How The Pirates Continue to Ruin my Love of Baseball

Seriously, the title of this post is not hyperbole. I'm completely serious when I say the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball organization is ruining my love of baseball. Why is such a contention not a hyperbolic statement? Here are three reasons the Pirates continue to ruin my love of baseball.


FIRST: A JUXTAPOSITION
Well, look at this juxtaposition. Allow me to posit rhetorical questions that should explain how the Pirates drive me to insanity while ruining my love for baseball.

Jim Tracy, first of all, if by some miracle your team is in contention next season (always a possibility if you're near .500 in the weakest division in baseball), aren't you going to want to have the arms of your starting pitchers healthy for that stretch drive? Wouldn't it be sensible to preserve the valuable arms of said starting pitchers in games that are meaningless because your team is currently closer to being the worst in all of MLB than to a playoff spot? And seriously, if you expect your starting pitchers to continue to transition from "promising potential" to "consistent production," there's no way that progress is going to happen with arms that have been abused pitching more innings and pitches than necessary in games that only count to determine if you're a fourth, fifth, or sixth place team in a wretched division. (Oops. I broke my rhetorical question rule.) Mr. Tracy, do you expect to win games next year if even one of Snell, Gorzy, or Maholm has to be shut down for any length of time due to an arm injury that was exacerbated by unnecessarily pitching too many innings? Even if you're not the manager next season, pretend you're an analyst: could any manager expect to win enough games to stay at .500 without those pitchers being healthy? As it is, they're still developing, and despite progress, they often stray too far toward the "potential" side than the "productive" side, and you want to complicate their progress by forcing them to learn that a season is "sixth months long?" Seriously, would you look at the Boston Red Sox, a team that wants to win it all now (and granted a team that has much better players than your team does) but still plans for the long-term and future in mind by MONITORING THE HEALTH OF THEIR PLAYERS AND PUTTING THEM IN THE BEST POSITION TO SUCCEED NOW AND IN THE FUTURE? Given that I'm shouting now, it's probably time for me to quit ranting, but would you please, please, just shut up about the future of September and October being "special" months? Because, really, can't you see that there's no way September and October could ever be "special" months if the most promising pitchers on your staff are shut down in May and June and July due to arm injuries caused by recklessness, carelessness, lack of planning, stupidity, and just plain idiocy?


SECOND: THE OUTSIDE PERSPECTIVE

Okay, I really, really know that I shouldn't read the blogs and message boards of other teams. Such an exercise is only going to serve to make me more bitter than I already am and further exacerbate the ways in which the Pirates ruin baseball for me. However, I can't help but find that the "outside" perspective is enlightening--a nice dose of cold water splashed on your head, so to speak, in the form of a wake-up call that you're not the only one who sees your organization for the ineffective monstrosity it's become.

That being said, reading random comments on these boards is highly ingratiating. Yesterday a question was posited, perhaps ironically, perhaps comically, but it was annoying. "With all this young talent, how are the Pirates so bad?" While a Cardinals fan replied to another Cardinals fan by explaining that the Pirates hated the pitching coach (another fascinating perspective from an outsider, given Colburn's various interactions with certain players this season), I thought I'd offer a serious answer to a question that would probably have been sarcastic originating from my mouth.

My Answer: Young talent? Inexperience, I'll give you. Green, I'll give you. Talent? A few of our pitchers have shown flashes of big-time major league talent. A position player or two has shown a couple of traits that might make him effective in some very secondary role someday. But young talent? The Pirates haven't drafted high upside talent in a long time. And even when the Pirates have accidentally drafted talent, I mean, do you expect that talent to be coached and developed properly in the system or upon arrival in Pittsburgh?

That last question brings me to another comment on one of our starting pitchers by a Rotoworld poster, who praised the pitcher's stuff while also noting, "I wish he (Snell) was in another organization. I just don't care for that organization."

