Well, now you’ve done it, Pirates. You’ve ruined everything.



Not so long ago, your fans were completely happy with a simple .500 season. After a American professional sports record 20 consecutive losing seasons from 1993 through 2012 – with epic collapses ending the 2011 and 2012 campaigns – simply breaking through with a winning record in 2013 was reason for celebration. The wildcard victory and spot in the divisional round that came with it were icing on the quite palatable cake of mathematical non-failure. Another wildcard spot last year, which lasted a few innings before being mowed down by Madison Bumgarner and the Giants, was more of the same: evidence that the demons of the ‘90s and ‘00s were exorcised and that the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club had achieved semi-relevance. Huzzah!

You could have stopped there. You could have been a small market team that had a nice little run of competitiveness before falling back to baseball’s wasteland while seeing its best players poached by big-name teams. Everyone would have said: “Hey, remember those three years back in the early 20-teens when the Pirates were competitive? Those were some pretty good times.”

But you’ve ruined it, Pirates. You’ve messed everything up. You’ve become … a legitimate World Series favorite. Uh-oh.

It’s all because you had to go and become the best team in the National League over the past two months, trimming the St Louis Cardinals’ lead in the NL Central from insurmountable to just 2 ½ games at the All-Star break, capped by taking three of four from St Louis – the last two in dramatic fashion on national TV. You have a legitimate baseball superstar in Andrew McCutchen. You finally have a true ace in Gerrit Cole, a guy who can dominate a playoff run by himself like Bumgarner did a year ago. You have speed. You have youth. You have veterans. You have everything. You have … expectations. Gulp.

Now absolutely no one will be content with a wildcard spot. Or even an appearance in the divisional round. Anything short of winning the World Series will feel like failure – failure like all those 90-loss seasons of the not-so-distant past, but worse because no one expected anything from those garbage squads.

Your window to win a World Series is open. Right now. If you’re ever going to tap into your vast collection of prospects and make a big deal before the trade deadline to bring in a real bat – and not another Ryan Ludwick or Marlon Byrd-type, but an actual impact player – now’s the time. If you’re ever going to go get Cole Hamels, this is the year. Everything you do now will be examined and parsed and critiqued like never before. Every move, every acquisition, every promotion and demotion has World Series implications. Maybe you go all-in, or maybe you let it ride and hope your pipeline of minor league talent keeps you an annual contender far into the future. There’s no wrong answer. But there’s only one acceptable answer: winning the World Series this year. Not three years from now. Three months from now.

You have real expectations. Pressure. A fanbase that expects greatness. You could have just been a nice team that was a nice story. But you had to mess it all up by becoming the best team in baseball.

Way to go.

Quote of the Week

[Pete Rose] has got to be suspended for life. If you are stupid enough to go out and bet on your own team and bet on baseball, there has got to be something wrong. If my brother did it, I’d say the same thing. I’m not afraid to come out and say it. Pete and I are friends. But he did something wrong, and it was terrible – Tommy Lasorda, Hall of Fame manager of the Dodgers.

Hey, if you want an expert on things that are wrong and terrible, you can’t do better than Lasorda. I suppose he’ll demand that Tommy Lasorda be kicked out of the Hall of Fame any day now.

Stat of the Week

.106 – Entering Sunday’s action, Mets outfielder Kirk Nieuwenhuis had a .106 average and 0 home runs in 66 at-bats this season. Then he three home runs against the Diamondbacks and became the first Mets player in the franchise’s 54-year history to hit three home runs in a home game. Nieuwenhuis’ big game continues the Mets’ season-long theme of getting memorable offense from their worst hitters. There’s Bartolo Colon’s inexplicable (or completely predictable!) four hits and three RBI on the season, Steven Matz’s five RBI in his first two MLB games, home runs from both Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey this year, and Jacob deGrom hitting a respectable .205. It might be time for the Mets to consider putting out an all-terrible lineup. They’d be unstoppable.

This Week’s Horrible Fantasy Team That Crushed Your Team

CJ Cron, DH, Angels – 9-for-15, 2 HR, 4 RBI

John Jaso, DH, Rays – 8-for-19, HR, 2 RBI

Dustin Ackley, OF, Mariners – 8-for-19, HR, 3 RBI

Carlos Ruiz, C, Phillies – 7-for-17, HR, 3 RBI

Danny Duffy, P, Royals – 12.1 innings, 1 win, 1.46 ERA

Mike Leake, P, Reds – 14 innings, 14 strikeouts, 1 win, 1.93 ERA

Reader Twitter Question of the Week

@DJGalloEtc Everyone is excited Kang danced to Gangnam Style. What token dance would they make an American do overseas? #BaseballQandA — Patrick Neville (@Patrick_Neville) July 10, 2015

Yes, Pirates rookie infielder Jung Ho Kang delighted baseball during a rain delay on Thursday by dancing to Gangnam Style. I suppose an American player overseas would similarly delight a foreign audience by … twerking? Sure: twerking.

Mr Baseball came out 23 years ago. It’s time for a sequel. Tom Selleck having to jiggle his 70-year old man ass on the big screen is a fair punishment for stealing California’s water.

Phillies-ness of the Week

Despite being 87, an age when most people are sleeping through baseball games, not eloquently calling them, Vin Scully remains baseball’s best play-by-play man. As such, he captured Phillies baseball as only he could last Monday night during the opener of a four-game series, saying: “You wonder why a team is last, then you watch them play.”

