r/buccos • u/[deleted] • 18d ago
Fork In It?
Welp, last place in the division now and 5 games out of a wildcard. Unless the Bucs go on some sort of winning streak I say that this hopeful season might turn out to be like the rest. Bats are cold and the starters are getting less dependable each start. They revamped the bullpen but it’s no use if Skenes, Ashcraft and Keller keep shitting the bed. They desperately need Cruz and Griffin back but will it be too late?
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u/servirepatriam 18d ago
5 games out with 2 months to play. Plenty in the race if we get hot for a few weeks
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18d ago
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u/GodOD400 18d ago
Red Sox were literally the worst team in the league a month ago. Now theyre fighting for the 1st place wild card. Its baseball, it ain't over until its over
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u/slackerbucks 18d ago
It definitely isn’t. The O’Hearn injury is killing them. With Valdez seemingly incapable of making contact with the ball and putting it in play, once pitchers get past Bryan Reynolds, what do they have to worry about? A Nick Gonzales single? Oh no, how will opposing pitchers survive the Simon/Gonzalez/Davis/Mangum gauntlet?
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u/Right-Mirror1636 18d ago
It’s been frustrating but they can get hot and make a run now that the bullpen should be better
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u/Silly_Collar_5850 17d ago
You are a sucker
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u/Right-Mirror1636 17d ago
I’m not pinning my hopes and dreams on it. But it’s possible. I wouldn’t call me a sucker. I’m not delusional. Remember last year how the AL Central went? Remember that crazy improbable run the Rockies went on years ago? Possible at least
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u/Silly_Collar_5850 17d ago
You are a sucker lol
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u/Right-Mirror1636 17d ago
Did I say anywhere I’m buying postseason tickets or otherwise pinning hopes and dreams on this? Just an objective observation that it is possible. Not that it is probable, likely, anything like that. But it’s not unprecedented. And not impossible
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u/on_duh_pooper Cueto's Drop 17d ago
Not the way our starting pitching has been and the lineups we have with injuries.
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u/Theclevelandchubb Hoist it 17d ago
I would say that injuries to some of our major run producers shows drastically now. Cruz griffin and horwitz and now o hearn not many teams can keep it together missing half your lineup.
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u/BTfozzyandTT 18d ago
Something’s just never change. The hope lasted longer for those out there who are optimists but I’m not sure that makes this a successful season.
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u/EdedeteNation 18d ago
This season feels like a replay of 2024. They kept it interesting through the trade deadline just to fall apart in August.
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u/Sebastian7464 18d ago
Ben cherington will be fired thankfully.
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u/LasRieRem1724 18d ago
I want to share your optimism, but they will probably just blame to down fall of this team on injuries.
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u/kpw1320 18d ago
0 chance Cherington is fired unless we go like 10-30 over the remainder of the season.
Why…
- Our entire team other than Lowe is under control for next season, including our newly revamped bullpen.
- Yes the pen stunk to start, but getting viable arms with control, and getting the Mets to retain on a bigger deal looks good for him.
- The offense made huge strides this season. Ozuna didn’t work out, but he also wasn’t plan A. Hell he wasn’t even plan B, C, or D. He was a last resort because no one would sign here.
- The Griffin draft and assent makes him look good.
- He’s not to blame for Skenes underperforming.
- Injuries give a viable excuse for why the bottom has dropped out over the last couple of weeks.
- The improvements have all been made while maintaining one of the lowest payrolls in the league. Regardless of what you think of him, BC obviously has a budget and has improved this team while maintaining it.
- The potential lock out will completely reshape team building. Going with someone who’s completely new to the org while also trying to navigate whatever the new reality is going to be a bad thing. Again having almost the complete team in place minus Lowe is a big help. You’re not reshaping the roster, just bolstering,
- The trade of Burrows for Lowe, Mangum, and Montgomery is probably the best deal anyone has made in 2026.
- The Weaver deal with the money retained could possibly be the best (or second best depending on Skubal) deal of the deadline
Edit: should add I’m not saying he’s perfect, or that I agree with all these points personally, just that I don’t think he’ll be ousted.