My Response: I wish my organization didn't drive me to despairing that any of my team's starting pitchers might actually blossom in Pittsburgh. I wish I could be confident that my organization was the best place for promising players who have shown they have talent to develop and harness that talent. But, alas, see the juxtaposition of the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates under Reason Number #1 the Pittsburgh Pirates continue to ruin my love of baseball.

The outside perspective, as much as it stings, is true. In their closing-in-on-15 (only a few more losses to go!) consecutive seasons of ineptitude, the Pirates have shown themselves to be a mess--and perhaps the most frustrating thing is that even when my Buccos stumble upon talent in the form of late round draft picks who turn out to be golden, they have yet to prove they even know how to handle/harness that talent and allow athletes to become the players outsiders can see they are capable of being--if only they weren't Pirates.

THIRD: MY OWN PERSONAL ISSUES WITH GIFTED UNDERACHIEVEMENT

Remember this lovely rant? Go ahead, click the link. Read what the blogger wrote on June 27th before Snell's swoon post All-Star break. It exemplifies a personal problem/pet issue that also serves to explain how the Pirates continue to ruin my love of baseball.

Back when I worked as a teacher, a certain type of student drove me crazy. I got angrier at this type of child, more frustrated, and more saddened than by any other kind of child. That type of child? The underachieving gifted kid. The one who would show you his or her intelligence so that you knew material could be learned, yet the child--whatever the reason--would refuse to learn material they were capable of learning more often than not. Whether lack of desire, effort, concentration, focus, or concern, the child's intelligence rarely, if ever, translated to actual performance. These were the kids who drove me, personally, the battiest. You're a discipline problem? Oh, whatever. You have trouble learning this kind of material this way? Not a problem; we'll work with that. You're smart but you do your work and quietly amuse yourself once you've finished your assignment? Terrific. You're crumpling your paper on the floor because you're frustrated that you're still struggling to understand the material? Well, here's a new sheet of paper, and let's have some patience. But you clearly can understand the material and do the work and yet you just won't? Now I want to collar and feather you--no, not literally, but seriously--would you just do what you're capable of doing? Please, save my sanity.

And when it comes to certain members of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and not just relatively green 1st or 2nd year players, I find myself experiencing the same exasperation/frustration that caused me to lose a little sense of sanity when it came to dealing with underachieving gifted kids. If you have the ability to hit the baseball, why don't you do that on a more consistent basis? (Sigh, Jason Bay, is your other knee injured?) If you can dominate a few innings of a game or several games, could you at least manage to get yourself to the consistently "very good" level in terms of giving your team a chance to win every game you start as a pitcher? I mean, really. It's not the Bucco players who simply lack quality MLB talent that bug the beeswax out of me. It's the players who've clearly shown they have MLB talent, even MLB talent that opposing scouts and fans are able to recognize, but don't consistently perform as such talent dictates that make me crazy.

Is the "underachievement" of such players really their complete fault? Not really, much as I wish it were, because it's a lot easier to control if it's only a player's issues. But if your manager doesn't put you in a position to succeed, if your coach isn't coaching you appropriately, if your general manager has you playing a role you're not best or yet suited to play, these people are setting you up for failure in much the same way that teachers who don't know what to do with gifted kids and schools that fail to give gifted kids an appropriate curriculum should not blame the kids themselves for failing to perform academically. And when it comes to Bucco management, well, suffice to say that they make many incompetently clueless educational administrators look like the very epitome of classy and competent professionals.

Still, I'm the one who has to (okay, I don't have to, I choose to) watch the few players with lots of latent talent and some with less but still latent talent not perform to the level at which not just I, but coaches, scouts and outside observers, believe they could. It's frustrating, it's exasperating, and when you don't get to watch players perform at the level their raw skill says they should, it makes it nearly impossible for you to continue to love a game in which it is a rare, too rare, event when one of your team's players does something amazing but something commensurate, or even a bit of a stretch, for his talent level. In that rare moment, you suddenly remember why you love baseball...but it's just that, for this fan, there have been far too many other moments from the PBC that continue to chip away at my love for the game of baseball.