Pirates’ front office audacious and tone-deaf in equal measure

By Chris Mueller

http://www.timesonline.com/sports

January 17, 2018

Frank Coonelly and Bob Nutting

I don’t know whether to be offended or weirdly impressed as a person who has followed the Pirates for my entire life and covered them as a member of the media for just about the last decade.

I can’t decide if the collective statements from Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington, statements made after the trades of Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen, are more offensive in their tone-deafness, or impressive in their audacity.

Huntington can’t seem to decide whether or not the Pirates are actually rebuilding, which is somewhat problematic, seeing as he is the general manager. Joe Starkey and I spoke with him Tuesday on The Fan, and he stuck to his story that the Pirates, post-Cole and McCutchen trades, were on the edge of playoff contention, according to the team’s internal projections.

The general manager went on to compare this coming year’s team to the 2013 squad that came out of nowhere to win 94 games, shock the baseball world, and finally put an end to 20 years of losing. Problem is, there are some key differences between the 2018 Pirates and that group.

First off, that team had, well, Andrew McCutchen. And he was coming off of his best season, entering the prime of his career. He was the kind of cornerstone piece, performing at a high level, that every team needs in order to be successful.

That team also had Cole waiting in the wings as a call-up. To say Cole was a shot in the arm would be an understatement. He was so good that by the end of the year, he was the man getting the ball to try and push the Pirates past St. Louis in Game 5 of the NLDS.

This year’s team has ... what, exactly? Gregory Polanco and Starling Marte, two players who have disappointed fans for multiple reasons? I don’t trust either man to become a breakout superstar. Marte is what he is, and that might not be much, post-PED suspension. Polanco is still young enough to make a leap, but nothing I’ve seen suggests that that will happen.

Where’s the 2013 Gerrit Cole for the rotation? It certainly doesn’t look like Tyler Glasnow will fill that role, given the fact that he still can’t throw strikes consistently at the major-league level. Francisco Cervelli isn’t Russell Martin, Ivan Nova and Trevor Williams aren’t Francisco Liriano and A.J. Burnett, and so on.

What’s more, the Pirates’ ground ball-oriented approach of five years ago, one that was novel when combined with the team’s aggressive defensive shifting philosophy, is now commonplace around the league. The team isn’t exploiting any market inefficiencies this time around. They aren’t sneaking up on anyone.

Coonelly spoke about the team defying expectations this year, a sentiment that rings especially hollow when Cole and McCutchen, two players who would have helped things to that end, are freshly minted members of new teams.

That said, the buck stops, literally and figuratively, with Bob Nutting. Anger at Huntington and Coonelly is fine, and justified, but no member of the front office has been more brazen in his flouting of reality than the team’s principal owner. No one person is more responsible for the Pirates’ current situation than the man who signs the checks.

Asked if the team would ever escape the cycle of developing talent only to trade it away when the price tag got too high, Nutting suggested that such a situation would require a fundamental reworking of baseball’s economic model. Some might assume that to mean that he isn’t thrilled with the status quo. The truth is quite the opposite. Nutting and the Pirates ratified the last collective bargaining agreement a few years ago. The only team that didn’t was the Tampa Bay Rays.

Make no mistake -- the Pirates could spend more money on their payroll. They’re profitable. Money keeps pouring in for major-league teams, be it from MLB Advanced Media payouts, or from revenue sharing, something designed to help level the playing field to some degree for smaller market teams.

The funds are there. The owner has chosen not to spend them. He was not forced to do this. This is the path he chose. The fallout is his to reap.

Barring something highly unlikely, the Pirates won’t contend this year. Same goes for 2019, and maybe 2020 and beyond. The only group of people who seem to think that this is fine, that this is OK, that this is all more or less part of the plan, and not a major betrayal of the team’s loyal fans, is the front office.

I’d almost be impressed at the audacity, if I wasn’t so disgusted.

Chris Mueller is the co-host of the ‘Starkey & Mueller Show’ from 2-6 p.m. weekdays on 93.7 The Fan.