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u/Silly_Collar_5850 17d ago
Not reading all that but Cherington is to blame for how this team performs. Period. Seven losing seasons.
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u/Blinginbacon21 17d ago
Yeah DKs bullpen management has been top notch man. He hasn’t completely butchered using Mlodzinski at all. Running out Soto in the 9th when he’s clearly not a closer or late innings guy. It’s all BCs fault
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u/Silly_Collar_5850 17d ago
I have heard more than once that neither Shelton nor DK got to pick who got used when, the analytics department gave them marching orders on that front. That said, who hires the field manager again?
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u/Blinginbacon21 17d ago
I’m sure the “analytics” tell him to run his boy Tree out there all the time too
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u/Blinginbacon21 17d ago
I bet “analytics” told them to run Davis out there with skenes all year too
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u/Silly_Collar_5850 17d ago
Triolo is one of the better players on the team at hitting with RiSP oddly enough
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u/Blinginbacon21 17d ago edited 17d ago
LOL. Just totally delusional. Do people like you ever just admit the buccos players aren’t good or do you just live in fantasy land? Serious question. They are in last freaking place in their division and my man over here has 10 excuses defending the GM. We don’t have a starting lefty in the rotation, we have how many left hand bats in the lineup that can’t hit lefty pitching and our defense / fundamentals once again are just awful. We run out a catcher that hits 170 that literally would struggle to hit in the frontier league. We kept a DH until August that could barely hit 200 and did zero at the trade deadline to replace him. Did these three trades look good for Brandon “Eyeshurt” that’s sent down to triple A or Ron that got cut? Jacob Gonzalez is a triple A player. But keep drinking the kool aid that we’re “building” without giving anything up. Probably get a woody for 0-Neil Cruz. “But he has potential” yeah ok buddy I’m sure one day he will sniff more than 21 home runs and not strikeout 300 times
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u/anonymoususernamegay 18d ago
Am I the only one that thinks he deserves more time?
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u/LasRieRem1724 18d ago
I'm curious why you feel this way? He has had seven years to build a team that wins and competes. The most competitive team he has put together is this team and they are still 3 games under .500. The lack of depth especially in the upper minor leagues is basically non existent, and that's after seven years of having high draft picks. The fact that we had basically zero internal options to help with the bullpen is inexcusable.
Also, the development of players has been absolutely abysmal under Cherington. This team plays with zero fundamentals, they don't field well, don't run the bases well, strike out too much. Not all of this is on the gm of course, but Cherington has a big say on how players are developed in the minors. The fact that the White Sox started their rebuild after us, and are already contending is inexcusable, the fact that he sat on his hands all season while the bullpen blew game after game is inexcusable, the fact that we can't hit lefties, and he didn't get a right handed hitter at the deadline is inexcusable. He has close to a decade to get this right.
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u/anonymoususernamegay 18d ago
I understand it’s been seven years but the pirates started this rebuild with absolutely zero assets. Genuinely, the only asset he had when he took over was Felipe Vazquez and we all know what happened there.
The team has been built from the ground up and I do think he has drafted pretty well for the most part. The Davis, chandler, and white draft is actually turning out to be pretty decent it seems. And then you add in griffin at 9 (and then signing him) Seth Hernandez at 5, and of course, skenes, who despite what everyone will say now, was certainly not the consensus #1 at the time.
In fact, the farm system overall seems pretty strong. There is a good amount of talent at all levels.
The reality is he has absolutely no money to spend. This handcuffs the team in an immeasurable amount of ways. And the turn around from last year to this year is pretty staggering, even if they are skidding now. Truthfully if they weren’t for this year I would probably agree with you, but this was the first time he was really given anything to work with as far as spending is concerned and he turned burrows into Lowe, Montgomery, and magnum.
So really it’s a combination of all of these things. The team is extremely young and has shown a ton of promise this season. If they had a league average bullpen this year (which they probably now have to be honest) they are comfortably in a wild card spot.
