for Bob Nutting. The airplane banners and 'SELL! THE! TEAM' chants reverberated a whole lot louder than the bats through this series, and not without cause.

I'll get to him.

And it's beyond mind-numbing at this stage that Ben Cherington, the chief architect of this sickening summer in the sixth year of his tenure, remains employed.

You'd better believe I'll get to him.

And Don Kelly can't be exempt. Honeymoons don't last long in professional sports, and his might've expired as soon as the team charter landed in Seattle on the Fourth, only to be followed by three straight shutouts.

He'll be in this, too.

But allow me, please, to flip the script, if only to pause the regular refrains here. Because the only person responsible for Reynolds going 0 for 4 with a K in this game also happens to be the only person responsible for Reynolds, he of the team-record $106.75 million contract, now batting .229 with a pedestrian 10 home runs and .662 OPS.

I love the dude. Always have. But that ain't it, and he knows it.

"It's just," he'd say to me here before a long pause, "... tough right now."

It shows. And he, at least, lets it show.

Where are the rest?

What about Spencer Horwitz, part of Cherington's endless series of sickly trade acquisitions, who's batting .229 with two whole home runs in 192 plate appearances, failing to run out what'd wind up a 3-6-3 double play to end the third inning?

Take a look:

One fan in the upper deck barked out, "Nice hustle!"

Number of other teams that'd have Horwitz as their starting first baseman: Zero.

What about several other players barely breaking a sweat over that same 90 feet?

What about Oneil Cruz allowing an alleged double to sail over his head and land on the track in center for two Chicago runs, then casually -- seriously, like carefree -- striking out looking to end the game and earning every one of the loud boos that'd follow?

That's a nice curve, but come on, that's all that guy'd been throwing. And it was Cruz's third consecutive K, all looking a lot like that.

What about all the fire and fun and even a bit of budding faith from that 6-0 homestand that took place earlier this month and, yet, a freaking lifetime ago?

For that matter, what about general competence?

What about Jack Suwinski going 0 for 3 with two strikeouts of his own and ... God bless this really good kid who tries so hard, but it's bordering on cruelty to keep running him out there amid a season where he's now 6 for 57 with 28 strikeouts?

What about Joey Bart, another relentless worker, swinging through high heat as if he'd never faced it in his life and fanning all three times up, leaving him at .232 with one whole home run in 226 plate appearances?

And although the other catcher didn't play, what about Henry Davis being 3 for 25 so far in July, his season average at .191 and an exact match for his big-league average four years after being the No. 1 overall pick in the MLB Draft?

The players bear some significant responsibility for whether or not they're competent at what they do. And, while acknowledging the role of the manager and coaches in this, in my eyes, they bear all of the responsibility for whether or not they're exerting themselves to the fullest. 

Same goes for leadership.

I've written this for weeks, and I'll reiterate: If there's leadership taking place in this clubhouse, it's being brilliantly disguised. And that's only bound to balloon with Adam Frazier just having been shipped away for some 28-year-old shortstop being painted by management as a prospect.

I asked Reynolds here if, with all the civic criticism of the owner and GM, there shouldn't be more on the players themselves.

"Yeah, we need to be better," he'd reply. "We need to score more runs and do all that. So, I mean, it's on us, too."

I then asked if there's enough accountability within the clubhouse.

"I mean, obviously, nobody's going out there trying to fail. Everybody's working hard."

They aren't. Too many of these players, whether over trying or pure talent, are part of the problem.

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It'd be idiotic to principally blame Kelly. He's been the manager for a couple months, and he can only play the players he's being given by a virtually comatose GM. 

But there are lessons to be learned from a lot of this for Kelly, not least of which is how he might respond to adversity unlike anything he could've encountered in his post-playing career.

To wit: How to create that accountability?

If he pulls every hitter who isn't hitting, he'll be submitting a mostly blank -- and illegal, by the way -- lineup card to the umpires. If he pulls every runner who doesn't run hard, every fielder who makes a mental mistake ... then he might risk further damaging an offense that can't afford to be without a single capable hitter. 

