Who was the Pirates starting third basemen on Opening Day? How did he play? And where is he now? What about the guy across the infield from him? Who was their left fielder? Their second baseman? The guy everyone expected to be the sleeper-ace of the pitching staff? Their catcher? What happened to these guys? Who was the pitching coach that was supposed to straighten out a terrible pitching staff and help them realize their potential? What happened to him? What happened to the bench coach that undermined the manager’s authority? What happened to the anticipated rookie starter who got shelled? What happened to the veteran reliever who couldn’t throw strikes?
This is what I don’t understand about the constant demands that John Russell hold his players “accountable” for their poor play. What’s he supposed to do? On Opening Day the starting lineup included Andy LaRoche, who’s been banished to the bench, Aki Iwamura, who’s been banished to the minor leagues for the rest of his Pirate career despite his stellar play in Triple-A, Jeff Clement, who spent a long sojourn in Triple-A and has been classified as a bench player now, Lastings Milledge, who’s been moved into a time share in right field because neither his bat nor his glove are good enough to be an every day player, and Ryan Doumit, who’s been shifted into a part-time role because of his inability to play catcher. Brendan Donnelly, Ryan Church, and Bobby Crosby, all veteran free agent acquisitions who didn’t pull their weight, have been set free. Charlie Morton, the rotation’s huge disappointment, spent most of the year in the minor leagues and is only back in Pittsburgh because of Ross Ohlendorf’s injury. Brad Lincoln was put on a short leash when he struggled in Pittsburgh. Joe Kerrigan was fired in part because of Lincoln and Morton’s struggles. Both Milledge and Ronny Cedeno and probably Ryan Doumit have spent time on the bench at various points this season for what amount to disciplinary purposes.
Now it’s September and the Pirates are awful. What’s left to do? Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata, Neil Walker, and Andrew McCutchen have to play just about every day. If those four come out of this year better than they entered it, 2010 isn’t really a bad year for the Pirates even if they lose 115 games. That means that JR has flexibility at catcher, right field, shortstop, and first base. Doumit’s not really a viable option at catcher, which crosses that position off. The only alternative to Cedeno at short is Argenis Diaz and he generally looks and plays like a minnow in a shark tank at this level. The right field rotation generally requires JR to play Milledge, Doumit, or Delwyn Young who somehow manages to combine the worst characteristics of both of them. The one thing he could maybe do is put Jeff Clement at first base and move Garrett Jones to right field, but does anyone honestly believe that would make things better? Because neither one can hit and while Clement’s not an awful first baseman, Jones is sort of like a more graceful version of Lastings Milledge or Ryan Doumit in the outfield. That’s a nice way of saying that he doesn’t flop all over the place like he’s got no control of his limbs when he fails to get to any of the numerous balls he can’t reach. What, exactly, is a manager supposed to do hold players “accountable?” If he benches Milledge for Doumit, people get upset. If he plays Diaz for Cedeno and Diaz screws up, people blame that on him. If he puts Milledge back out there and Milledge does what he usually does, that’s his fault, too.
But now the story is that Russell hasn’t held the players “accountable” and so if he’s not fired, then the front office isn’t holding HIM accountable for failing to be King Midas and if the front office deflects blame from him, then no one’s holding THEM accountable for the heinous crime of trying an honest-to-god rebuilding project for the first time since Syd Thrift was in charge. A a result, now DK charges Russell with not holding the players accountable with no real suggestions as to how he might do that even though he benched Milledge as recently as Saturday in a game he probaby would’ve played (there was a lefty on the mound) in normally if he didn’t have a tendency to play the outfield like right field is a bowling lane and he’s in slippers. And there’s a ridiculous Bob Smizik blog entry about firing Russell that once you strip the Pirates’ record and dates out of it includes more exclamation points in its title than objective facts about the situation in the text. And I’ve seen John Russell called a “moran” on the internet way too many times to have much faith left in humanity.
Honestly, I’m not sure Russell is the best guy for the Pirates’ job anymore. It’s certainly possible that the club needs a Michel Therrien to light into them both privately and publicly and start a fire that Russell can’t start. But it’s also possible that that sort of manager would only alienate an Andrew McCutchen who may be trying to play through an injury or a Pedro Alvarez who’s doing everything he can and still going through dry spells at the plate. The Pirates had a coach who’s a notorious hardass, who mixed it up with players, and who apparently thought that Russell was not doing his job. The front office sided with Russell.
Look, I have no idea what the players think of John Russell. It certainly seems possible that his low-key demeanor has caused him to “lose” the clubhouse, that no one’s afraid of him and that’s causing even more mental mistakes than we saw earlier in the year. But I don’t know that for sure and I’m not really sure anyone outside the front office does. I do know that Lastings Milledge and Ronny Cedeno don’t have poor fundamental baseball skills because of Russell; if they had a stronger fundamental base they would’ve never been traded to the Pirates. And I know that young rookies are going to struggle and have ups and downs at the plate and in the field and on the bases and look lost sometimes no matter who the manager is.
Once upon a time, I was about as anti-Lloyd McClendon as a person could be. And I had all the same complaints about Lloyd that people have about Russell now: his lineups were stupid, he didn’t know who should be on the field, he couldn’t handle the pitching staff. Where people think Russell is too laid back, I thought McClendon was too fiery. I was convinced that if the Pirates just got a better manager in there, they’d be a better team. There’s a reason most fans tell themselves that. It’s much more comforting to believe that the manager is a moron and that a losing team is playing well below its potential. No one wants to believe that their favorite team is truly a bad team because we all get attached to players and root for them and it’s hard to face up to the fact that they might suck. But this Pirate team is a bad team and they’ve got a lot of places they have to improve upon if they want to be something other than a bad team.
What really kills me about all of this intense focus on Russell is that despite the team’s poor play this year, they’ve got a really interesting core of four young and enough talent in the minors that the team is certainly going to get better in the next couple years. The questions we should be asking are if that’s going to be enough, if this awful year has exposed flaws in the key players in the system or in Neal Huntington’s plan, and what can be done to supplement the talent we have or change the plan if certain players don’t work out. Instead, we’ve got all this stupid focus on something amorphous and undefinable and it’s mostly centered on Russell, someone that has much less influence on wins and losses than most people think. And I’ve obviously fallen into the same trap as I’m working on about 1000 words now about “accountability” even though I think this would be a 100 loss team even if friggin’ George Washington rose from the dead to manage the team and try to light a fire under their asses. I do it because I feel like I have some responsibility to talk about what everyone’s talking about, but I’m done with that now. Tomorrow I’m going to start examining 2010 in the only context that matters: the future.
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