A Harsh Dose of Reality

In no particular order, my thoughts on tonight's game, including snippets of the pregame and post game shows. But before returning to chronological order in terms of events, I must say this (somewhat snark warning): It was all Shawn Chacon's fault!

Pregame: Stan asks Bob Walk if the team is in a pennant race. Um, the Pirates were thirteen games under .500 before the start of today's game. In any other planet but the NL Central, they already would have been mathematically eliminated from any semblance of a pennant race. Alas, for one more evening, we hear ridiculous discussion of a pennant race that isn't.

I love Matt Capps, too: Being disgusted with broadcasters who should know better when it comes to talking about poor (as in bad records, not just penny-pinchers)teams doesn't mean I'm disgusted with young players who want to keep winning games and believing they're "in this thing" until the math actually dictates that they aren't. Capps speaks well, and he's done his job as a closer this year as well as he speaks--which is, overall, very well. Sure, he still needs to learn offspeed pitches, but he's one of the players of whom I can actually swallow Jim Tracy's label as "special." Athletes who want to win, always a good thing.

What did I miss? I flick off the TV for a brief period of time, and alas, at 7:10 p.m., I turn on the TV and see the Reds are up 3-0. Things would go downhill from that point. Speaking of which...

My Amazing Powers of Predictive Prognostication Prowess: I had been wincing all week when seeing that Snell was due to face Harang. Something about that match-up just screamed, Huge mismatch in favor of the Reds. Unfortunately for a fan still pulling for my team, I was right. Allow me to count the ways.

The Reds Hit Snell Hard: Snell's last outing against the Reds was, er, bad. Tonight's was his worst all season. Whatever the reasons that I'm sure pitching experts could better explain, in order for Snell to have a chance against a hot Cinci lineup, he has to be perfect. And, just as I suspected, he wasn't perfect (reasons for this imperfection will be soon be further discussed.)


The Hot Bucco Bats Cool Off while Facing One of the NL's best pitchers: Being unable to hit Arroyo, an average to above average MLB pitcher at various points this season, should have been a warning. Aside from Jason Bay, the Pirates didn't hit Harang. There's also the fact that Harang is just really, really, incredibly good. A pitcher like that is going to show that the Pittsburgh offensive barrage in August is truly not the offense of the best team in the majors (but I mean, didn't we already know that?)

People Stop Delusional Dreaming about a Pennant Race After a Harsh Loss: One can hope the broadcasters and journalists will shut up about it and not ask the players about it. Better to try to climb closer to .500. I mean, look at where a team 14 games under .500 is in any other division.

Alas, my positive powers of predictive prognostication prowess ended there--I didn't predict another Bautista error or some fly balls that could have been caught not being caught (by this time, however, the game was out of reach). Hopefully, however, the Pirates got all that--bad pitching, inept offense, and lacking defense out of their system. It would surely be nice if that horrifically bad play could only last for a game. Not because I want to believe in the delusion of a pennant race, but rather because it's fun to watch my baseball team win games.

Other Thoughts on Tonight's Game:

--Snell could have been lights out and still lost this game. He could have done what Bob Walk wanted him to do and only given up the 3 runs and lost the game. He could have pitched 7 or 8 strong innings and made 2 minor mistakes and still lost by a 1-0 score. Truth told, I'd feel much better about the loss if Snell had lost his eleventh game in that manner. (Remember, at this point, I'm just looking for progress from these young players with potential.) But he didn't lose that way, which brings me to a question running through my mind the entire game.

--Who is Ian Snell? Seriously, is he the pitcher he was in the first half of the season who threw quality start after quality start, struck out batters, didn't give up many long balls at all, and pitched at an All-Star level? Or is he the pitcher he's been post All-Star break--some good pitches with a lot of bad pitches, a pitcher with good stuff who will never really become anything more than an average pitcher with good stuff? Seriously, was that 2.93 1st half ERA a mere mirage, a la Zach Duke's 1.81 ERA his rookie year? Is Snell a pitcher who can only face certain teams and look good? Who, exactly, is he?

