Jun 25, 2016 4 min read

Looking for someone to blame for the Pirates’ season appearing to be headed down the toilet?

You can blame Clint Hurdle for suddenly forgetting how to manage.

How about general manager Neil Huntington for not doing enough to improve the team in the offseason?

There’s always Bob Nutting for being cheap, and his fellow owners for maintaining an economic system that makes it so hard for the Pirates to compete with high-revenue teams.

I’d go with Andrew McCutchen and Francisco Liriano.

McCutchen is hitting .239 and Liriano’s ERA is 5.17.

Both are picking up where they left off at the end of last season. McCutchen hit .237 in September, which makes him a .230-something hitter for almost four months.

Liriano had a 2.98 ERA before the All-Star Game last year and 4.00 after it. That makes him a pitcher with an ERA close to 5.00 for almost an entire season.

McCutchen is supposed to be the Pirates’ best offensive player and he has a history of slow starts, but it’s late June and we’re well past the early part of the season.

It makes you wonder if he’s playing hurt.

McCutchen will have to hit .340 for the next two months to get near his lifetime batting average of .294.

Liriano was a reclamation project, and whatever the Pirates get out of him the next few years is just gravy, but he’s also the No. 2 starter and has to pitch like one for Pittsburgh to have any chance of getting that wild card that sets them up to be blown away by a really, really good pitcher in a one-game playoff.

McCutchen is too good to be stuck below .240 and – unless he is playing hurt – nobody should be surprised if gets hot really fast.

The problem for the Pirates is that it’s already too late to get decent seed in the playoffs. Making them at all is a long shot.

• It’s beginning to look like the Pirates will be sellers at the trade deadline and what do they do with McCutchen? If he’s still hitting. .245 on July 31 his sale price will be way down and the return might not be worth it. But what if he hits .340 from now until the deadline and several teams are interested? Should the Pirates trade him if a team blows their socks off with a deal?

Yep.

They have Austin Meadows playing center field in Indianapolis. He proved he was ready for Triple-A this season by hitting .311 and putting together a franchise record 22-game hitting streak at Class AA Altoona.

Meadows is probably not another McCutchen but he’s a top prospect and should be a solid major leaguer.

If the Pirates can get some MLB-ready prospects and a good major-league player for McCutchhen, they should make the deal. The current version of the Pirates might have peaked last year with 98 wins.

There’s still a long way to go this season but it’s beginning to look like it’s time for a tweaking.

• Good for Beau Bennett. If ever a player needed a change of scenery, this was the time. The Penguins traded him to the New Jersey Devils for a third-round pick in this year’s draft. Ray Shero is the Devils’ general manager and he drafted Bennett in the first round for the Penguins.

I thought Bennett was a major talent from the time I saw him play in the Penguins’ prospects game. He has great vision and great hands. He might ever be a star but it wouldn’t surprise me if he becomes a solid NHL player.

• The 2016 pro football season started this week, in case you didn’t know.

The Canadian Football League opened its season Thursday. ESPN is televising a good number of games and, if you like football, there is really nothing not to like about the CFL. Except that it’s not the NFL.

• I am experiencing serious emotional problems this weekend, though. The CFL players had advertising logos on the front of their jerseys. Very disturbing.

• I’m happy for the sports fans of Cleveland getting their first major pro championship in 52 years. It’s a great sports town and they deserve a winner.

• The Los Angeles Dodgers, who are in town this weekend, spent $96 million on international players this year. That’s more than the payroll for six Major League teams, not including the Pirates, whose payroll is around $106 million.

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