Dec 10, 2016 4 min read

Pirates season tickets still might make a nice stocking stuffer. If the Pirates had traded Andrew McCutchen last week, as many people expected, that might not have been the case.

Did the Pirates never have any intention of trading him or were the offers for him just not good enough?

We’ll probably never know but it’s probably safe to assume that, if a team offers the right package, McCutchen will be gone before the end of the 2017 season.

If you spend any time on Twitter or listen to the local talk shows it’s pretty obvious that Pirates fans are getting restless and they’re back to accusing the Nutting family of being too cheap to win.

Here’s a suggestion: Don’t risk having that stocking stuffer turn into a lump of coal. Don’t give Pirates tickets as Christmas gifts. And do yourself a favor. If you have season tickets, don’t renew them until you see what kind of team the Pirates are going to trot out there next season. Right now, it looks like a team that will be just good enough to not make the playoffs.

If you blame the Nutting family’s cheapness for that, then don’t send them your hard-earned money until they show you they’re willing to spend a few extra bucks to win.

The Nuttings have every reason to be confident that PNC Park will get you to enough games to fatten their bank account.

There are Pirates fans and there are PNC Park customers. Which are you?

• There’s a good chance that sometime during the Steelers’ game in Buffalo, Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown will hook up for their 50th touchdown pass and break the tie with Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann for most TDs by a quarterback-wide receiver combination in franchise history. They got number 49 last week against the New York Giants.

Brown’s on his way to setting an NFL record for receptions over a four-year period and Roethlisberger already holds several Steelers passing records. Each time they add to their totals the temptation is to declare one or both the Steelers’ best ever at their position.

Don’t.

Both Roethlisberger and Brown would be great in any era and both are locks for the Hall of Fame, but the passing numbers are ridiculously inflated because of rules changes and the way the game is played, so you have to ask a simple question about each player.

Does Roethlisberger do anything better than Bradshaw?

Nope.

Does Brown do anything better than Swann?

Nope.

If you’re not old enough to have seen Bradshaw and Swann play, then there is plenty of evidence all over YouTube.

I think it’s fair to say that Brown does everything as well as Swann – make the difficult catch and make great runs after the catch – but he does neither any better.

Roethlisberger does nothing better than Bradshaw and some things not as well. Bradshaw is the best pure passer I have ever seen. Watch his highlights and notice how effortlessly he threw a ball 50 yards or more. His is the only 50-yard pass that arrived at the receiver chin high. And he had tremendous touch. Roethlisberger’s no more accurate and not nearly as good with the deep ball.

Bradshaw was every bit as good at keeping a play alive as Roethlisberger and a much better runner when he decided to tuck it and go.

And with Bradshaw, sliding to avoid a tackle was never a consideration.

When Roethlisberger’s career is over, his numbers will blow Bradshaw’s away, but remember, the numbers are inflated and he does nothing better and some things not as well.

Steelers fans are lucky to have had all four.

• What did we do before enough nerds came along to keep track of a Major League Baseball’s hitter chase percentage? The St. Louis Cardinals signed center fielder Dexter Fowler to a four-year $62-million contract a few days ago and one of Fowler’s big attractions was the fact that he only swung and missed at pitches out of the strike zone 17 percent of the time – the best in baseball.

That’s nice, but how do they find people willing to sit through a three-and-a-half hour baseball game and keep track of that kind of minutiae? And how much are they paid?

Call me crazy but a batting average is enough for me. A .300 hitter hits safely 30 percent of the time. How many of those hits are on pitches that would not have been strikes?

Unfortunately in sports – especially baseball – there is no longer such a thing as too much information.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.