One year ago today, the Pirates were 12-19. That was the NL’s third worst record through May 4th, and it put the Bucs behind the Brewers by 8 1/2 games in the NL Central. The Pirates finished the season from that point on at 76-55, erasing the deficit with the Brewers, nearly catching the Cardinals, and winning the NL’s first Wild Card spot. The Pirates played some ugly baseball last April and early May. Right now, the Pirates are 12-13, 7 games behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. And so the question I find myself asking is this: Why do I feel worse about the 2015 Pirates on May 5th than I did about the 2014 Pirates on the same date?
It’s relatively easy to argue that the Pirates’ ugly results against the Cubs and Cardinals the last two weeks shouldn’t be a reason for overwhelming panic. Sure, the Pirates went 3-7 against their two main division rivals over that span, but four losses were by one run and three were in extra innings. The Pirates were only outscored 39-33 in those ten games. Logic more or less dictates that the Pirates can’t keep losing one-run games in St. Louis at the pace that they’ve been losing them the last two years, and if you start to flip some of those games around, the difference between the Pirates and Cardinals would probably disappear pretty quickly.
This is what the logical side of my brain is telling me: that the Pirates aren’t any worse off today than they were at this point last year, and that the close losses to the Cardinals and Cubs aren’t coupled with nearly as many close wins, so at some point the tables will reverse. This might be true! There’s certainly a lot of baseball left, and the basic talent level that gave us all a bunch of hope when this season began still exists on the Pittsburgh Pirates.
None of this is preventing me from worrying about the 2015 season. As mentioned above, the Pirates finished 2014 in a blaze of glory from their low point in early May, but even though they had the National League’s third best record from May 5th onwards, they were only 1 1/2 games better than the Cardinals. It’s one thing to try and make up a 9 1/2 game deficit against a shooting star of a team like the Brewers, and it’s another to try and make up 6 1/2 games against the National League’s standard of excellence in St. Louis. Will the Cardinals keep winning games on a 122 win pace without Adam Wainwright? Of course not. Can the Pirates finish seven games better than them from May 5th forwards? I have my doubts.
This is all being compounded by the general state of the National League Central. It’s been clear for a while now that the Cubs are steamrolling towards respectability, and the early part of 2015 says pretty clearly that if they don’t get there this year, they will next year. The Cardinals are the Cardinals, assuming otherwise is foolish. And so from the end of last season onwards, it’s been clear that while the Pirates are set up quite well for the foreseeable future, that it’s entirely possible that 2015 could be their best chance to win the National League Central. And now it’s May 5th and they have an 8% shot at the division. Given the nature of the Wild Card Game and the talent on this team, it’s frustrating to feel like they might already be in the process of squandering this year, even with so many games left on the schedule. Expectations come with a lot of weight.
There are two gigantic problems looming over this team right now, that are making every early-season misstep feel much more significant. Those two problems are the two players that finished in the Top 10 of 2014’s NL MVP voting. Out of the eight Pirate position player regulars, on Jordy Mercer is hitting worse than Josh Harrison and Andrew McCutchen. Harrison is hitting .188/.220/.313 and McCutchen is hitting .193/.291/.307. It seems like a stretch to assume that both players will finish with OPSes under .600, but that shouldn’t preclude us from worrying about either of them.
We can start with Harrison, because all you can say about Harrison is this: Who knows what to expect from this guy? My main opinion on Harrison coming into 2015 was that it was impossible for him to match his 2014 numbers, but that he didn’t have to do that to be a good player. Everything about Harrison is a disaster right now, though. It’s one thing that his BABIP is down to .211, which is obviously not going to be sustainable for him (he’s still hitting line drives at a relatively robust 20% rate), but his strikeout rate is up and his already low walk rate has been halved from last year. The low BABIP suggests that he’ll pull himself at least partially out of this hole, but the change in plate discipline for the worse is distressing for a player who’s been defined by his lack of plate discipline. As Charlie pointed out on Friday, his 11-pitch-bases-loaded-at-bat against Lance Lynn was possibly the worst 11-pitch at-bat in baseball history. Lynn walked Harrison twice, and Harrison refused to take it, eventually resulting in a pop-out. That sort of at-bat is the Josh Harrison Nightmare Scenario, and it always has been. Harrison will probably stabilized, but every time he has an at-bat like that one, I start to wonder about making statements like that.
The big problem right now, though, is Andrew McCutchen. McCutchen has probably been the best offensive player in baseball not named Mike Trout over the three seasons prior to this one, which is an impressive statement when you consider the names (Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Cabrera, for two) behind him on that list. McCutchen wasn’t good or great from 2012-2014, he was transcendent. It would be one thing if he was in a slump, because he’s had slumps before. He’s not in a slump by any Andrew McCutchen-related definition, though, because what’s happened to date in 2015 is much worse than anything that’s happened to Andrew McCutchen in his recent history. There has been some attempt on the recent Pirate broadcast to make it seem like McCutchen is in the process of breaking out of his slump because he’s got six hits in his last five games and hit a few balls hard to center field or right center. What I’ll tell you is this: five of those six hits have been singles, and I watched John Lackey miss his spots with 92 mph fastballs on Saturday only to see McCutchen swing through them. I don’t think he’s been appreciably better over these last six games, and the only reason that he might appear that way is that we all want that to be true.
I am not a doctor and I am not Andrew McCutchen, so I would hate to say anything other than that it’s been clear for a while that McCutchen’s knee is bothering him. What I will say is this: my biggest fear is that he’s dealing with something that will either require him to take a decent chunk of time off, or to continue struggling. Either scenario there takes Andrew McCutchen as we know him out of the Pirate lineup for a significant amount of time. The Pirate offense doesn’t necessarily have to be bad without McCutchen operating at top capacity, but all of the talk of “the best young outfield in baseball” and the thought of the Pirates having one of the NL’s best lineups was all predicated on the Pirates having one of baseball’s best hitters anchoring the heart of the order. The Pirates do not have that right now. Maybe McCutchen will play his way through the knee problem and come out of this funk in this week’s home stand, but I’m no longer counting on this to happen.
Therein lies the problem. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to say that this Pirate team operating at what we thought was top capacity before the season began could make up a seven-game deficit against the Wainwright-less Cardinals over the course of 137 games. It’s just difficult for me to think that this club’s top capacity is as high as we thought it was a month ago.
Image credit: Dilip Vishwanat, Getty Images
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