The Pirates are bad. Really bad. They’ve lost games with bad pitching. They’ve lost games with bad hitting. They’ve gotten blown out and they’ve lost one-run games. Their bullpen has blown leads. They’ve lost games with bad defense. They’ve lost games with terrible base running. It would be easy to say that they’ve lost in every conceivable way this year, but every time I start thinking that they find new ways to lose. It’s disheartening and terrible to watch most nights of the week.
The thing is, it’s not even remotely new. This year, the Pirates are 30-58 right now but it was only four years ago that they limped into the All Star Break (at PNC Park, no less) with a 30-60 record. And sure their run differential was better that year and they were on pace to score more than 520 runs, but when you lose two of every three games, there’s a good chance that you suck something awful.
So instead of wallowing in how bad these Pirates are at the All-Star break, let’s turn back the clock a bit. This is the 2006 version that kicked off the second half of that season on their way to a much-trumpeted 37-35 finish (age in parenthesis):
- Nate McLouth, RF (24)
- Jack Wilson, SS (28)
- Freddy Sanchez, 3B (28)
- Jason Bay, LF (27)
- Sean Casey, 1B (31)
- Jose Castillo, 2B (25)
- Jose Bautista, CF (25)
- Ronny Paulino, C (25)
And this is the lineup the Pirates used yesterday, which is what their lineup will presumably look like most nights of the week after this year’s break:
- Andrew McCutchen, CF (23)
- Jose Tabata, LF (21)
- Neil Walker, 2B (24)
- Garrett Jones, 1B (29)
- Pedro Alvarez, 3B (23)
- Lastings Milledge, RF (25)
- Ryan Doumit, C (29)
- Ronny Cedeno, SS (27)
Which lineup would you rather watch every night? McLouth was the youngest position player on that entire team back in 2006 at the age of 24. Four of the Pirates’ first five hitters yesterday were that age or younger. That Pirate team was only really looking at big improvements from McLouth and Ryan Doumit (25) in the near future. This team has five starters under 26 and an enigma of a first baseman who may be capable of a little more than we saw from him in the first 88 games.
That 2006 team did eventually start to get better, but as they started to move towards their 75-win ceiling, huge portions of the team started to hit free agency and were traded away. We’ve got a lot longer until that happens to the heart of this 2010 lineup.
Almost since the inception of this blog, I’ve wanted whichever front office was in charge to blow the team up and start over with young guys. It’s finally happening. It’s a painful process and everyone’s taking some lumps because of it right now, but bringing up Tabata, Walker, and Alvarez and benching LaRoche, Clement, and Iwamura was the right thing to do. There’s no such thing as a good 30-58 team, but I’ll take this 2010 version over the 2006 version every day of the week.
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