Usually, teams in Major League Baseball who are 7 games below .500 winning percentage do not try to make a playoff push around the All Star Break and the trading deadline. The current National League Central standings have every team within just 10.5 games of catching the Milwaukee Brewers who sit in first place at the moment with a record of 49 and 40 as they finish their last series for the first half of the year. At the midway point of the year, most teams have a decision to make. Some teams will become sellers if they decide they are not likely to make the playoffs and others will become buyers looking to add to their team to push them over the hump towards a winning season and hopefully a playoff run. Unfortunately, in the convoluted setup of baseball, every team plays 162 games for a short playoff experience. A one-game wild card playoff allows five teams from each league to reach the postseason, but that one game is a bit of a wild card itself. It is pathetic that a grueling 162 game season comes down to a make or break game.
For the Pittsburgh Pirates, a number of tough decisions will have to be made by General Manager Neal Huntington and his staff. Can the Pirates keep their star players? What does the future hold for the organization? Can this team make a playoff push with some added help. For the fans, these decisions will have a great deal of consequences for the team. Already, the average attendance at PNC Park has dropped by 4,000 people per game because people are quickly losing interest in this team. I struggle to maintain interest. Every time the Pirates manage to win a game or two it’s like one step forward and two steps back. When I attended the second game of the season at Fenway Park in Boston, I could feel the air come out of the tires as Red Sox catcher, Sandy Leon clubbed an Antonio Bastardo pitch high over the Green Monster in left field for a three run home run in the twelfth inning to ruin the season. I felt the wind taken out of the sails as the Bucs lost their second game in a row at the start of the season. By that point, I convinced myself that I was going to endure yet another year of mediocrity. In my lifetime, the Pirates have had just three successful seasons of baseball finishing with a winning record. The furthest they have gone is the second round of the playoffs once where they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in a five game series. Until 2013, the Pirates had not had a winning record since the 1992 season. This city saw the Pirates lose for 21 years straight.
Pittsburgh has been spoiled with fantastic organizations like the Penguins and Steelers who are professional organizations that find ways to win and look to improve when they can. They do not often miss on draft picks or lose badly on trade deals. Their owners, Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle for the Penguins and the Rooney family for the Steelers actually want to win. Fans have a clear idea of each club’s ambitions and fans have their own standard of what they expect from the team. Fortunately, those expectations align every season and that makes for a terrific partnership between fan and team. In the case of the Pirates, fans expect the ownership group to make a strong attempt to reach for success and to at least reach the playoffs. The Pirates ownership has shown they do not have the same goals. They have repeatedly shown the fans they are not on the same wavelength and they are not committed to winning. They are unwilling to push for it when it counts, they are satisfied with the status quo or keeping the team the same when they begin to achieve instead of adding the necessary pieces to push them over the top. The ownership team is doing the fans a disservice and it shows in their attendance numbers. Fans do not look forward to going out to the ballpark anymore because it only accompanies disappointment and frustration. This team has to be one of the most frustrating groups in sports. Fans are always promised the stars of tomorrow from the minor leagues who are going to be great one day only to wait around for them to come and lift the team but they never arrive. The Pirates as an organization strike out more often than some of the players on their Major League roster.
My expectations for the Pirates are not very high for this year but I hope Neal Huntington and the Pirates will surprise me. As of now, I am bracing for the worst as ace starting pitcher Gerrit Cole and the face of the team, center fielder Andrew McCutchen have trade rumors swirling around them among many other players on the roster. This will show the fans if the Pirates have given up or if they really want to be contenders in a bad division this season. They are not out of the running but they can quickly drop out with a bad move or a move they believe will benefit themselves in the future. For Pirates fans, the future they preach about never truly seems to arrive as their window to win closes quickly on the roster with this core group. Attendance has already taken a significant hit this season and throwing away the superstars is a sure fire way to lose the whole fan base. Take note Bob Nutting and Neal Huntington. 7Springs can wait, we want a baseball team that can compete, not ski resort improvements with our ticket revenue.
