Over the past few days, it’s been a little frustrating to me to see Oneil Cruz singled out for criticism. I know it hasn’t been an auspicious start to the 2024 campaign for the Bucs gargantuan shortstop, but then again, who in this lineup is off to a good start? Cruz has been exactly replacement level so far this year, which puts him ahead of such esteemed players as Andrew McCutchen and other young Bucs like Jack Suwinski, Henry Davis, and Jared Triolo. And unlike Cruz, all of those players spent 2023 playing baseball, mostly in the major leagues. Cruz went almost an entire calendar year ..read more

Photo by Dan Gaken. The Pirates have been racking up losses lately — including a sweep at the hands of the Oakland A’s this week, a team that barely exists — and even someone with little knowledge on the workings of baseball like Bob Nutting can probably figure out why: the Bucs aren’t scoring runs. In the 17 games since defeating the Phillies 9-2 on April 14, the Bucs have score 5 runs once. They’ve scored 4 runs twice in that span, with one of those coming in an extra-innings victory where the Pirates scored 3 runs in 10th, and thus one of those runs came courtesy of the Manfred ghost runner ..read more

When a team loses over and over again in the same fashion, it becomes challenging to find new things to say about them. That’s why I really don’t have much to say about the Pirates’ latest loss on Tuesday night, which played out like most of their games over the past three weeks. Mitch Keller was the starter and wasn’t particularly sharp, but his 5-inning, 3-run performance was good enough to give most teams a chance to win. The bullpen was a little shakier, coughing up 2 more runs. But ultimately the performance of the pitching staff, and their ability or failure to execute, was irrelevant. T ..read more

When I went to bed Monday night, the Pirates were well on their way to dropping the first game of this Oakland series and had only managed one hit. For my recap, I was just planning to post a link to the clip from Major League of Bob Uecker, playing the Cleveland Indians’ radio broadcaster, exclaiming “one goddamn hit?” It was hardly an original idea, but it would have been easy and it would have accurately summed up my feelings on Monday’s game. Alas, I woke up to discover that Oneil Cruz just had to single in the 9th inning, which means I actually have to write something for this recap in th ..read more

Photo by Jakob von Raumer. Sunday was the one-month mark for the 2024 season (which began on March 28) and the first full month of baseball will come to an end on Tuesday. For the Pittsburgh Pirates, this past month was a story of two halves. In the first half, the Pirates raced out to a 9-2 start — their best record through 11 games in more than 30 years — and saw their playoff odds climb to almost 40%, the club’s best mark since 2016. The first three series against the Marlins, Nationals and Orioles played out like a best-case scenario for the 2024 season: the starting rotation was much bett ..read more

Incredibly, the Pirates had not yet been shut out this year coming into Friday night despite the fact that this club seems to find new levels of offensive ineptitude with each passing week. After Friday’s loss, that is no longer the case. I went to bed after the Bucs failed to score in the 7th, figuring if I stayed up to keep watching the Pirates would only make me mad and tired the next morning. And I was right on the money ..read more

Remember earlier this season, when the Pirates rolled to a 9-2 start despite making a litany of mistakes in both the field and on the basepaths? There’s a good chance you do, given all the comments about it I remember seeing online. We were all amazed that the Bucs were able to get off to such an impressive start despite their lack of fundamentals, and we all wondered how good this team could really be if they cleaned up their play. Well, one thing has changed since then: the Pirates have stopped winning, but the mistakes in the field go on. In retrospect, perhaps it was easier for the Bucs to ..read more

There is plenty that I could write about the Pirates’ pitching on Wednesday night. I could talk about how Josh Fleming actually looked decent, and whether Derek Shelton pulled him too soon. I could talk about how Luis Ortiz got squeezed at the plate, which led to the winning run being walked home in the 3rd inning. I could talk about how Roansy Contreras still looks very much like a work in progress, while Hunter Stratton has been solid. I could write about the bigger implications of Wednesday’s game as well, such as why the Pirates are still doing bullpen games in Year 5 of the Ben Cherington ..read more

Look — the season isn’t even a month old. Bailey Falter has only made five starts, including Tuesday night’s performance. And one month or five starts does not tell us anything definitive about a starting pitcher. At this point a year ago, Vince Velasquez was looking like an uncovered gem, and Johan Oviedo was pitching like an ace in the making. Oviedo eventually came down to Earth, and Velasquez went down with what turned out to be a season-ending injury shortly thereafter (he is still a free agent). So I am not ready to make any grand proclamations about Bailey Falter on April 24, other than ..read more

It is one thing for me to log on here after each loss and write that the Pirates can’t keep playing this badly forever, but it’s another thing to believe it. With each runner stranded in scoring position, with every butchered defensive play, with each called strike 3 looking, it gets increasingly difficult for me to believe that the Bucs can turn this season around. Obviously this team wasn’t about to finish the year 11-151, but every loss and scoreless inning made it harder to believe that the Pirates had more in common with the club that started the season 9-2 than the team that dropped six ..read more