If the Pittsburgh Pirates miss the 2017 postseason, what will it mean for the club, its GM, its manager, and its players going forward?
Though the Pittsburgh Pirates are technically still in the NL Central race, nothing about their play over the past 2-3 weeks has given their fans any modicum of confidence in the team sneaking into the MLB postseason.
In August alone, the club has lost big, lost small, lost early and lost late. Along the way we have seen weaknesses laid bare. A shoddy bullpen.A “star” player who refuses to play to his talent level, if he can stay on the field at all. It became apparent that this Pittsburgh Pirates offense is lackluster at best, and their chances of winning a World Series in the near-future is very much in doubt.
With it being a foregone conclusion that the club will not be participating in October baseball, what will missing the postseason for a second consecutive year mean for those that have the most direct impact on that result?
The architect
For Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Neal Huntington, the answer to that question might be “not a whole heck of a lot.” At least, not yet.
After all, it has already been widely reported that Huntington and manager Clint Hurdle — more on him in a second — will likely receive extensions for 2018.
Comfort is the child of complacency, and it has become clear that a mist of self-satisfaction has crept over Federal Street. To be clear, the fault for settling for quasi-competitiveness does not lay solely at the feet of Huntington. However, his insistence on relying solely on a pipeline of prospects or in-house solutions to back fill holes in his roster has left the team in this nebulous state.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]To be fair, some of those in-house solutions have surprised and delighted. See: Williams, Trevor.[/perfectpullquote]No Jung Ho Kang to start the season? No Starling Marte for 80 games after a handful of contests at the start of the season? No problem for Huntington, whose solution was to play rapidly aging David Freese nearly everyday at third, while trying to force John Jaso into corner outfield spots after playing all of seven career games there prior to 2017.
You’d be hard pressed to find a more risk-adverse GM than Huntington, and at times that has served him well. But that risk aversion can be the very definition of a double-edged sword when the meticulously researched moves that were made do not pan out.
One could almost give him a pass on whiffing on a guy like Phil Gosselin, because those are the types of fliers that a cash-strapped GM should take out. But the abject failure of Daniel Hudson — one of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ two big off-season signings — has left a lot of egg on Huntington’s face. Whether his previous success was a mirage, or if the Pirates are trying to make him into something he is not, Hudson’s two-year, $11 million dollar deal will now be an albatross for the 2018 season if he cannot gain some semblance of effectiveness.
The point is this: If a risk-adverse GM’s moves backfire, he surely will not be able to back fill as easily as those that work a bit more freely.
In the end, it is going to take a lot more than two consecutive “meh” seasons for Huntington to feel any real pressure. The Kang and Marte situations must absolutely count for something, and any GM would find themselves behind the eight-ball if two of their major cogs were unavailable. But the inaction and, perhaps, stubbornness in replacing them with whatever was found in the Pirates’ cupboards is absolutely a black mark on Huntington.
The conductor
We may not spend much time here, but it has become painfully obvious that Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle is finding an increasing helping of blame on his plate.
Curious lineup decisions, even more curious double-switches, an insistence on swapping out Josh Bell defensively late in games, a profound reliance on the creature comforts of Tony Watson and Jaso…with all of that and more, Hurdle has done more this season to raise eyebrows than in years past.
I believe that it is now entirely fair to wonder if Hurdle’s message has gone stale, much as it did in his waning days with the Colorado Rockies. We mentioned at the top that Gregory Polanco has not yet reached a level of consistency. How much of that falls on Hurdle’s shoulders? The team looked very sloppy on defense early on, did he not have them ready to play out of Spring Training?
It is absolutely fair to ask that, but the answers will likely not come until sometime next season, when the Pittsburgh Pirates will have to decide on their incumbent manager’s future with the club. The same saving graces for Huntington — Marte, Kang, low payroll et al — give Hurdle some breathing room.
The instruments
We have opined here at PBD before about how the blame for the club’s lackluster 2017 should at least start with the players on the field.
For the most part, that holds true. For all of his huffing and puffing, Andrew McCutchen turned in a lackluster start to his 2017 season before turning it back around by turning it on. Of course, Kang and Marte deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the club’s milquetoast first steps into the season. Gregory Polanco did not set the world on fire to start the year, and he never seemed to land on solid footing for any extended length of time.
But if we think back to before the season began, many felt that Pittsburgh Pirates’ talent level was comparable to other second-tier National League — a.k.a those teams not named the Nationals, Cubs or Dodgers — and could contend for a wild card spot at the very least.
Yet, sure enough, bad starts from McCutchen, Polanco, Watson — three pillars that needed to carry the team in Kang and Marte’s stead — derailed the club early.
The truth is that missing the postseason in 2017 will not mean much for the players on the field, who are just as enveloped in complacency as the front office. As announcer Greg Brown alluded to in a recent post-game broadcast, where is the pressure to play better?
The GM has already shown that he will not — either at his own behest or otherwise — go out and swing a trade or acquire a competent replacement if their play lags. The prospects that are in the farm system are just that — prospects — and despite a few high-profile names not quite on the precipice just yet, the players have to know that their in-house replacements are nowhere near able to shoulder the load.
With impact prospects such as Mitch Keller, Austin Meadows and others still a few years away, the pressure should be equally light in 2018 if things do not go the Pittsburgh Pirates’ way.
The GM has proven to be a capable small-market architect, who can sell the future without taking many risks.
Despite his flaws, the manager is a good one who has had success in the past.
The talent level on the field — when all hands are on deck — is considerable. But the team may not have enough talent in certain key areas (middle relief, right field, third base if Kang never plays in MLB again) to make a difference, and some of the talent that they do have refuses to take a needed step forward.
That’s a sad state of affairs for a team two seasons removed from a 98-win season.
Just don’t expect the lack of postseason play in 2017 to push the organization to make radical changes. It is going to take a deeper level of disappointment for that to occur.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