There’s really not much that can be added to that. Except let’s just add this anyway, from a Giants fan watching Sunday’s carnage:

The @Phillies are so bad I just observed a wild pitch outta the bullpen — Patrick Malatack (@patrickmalatack) July 12, 2015

Chicago Cubs World Series Odds: Holding Steady

The Cubs split a four-game series with the Cardinals last week and, with a win on Sunday against the White Sox, avoided getting swept by their crosstown rivals. Not the greatest week, but it could always be worse for the Cubs and – historically - it usually is. At least Jon Lester got his first major league hit this week after starting his career 0-for-66. Take that, DH proponents.

A-Rod-ness of the Week

Here’s Yankees catcher Brian McCann on Alex Rodriguez as a team-mate: “He’s one of the best team-mates I’ve ever had. The way he sticks to a routine every day, to watch him go about his business on a daily basis is absolutely incredible. When you watch him do his tee work, his flips, his machine work, you feel like you’re watching the best swing ... you’re watching a flawless swing. He works at it, he works on his craft, and it goes back to baseball’s on his mind 24/7. I’ve been so impressed.”

When McCann, one of the authors of baseball’s unwritten rules and a strict adherent to “The Code,” gives A-Rod his blessing, it’s probably time for everyone to let bygones be bygones. Alex Rodriguez is redeemed! (Or he’s just a guy who is playing well for Brian McCann’s team, so anything he does or ever has done is fine as long as he continues to produce, per baseball’s unwritten code.)

10 Things I Think I Thought When I Thought

1) The Mariners had a 108-year old woman throw out the first pitch before their game on Saturday night.

She is one of just a handful of still-living humans who were alive when the Cubs won a World Series, yet her favorite team is an expansion team that began to play the year she turned 70. Odd. Most people pick a favorite team around the age of four or five, but she waited until 70. Maybe that’s the smartest way to do it, though. Seventy years in, you’d know which franchises are worth rooting for and which ones are hopeless. You could make a wise, informed choice. Or you could still mess up and pick the Seattle Mariners. I guess life decisions aren’t easy at any age.

2) Congratulations to Brian Dozier on making the All-Star Game. After losing the Final Vote, Dozier got a spot due to Jose Bautista’s injury. It was the best way. The only way. Dozier simply had to lose the fan vote. Baseball must not allow players to be elected when the ballot box is stuffed with clumps of back hair.

3) Baseball wants us to pretend that the All-Star Game is important, and they’ve forced consequence on it by having the exhibition determine homefield in the playoffs, yet the best pitcher in baseball, Clayton Kershaw, only made the game at the last moment because two other players on the roster are unavailable to pitch. Absurd. If the game matters, then make sure the best players are in it – which means no fan vote(s) and no representative from every team. A player like Kershaw should be the first player on a roster, not a last-minute, chance, throw-in.

4) Of course, on the other hand, I suppose you could make the case that Kershaw has enough influence on the World Series already without being in the All-Star Game, because any team who faces him in the postseason gets a free pass onto the next round. Thanks a lot for ruining my expertly constructed argument from above, baseball Peyton Manning.

5) Here’s Andrew McCutchen’s 14th inning, walk-off home run against the Cardinals on Saturday night.

I have nothing to say about it, I just know people like seeing the Cardinals look sad. Sometimes you just have to give people what they want and move on.



6)

White Sox position players in July have been worth 0.0 WAR, which is the group's best month of the season — Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) July 9, 2015

Yikes. WAR, of course, is Wins Above Replacement – the Replacement level players being the filler, Triple-A-quality players ever team has stocked in the high minors. If this stat is accurate – and if you’ve seen the White Sox play this year, it is – the White Sox are no better than a Triple-A team (Jose Abreu and Chris Sale excluded). Here’s where it gets interesting – or at least a little less pathetic – the White Sox’s actual Triple-A team, the Charlotte Knights, have the third-best record in the International League at 51-40. Should the White Sox be relegated and replaced by their Triple-A team? You can make the case that they should – and if not logically, then at least for entertainment purposes.

7) Comic-Con was in San Diego last week, but the Padres were on a road trip. What a bummer for the team. Comic-Con’s core audience tends to be people who aren’t exactly all that good at sports, and it was cruel for the baseball schedule to take the Padres away from their people.

8) While I’m on the jock/nerd beat (guess which category sportswriters fall under!), Dodgers All-Star Joc Pederson is rather fortunate he was athletically gifted. It would be pretty rough growing up with the name “Joc” if you were a clumsy collection of bony limbs and gym class failure that liked collecting bugs. “What are you doing? Put your inhaler away and make some tackles! Is your name Joc or not?! This is more disappointing than when I had Einstein McGee write my science paper for me and got an F.”

9) It’s easy to criticize baseball broadcasters for using dull catchphrases that feel safe and focus group-tested. But then you hear one of them try to come up with something on the fly.

Yeah, let’s stick to the focus group-tested lines.

10) Don’t be surprised if some of the players at the All-Star game start a fight with Great American Ballpark. No way they’ll stand by and let a stadium with such a cocky name just sit there and get away with it. The unwritten rules (probably) say that stadium names have to be humble. Claiming to be a “Great American Ballpark” is the bat flip of corporate naming. Beat that stadium up, Kansas City Royals.