Kelly'd told me in Seattle he prefers an environment in which his hitters never feel like their plate appearances are a lock. I reminded him of that after this game and asked how he navigates that when next to nobody's coming through.

“It’s a fine line," he'd reply. "We want to get them all going and find a way to get that confidence going like we had that last homestand. Yesterday, I thought we swung the bats better, had a bunch of basehits. Today, not as good. But we just need to find a way to get that confidence rolling, get them going up there and attacking pitches."

I don't have a ton to add on this one. It'll take time to see how it unfolds, and Kelly's a quality individual who's well worth the patience that'd require.

For now, though, I won't hold back: There's a very Derek Shelton feel to this clubhouse of late, and that script's got to be flipped sooner rather than later, regardless of the player personnel.

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In Neal Huntington's Year 6, the Pirates won 94 games, made the playoffs for the first time in forever and, to the credit of a ton of people at the time, made the Blackout happen.

In Cherington's Year 6, the team's worse than ever. It's literally regressed.

I'm tired of fussing over this guy. I'm tired of pointing out flagrantly obvious facts like how the Pirates, under his watch, are 333-475, a .412 winning percentage that, sadly enough, would look wonderful compared to their current .390. I'm tired of sifting through the terrible trades and signings, the shallow drafts, the nonexistent international pool, or even at other teams' acquisitions in the same span.

I'm not about to make some big deal about Mike Tauchman, for instance, but he's the guy who belted that home run into the Allegheny River early in this game. He's a right fielder, he's batting .289 with a .383 on-base, five home runs and 25 RBIs, and he was signed out of free agency this past winter by Chicago for one year at $1.95 million.

Boom:

So, in addition to being the Pirates' most productive hitter by a gaping margin, he could've been one of their cheapest.

Fire this guy. Enough's enough. 

It's way more than enough, actually. Every single day he keeps his job is an insult to everyone who cares about -- or, more important, is part of -- this organization at every level.

Add to that hearing Cherington say, as he did on his weekly radio show this morning, "Our goal is to win in 2026 and we're looking to improve the team. ... We need to find ways over the next several days to July 31 to put ourselves in a better situation going forward, to increase the chances of the Pirates being a winning team in 2026 and beyond. That’s our only focus."

Then imagine that Nutting would actually allow this spectacular failure of an executive to make any moves at all in advance of that trade deadline, to do further damage before a successor can be found.

Yeah, no. Just go away.

And take all the out-sized brains who discovered Bryan De La Cruz with you.

____________________

Ultimately, all accountability both begins and ends at the top of any structure. And given that Travis Williams oversees only business operations -- he ranks higher than Cherington, but he'd never be able to make the call on firing the GM -- that means Nutting.

Because of course it does.

Because it always has.

I've covered his entire tenure that began in 2007, meaning all of the bad and, yeah, the bit of good, too. I was delighted to hear from him in the Dominican Republic after he'd taken his own tour of the team's facilities down there in the late 2000s, determining that they'd need to be -- and would be -- built up to state-of-the-art. I was impressed with his hiring of Clint Hurdle, very much counter to his more common don't-shake-the-ship choices. I gave proper credit to the owner for the three playoff appearances in 2013-15, all three of which were founded on record payrolls. I applauded his eating $17 million in future commitments to clean house in the front office after the 2019 season. 

But this ... it's indefensible.

Keeping this GM on board and, while I'm at it, behaving this way over some draft pick while the big-league team's drowning out on the road ...

... and then distributing that on social media, as if they'd finally won something ... I'm sorry, but that's as low on the loser scale as it gets.

Nor is there any counter for ignoring the very vocal, very visible pleas from the public -- whether it's being flown by a plane or just shouted out loud at the ballpark -- for real change. It's one thing to tune out the fans because they've got some silly ideas or prefer to see things rushed, but this is neither.

Pittsburghers aren't stupid. Baseball's been here for 144 years, and it'll be here long after we're all gone. We know trash when we see it.

Take it out.

Or take this as a sign from above:

JUSTIN BERL / GETTY