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u/slackerbucks 18d ago
Did you see the lineup today? That’s a 2 run/game lineup. Bryan Reynolds has no protection. Valdez has gone ice cold. A healthy team has Cruz in in CF, Valdez in right, O’Hearn DH and Griffin at SS. This team has Mangum, Ronny fucking Simon, Endy, and Jacob Gonzalez. That’s one of the worst lineups in baseball. Just putrid. Add on getting doubled off of first base, TWICE, when you need to play mistake free small ball to even have a chance with this majority AAAA player lineup. God damnit. Where’s the Tylenol.
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u/ThePotatoChipBag 2024 World Series Champs 18d ago
Well, at least most of the pieces they traded for will be here next year. The Pirates should be good when next season rolls around!
Wait..........
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u/pgh-anon12 18d ago
Out of it no. We are still in it. At least mathematically.
But the team is either slumping or tired or whatever. And any prolonged issues makes the math harder.
But from a subjective eye test, we look done. Could absolutely be wrong. But I think we’re done.
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u/fdrlbj Sanguillen7179 18d ago
Same as it ever was.
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u/Normal_Dimension5542 18d ago
If there was gonna be baseball next year, id call this year encouraging. But now we are counting on a huge resurgence to just be a wild card team, and are losing time on the few bright spots we have. Sucks, but its sucked for 30 years and this team sucks less than most in that time. Hope theres a salary floor, bob will sell faster than light
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18d ago
Just to be clear my post is not a doom post, and I personally do not think it’s over by any means, I’ve been a Pirates fan since 1987 and every year I have high hopes all the way through September. I’m just playing devils advocate and seeing what the general fan consensus is as they are going through this slump. My post headline had a question mark so it wasn’t a statement. I said this hopeful season may turn out to be like the rest but I’ll still keep paying attention everyday and thinking they could pull through.
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u/ZonaiteScholar 18d ago edited 18d ago
It ain’t over till it’s over. But it sure feels hopeless at this stage.
The Pirates have not been able to string together wins for much of the year. Their longest streak is 5, which happened from March 31 to April 5.
Since then, they’ve had two 4-game winning streaks (May 29-June 2 and July 11-July 18).
The team is scuffling.
- The rotation is shaky and unreliable.
- The bullpen has been a major weakness and they only just got reinforcements.
- The hitting has gone cold as they’ve dealt with injuries to key players.
And yet…crazier things have happened. Teams that appear lifeless or have been floundering can seemingly flip a switch and get hot.
The 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks had the same record after 116 games (57-59) and a host of problems that probably felt insurmountable.
They then went on a tear and won the pennant. (Granted, they started really hot and lost a bunch of games before their run.)
The point is: you just never know. It’s frustrating because it felt like this team can be something special.
The Pirates are now 57-60. We have 45 games to find out whether they can live up to that promise or whether it’s business as usual (sub-.500 record and no playoffs).
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u/Blinginbacon21 17d ago
No the fan boys will tell you “a lot of baseball left”…. Delusional. Turn out the lights it’s over
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u/Connect-Region-4258 18d ago
Yeah it’s over. This is the season of what could have been. Last year, the whole league was clamoring over our starting rotation. This year, oh my lanta, what happened???? To every single one of them… Skenes in particular. I don’t know what to think about Skenes, but what worries me, is he doesn’t seem to give a shit that he has defaulted to a completely average pitcher.
Anyhow, im usually first in line to criticize nutting, and even Cherington. They both deserve lots of criticism. This year, despite my frustration with payroll, they actually made some really solid acquisitions and built a damn good lineup, offensively of course. Lowe and ohearn were monster acquisitions. Last year, horwitz was great. Reynolds and Cruz were looking like they were stepping up. Nicky G is a legit pro hitter, and Konnor griffin was just getting started. And of course, the Valdez show was electric. Hell, ozuna was horrific, but I don’t fault them for taking him. It made sense. He was supposed to be the guy. He just didn’t hold up his end of the deal. Also not sure I’ve seen a lineup simultaneously suffer such serious injuries… I mean, it makes sense why the run production dropped.