--Despite my questioning of exactly who Snell is, and as exasperated as he made me throughout the game, I'll applaud his post-game comments. He admitted he hadn't pitched well and said he let his team down--which is far better than screaming, for example, about a 2 base Bautista error that blew the game more open than Snell already had. While applauding one portion of Snell's post-game comments, the other admission made in those comments was highly disconcerting (snark: and no, I'm not talking about the fact that Jim Colburn tried to calm Snell) and brings me to a problem with certain Pirates players.

--The Pirates have two major problems. Problem number one is really nothing the players can do that much about because it's a talent problem. The Pirates just aren't very good at baseball. The team doesn't have enough talented players, and of the talented players they do have, despite Harang's charitable post-game comments about the team having hitters who can hit for power and get base hits, they don't have the right mix of talent necessary to win games when facing a very good to great pitcher (tonight) or a good to great team (their losing record against winning teams). But aside from the talent issue, certain Pirates have a problem with emotion.

Emotion? you say. Take me as one who believes that emotion isn't a bad attribute in a ball player. Emotion, used properly, can be an asset to a player and a team. The problem comes when players don't know how to channel their emotions properly.

Exhibit A: Ian Snell is emotional and high-strung, and everyone, save for apparently Shawn Chacon, understands this fact. (Or maybe Chacon was just hoping getting Snell mad would help him pitch well--as that has been known to work in the past.) But Snell admitted to being distracted on the mound tonight, and in that confession, he showed one of his weaknesses as a pitcher: not that he's emotional, but that he has yet to learn how to channel and properly harness and utilize his emotions. (Yeah, practically speaking, don't leave a breaking ball high to mashers like the Reds--but when Snell is locked in, it's a far less frequent occurrence for him to make many, many bad pitches in a game.)

Exhibit B: Just as you want to say that Snell is young (I'm the same age he is, so I don't fully buy that), we have the defending batting champion being so mad at himself for swinging at a 3rd strike in the dirt that goes behind the catcher that he doesn't even run to first base. The way Harang was pitching, it probably wouldn't have mattered. But Sanchez's emotional response and mental lapse fully illustrate a problem some players and young teams have been known to exhibit. It's not the emotion that's bad--it's being unable to control and harness that emotion properly.

Conclusion as in What Matters Now? Every team, even great teams that will win pennants (neither of which are true of the 2007 Pirates), has games like tonight's game. A great pitcher pitches a great game, and you can't manufacture a single run. Your pitcher, who you've seen and know can be good, gets lit up, and gets hit hard. Your coach throws in the towel on the game and gives his regulars a break for the late innings. It happens in a long season to every single team, good, bad, mediocre, or fluctuating somewhere among all three levels.

What matters for the team is the response. Do you still believe you can win every game, as Matt Capps said in the pregame show? Will you continue to do what actually can be done against mediocre pitchers and work them deep in counts? Mr. Sanchez, will you correct the swinging at balls in the dirt? (Your statistics the past two years suggest you will.) Mr. Snell, will you learn from this experience--to the point of gaining emotional control, at least a little more than you showed today, in subsequent outings? Mr. Tracy, will the team you manage still believe your words after the game that what happened tonight had everything to do with a great pitcher and do what's necessary to win the games against pitchers who are less than great? And, perhaps idealistically, did any of these young pitchers learn anything from watching Harang? Because while facing the Pirates had to help, Harang's filthy good, and someone you want pitchers like Gorzy, Maholm, Duke, and tonight's imploding starter, just to watch, to see what you can take away and apply to your own games. Yes, to the point of winning more games.

Because, harsh dose of reality aside, I still want my team to win games. Here's to hoping today's helping of reality is a learning experience that helps to propel certain players to develop attributes necessary for good MLB players--and not a horrific tailspin where players revert to habits (cough, leaving the ball high, cough) we'd hoped they'd--if not yet completely exorcised--would continue at least to manage to avoid more frequently rather than continue to succumb to such habits.