The 2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Team Season Thread

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Harrison and Mercer aren't much more than replacement level. Walker was a good hitter though and batting in next to MVP era McCutchen helped him.

Which, I think goes to say that it will be hard to emulate the NH years because almost that entire run of competency was tied to McCutchen carrying the offense and the coaching staff being extremely creative and effective at run prevention. Hayes and Reynolds combined are not at the level of what McCutchen brought those years. Not to mention this combo of coaching staff and pitching staff are just flailing.


I think I just view the transition from rebuilding to competitive as longer, it's not like you flip a switch, or have a straight line upward momentum. Deciding to keep Reynolds and stop tanking might just be the first in a string of years where BC tries to feel this out. think like 2011-2012 pirate teams that flirted with .500 through July with guys like Kevin Correia and Jeff Karstens.

IMO the loney in this case is slightly underselling the difficulty of finding slightly above replacement players that are good enough to hang around until they are arbitration eligible or free agents. (i.e. guys you need to have playoff teams)

In the three wild card seasons:

Walker was worth 8.8 WAR
JHay was worth 7.4 WAR
Mercer was 4.0 WAR

That's 3/8th of your everyday starting lineup that you could count on producing a halfway decent season. I mean, its not that hard to find a flash in the pan that produces a 2 or 3 war season (think Newman 2019, jung ho, etc), but it is hard to find a guy that can consistently produce a halfway decent season on the cheap. We aren't signing a bunch of Jean Segura types, so we have to develop them internally. Like, we might sign one or two, but we aren't filling out half the roster with them.

The question is, how many of these guys they acquired are good enough to produce 7 WAR over three seasons? It's not that easy to find guys like that.

[Troy Loney]

All three of those guys have proven to be stable major league players. I guess i am having trouble identifying to sort of pressure point or determining factor.

Mercer was a guy drafted out of college, high in the draft, and earned his shot through a methodical path through the minors. Kramer is a good example of a guy whose floor absolutely should have been Mercer, but failed. I think Newman will ultimately be as good as Mercer. Play good defense and be a .700 ops hitter (he’ll just do it in a different way).

If nick gonzalez is not as good as harrison, I’ll be disappointed. If swaggerty recovers, he could maybe be like a Nate mcclouth. Cruz is either going to be an all star or never stay for more than a week in the majors.

Next year, there’s going to just start being a ridiculous cycle of players getting at bats for the big league team. Basically just look at the Altoona lineup from last night, over the course of 2022 they will get an at bat for the pirates. Just so much sink or swim upcoming

[Troy Loney]

Lonnie White’s first at bat

[Troy Loney]

Anyone with understanding of swing mechanics have thoughts on this?

[willeyeam]

i'd say it's shorter, more compact, quicker hands.. can let the ball travel a little further back before he goes...gives himself an extra split second to see the ball.. hasn't cost him any power apparently

[willeyeam]

ellipses mandatory for scouting reports of course

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

As far as the lower half goes, he’s doing a marginally better job at not lunging. You cant see what kind of pitch he’s flying out on the old swing, but it looks its probably a curveball, too much of his weight on on his front foot, so he puts a relatively crappy swing on the ball flys out to left. As far as his upper half goes, my old coach use to preach that the first move of the hands should feel like the knob of the bat is going to the ball. That helps you stay inside the ball. That prevents a long swing. In the old swing, the first move is not toward the ball, the first move is to move the barrel of the bat towards the ground. New swing, its much better. Knob of the ball to the bat is also why the swing looks quicker on the new one.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Not enough ellipses in my post, also no references to random Swedish defensemen that the penguins drafted in 2014

[willeyeam]

As far as the lower half goes, he’s doing a marginally better job at not lunging. You cant see what kind of pitch he’s flying out on the old swing, but it looks its probably a curveball, too much of his weight on on his front foot, so he puts a relatively crappy swing on the ball flys out to left. As far as his upper half goes, my old coach use to preach that the first move of the hands should feel like the knob of the bat is going to the ball. That helps you stay inside the ball. That prevents a long swing. In the old swing, the first move is not toward the ball, the first move is to move the barrel of the bat towards the ground. New swing, its much better. Knob of the ball to the bat is also why the swing looks quicker on the new one.

Yep we used to hit wiffle balls with the knob of the bat to feel that. Also would face the fence the length of the bat away and swing without hitting the fence to get the hands through. Fraizer seems to have that down to a tee now (heh)

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Yep we used to hit wiffle balls with the knob of the bat to feel that. Also would face the fence the length of the bat away and swing without hitting the fence to get the hands through. Fraizer seems to have that down to a tee now (heh)

#metoo regarding the fence. We would also go perpindicular to the fence with our back foot touching the fence and focus on swinging without having the bat touch the fence (to avoid that move i was referring to with Fraziers old swing where the bat goes flat). On that note, one of my coaches said that mark mcguire used to take batting practice while holding a volleyball between his thighs to prevent lunging. in case you havent tried to hit a baseball hard with a volleyball between your legs, its really hard to do.

[willeyeam]

haha eff that. my dad would have me take some swings without stepping and that was hard enough

[Troy Loney]

Ok, so it sounds like his rise up the system could be attributed to gettin better and not simply sss

[willeyeam]

Okay we analyzed his swing but can we talk about how he runs like a 17 year old that got caught at his GFs when the parents came home early and the dad is chasing him down the street

[Ad@m]

@MrKennethTKangaroo

[Troy Loney]

Okay we analyzed his swing but can we talk about how he runs like a 17 year old that got caught at his GFs when the parents came home early and the dad is chasing him down the street

Confounding baserunning aside, which is the primary takeaway, wtf is this dude doing?

I am struggling with why the Curve social media team would share that clip? Sure, if he smokes a ball down the line and races for a triple, that's a worthy highlight. For one, it seems like he bounced a ball inside the first baseline, the opponent had some Adam Dunn clone out in RF, off-camera, bumbling around, booting the ball all over the place, clearly something going on judging by how Frazier rounded second.

We also need to talk about the camera work here. So even beyond ridiculousness of sharing that video, and being like, "look at this TRIPLE!". If they're like, "do we have footage of this Frazier 3B" after seeing it on the box score, and someone sends you that clip, and your like "got it" and submit tweet. Granted, these are probably Altoona HS comms majors homes for the summer getting some unpaid internship with the curve comms department. These are people all destined to run local news twitter accounts in a couple years, which probably explains why the local news feed chooses to tweet some of the most confusing things.

[willeyeam]

lol

[Morkle]

I wonder if DK is gonna write a “our league, not there’s” when the Pirates lose 100 games and he goes all in about crying for a salary cap.

What a total about face, absolving the franchise completely after that pandering he did last year.

[DigitalGypsy66]

[faftorial]

I saw his average was .198 today so this isn't surprising. There's no reason to keep him at this point.

[willeyeam]

Needed to be done. But sad either way

[Troy Loney]

Mackey is saying he was put on waivers. So the “severing ties” thing was bs. And that there is no plan to outright him after he clears

[Morkle]

Claimed by Miami Marlins, FYI.

[Troy Loney]

Wow, nutting just saved 5mm on that

[MR25]

Watch Miami turn him into a .300 hitter

[Troy Loney]

I imagine they’ll try to light a fire under his ass, either it takes and he starts trying again, or he just becomes Jose Tabata