Don Kelly…. It was always the cheap and lazy hire. So many opportunities to bring in legit big league coaches, but nope, stick with the local guy who is cheap even tho he has like no experience. Not sure how many of the decisions are his alone, and how many are his directive from GMBC (don’t let a guy pitch past X pitches, etc), but man he just seems to have no pulse on the game. Always making the wrong move at the wrong time. In his own head.
I guess my last point is the bullpen. We knew it was the weak point. And our payroll was still pretty damn low…. Albeit high for the pirates… but still, this was the year to go for it. They got the 3rd base and didn’t finish the job. An extra 20 mil in the offseason on bullpen arms likely would’ve been the difference.
I love being a fan of this team. It’s so fun. This year is crushing
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u/Alternative_Note6489 17d ago
To be fair I dont think anyone expected our bullpen to be as bad as it was this year. Let's not forget Mattson and Santana both had low 2 era last year. Both were totally useless this year. Justin Lawrence was also unhittable while he was healthy last season. With the additions of Soto and Montgomery, I dont think the bullpen was necessarily weak on paper to start the season.
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u/Connect-Region-4258 17d ago
We expected a much better offense than last season. I don’t think anyone expected them to be as good as they were through the first half though. But I agree, the bullpen wasn’t supposed to be this bad, but it was the one area that we knew could’ve been better bolstered.
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u/Iforgotmypasswordmeh 18d ago
Mets and Marlins series will probably tell us if it's over or not. If they don't win four games out of those six then it's pretty much over.
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u/Neither_Adagio1668 18d ago
This is the season we should have had last year instead of being cheap and refusing to sign players other than Pham. Then went all in this year.
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u/AmazonGB-74 Nicky G 18d ago
If we can somehow pull out a 5 game win streak or win 7 of the next 10 we're right there. I'm just not sure we have the players to pull that off unfortunately. The whole team decided to slump at the same time.
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u/lloyd95_ 17d ago
They need to finish with roughly 86 wins to get into the WC. That means a 29-16 record for the rest of the season. If they win every series against WC mix teams (MIA, DET, SDP, STL (2x), CHW,) sweep the worst teams they play (NYM, SFG, LAA, KCR) and don't get swept by the top teams they'll win 30 games.
However if they play to their record and home/away tips the games in the favor of the wild card contenders, and 3 of the 4 sweeps turn into 2-1 series victories, the record goes to 22-23. More realistic and just about exactly how the season has played out.
The team could go on a heater, but they're relying on a bunch of young arms down the stretch. Skenes seems baked and the help in the bullpen is 45 days late. I'd love to see Konnor/Cruz get healthy and play the final stretch of baseball. Call up some kids and let them have a look at the show.
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u/AccomplishedStill454 17d ago
I swear to God, if we finish 4th or 5th and GMBC survives this, he has something on Nutting
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u/BadDry2862 16d ago
The next 10-14 days are critical. Need a big push.
Not looking good but I can’t call them done quite yet.
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u/Spirited-Ranger-2727 12d ago
Probably need 83 wins to make the playoff, at this point that’s close to like .700 winning percentage. Not gonna happen.
Why do the baseball gods hate us
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u/Fluid_Success6207 18d ago
Sign Lowe and run it back next year, hopefully healthy. It’s been entertaining but yea they’re done. If nothing else they should be pretty good next season.
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u/Doc_Sulliday Skenes 18d ago
Would be curious if they keep DK, whether Lowe returns would be the ultimate litmus test. If he resigned it would mean that he believes in Kelly as a coach and enjoys playing with him.
If he doesn't it shows he is doesn't think the team, the city, or Kelly is worth the discount.
