The Pirates' Accelerated Rebuild

 

Kinda odd for a team to go from underdogs to contenders to busts to rebuilders in the span of a year. Typically that takes a couple years.

It's as if the Pirates went through a full decade's storyline in just a few months, like someone accelerated the process under a dome, like that Shyamalan movie from a year or so ago. April and May could have been two competitive seasons, June and July could have been the disappointing selling follow-ups, and now we're back at where we were last year, the younger team with rookie call-ups trying to preserve for the future. It doesn't usually arc this quickly. 

It's also accelerating to the point where a lot of the early-season standouts, like Jack Suwinski, Mitch Keller and Johan Oviedo have calmed down tremendously. Both Keller and Oviedo have ERAs around 4 now, and Keller has had a string of disappointing starts that has cooled his ASG-caliber season. Oviedo, while steady and great at eating innings now has a 4.42 ERA and a 6-12 record. Compared to the other three starters, that's a low ERA, though- Osvaldo Bido, Bailey Falter and Quinn Priester are all struggling so far and the usual suspects for the rotation [J.T. Brubaker, Vince Velasquez, Max Kranick, Luis Ortiz and Roansy Contreras] are either hurt or down in the minors. 

And if you think that the spool of pitchers are taking their time acclimating, there's a whole host of rookie batters that are also doing their best to figure into things. The big ones are people like Henry Davis and Endy Rodriguez, and neither are especially burning things down at the moment. The best one is probably corner infielder Jared Triolo, he's hitting .271 with 15 RBIs in 35 games. There's also a few accumulated guys, like Alika Williams and Liover Peguero, who are also doing cool things in the middle infield. But...there aren't any .300-hitting rookies or anything, they're all hitting around .211, even people like Davis. The only one of these call-ups that's really raising eyebrows is Peguero, he's got 4 homers in 20 games. But other than that, what can you say about these guys? You can barely say anything about the veterans, other than Reynolds and Hayes there's not a ton going on.

The hope is that this glut of call-ups can turn into accumulated talent that can start, and that it can form something like the Orioles' call-ups did. The difference is I saw more promise in the Orioles' call-ups, here you just see a lot of people just sort of standing around waiting to become great. Maybe it happens eventually, you hope it does, but who knows.

I really hate that the Pirates' season become as dreary as this, throwing a bunch of rookies in the air and seeing which ones land, but this is apparently how this accelerated timeline goes.

Coming Tonight: He split last year between a contender and a bottom-feeder, and he's managed to do the same thing this year without switching teams.