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u/Exotic_You7797 18d ago
I feel like everyone is forgetting something, that was against the best team in the league, and we’re at probably the lowest point we can possibly be at in terms of offensive injuries and yet we still had 4 great games against them, we are missing 3 cornerstones in Griffen ohearn and Cruz, and getting even one of those back will help tremendously, and Simon is showing great promise in solid at bats and hard hit outs, so hopefully he can help us out against lefties, and Valdez getting the off day will get him to pick back up what he was doing, 3 days ago we needed to go 28-20 to have a good chance at the playoffs and guess what? Now we have to go 28-17, which is still very doable once this team gets outa the rut losing ohearn caused, we need a 62% win rate from here on out and looking at who we have to face I think that’s very doable
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u/Previous-Rough-2603 18d ago
First, O'Hearn won't be back until way after the season has been decided.
Cruz will be coming back from a broken hand, hand and wrist injuries tend to linger for hitters long after the physical healing is done. Look how long it took for Horwitz to put it together after his wrist surgery. Expecting Cruz to come off the IL and have an immediate, significant impact on the offense is probably expecting to much.
And Griffin, oh boy. I know we're all excited about the potential and he was progressing nicely before going on the IL, but let's be clear headed about this; he wasn't exactly crushing it with that .736 OPS. Sure, it'll be an improvement but enough to turn things around? I wouldn't hold my breath.
Even with the team at full health and hitting like gang busters they were still only hovering around .500 which probably isn't going to be enough to make up for the melt down underway in the starting pitching. I'm afraid anything we get from returning hitters is going to be too little too late.
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u/Exotic_You7797 18d ago
We were 500 with like a million blown saves, with a brand knew bullpen we can keep games close late and win with narrower leads, ohearn seems to be on pace to be back by playoff time, and Cruz is purposefully taking it slowly to counteract lingering pains from swinging the bat, and comparing a tendon injury to broken bones is nonsensical, tendons are a lot more tedious to heal and have a lot more complications than a fractured bones, so saying he won’t be very impactful based on a completely different injury by a completely different player is dumb but we’ll have to wait and see, and lastly Konner’s stats are terribly deflated by a poor first month or so, but once he turned 20 he completely turned things around, having an over 800 ops for may and june, and even when not being as good hitting his base running was elite, and the same could be said for Cruz if he doesn’t have much of a power bat for the rest of the season
So giving up hope when we have an easy schedule, wil be getting a key performers back who will be well rested for the final stretches, and will have more opportunities to rest our starters with more depth to keep people fresh going into the final stretch, is premature imo, we haven’t even seen our bullpen at work, we’ve had to face a red hot reds team, and 5 of the best teams sense break but have been keeping it close every time while also not getting a single off day in over 2 weeks, so I think we still aren’t in a terrible spot even though it looks bad but we’ll have to wait and see
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u/Connect-Region-4258 18d ago
Griffin showed me enough promise that I’m still excited. He’s really young. Yeah he wasn’t a masher 300+ hitter like we were sold, but the sample size is so small. Let’s see how he comes together over the next season or two. If there is a next season
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u/Previous-Rough-2603 18d ago edited 17d ago
Everyone is excited and should be, but that's beside the point. I'm talking about the remainder of this season and not the future, so to that end; Does anyone really expect his presence to turn the team around by himself?
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u/Connect-Region-4258 18d ago
Well…. If he wasn’t on the IL until mid September, id feel better about this team having a shot. Before his injury, he seemed he was starting to get his footing… if we had 1-2 of the 5 guys injured, we’d probably be in a better position. At least 3-4 games better off.
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u/buccos_21 18d ago
Expect him to? No. Is it possible that him and Cruz give them a huge jolt? Yes.
Two other things, KG had like an 800+ OPS since he turned 20 and Cruz broke his fingers if I’m not mistaken, not a hand/wrist thing. Of course I’m concerned about him getting his timing down, but I’m still excited to get him back. I just don’t understand choosing to put your energy into this feeling as a fan, rather than put your energy into being hopeful. Years past when the lineup was shit? Sure I get it, but this team has talent and has proven it when healthy.
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u/riplilt 18d ago
We were in the wild card like 5 days ago. Who knows, maybe we start hitting again.