April brought showers to Nutting family
April was not a good month for the Nutting family
The Pirates did a really good job of convincing fans and PNC customers, who call themselves fans but are actually there for the view and the food, that they are going nowhere. And the conversation that had been mostly about baseball for the last three and a half seasons is back to Nutting family cheapness.
The fans were given no indication over the offseason that the Nuttings had enjoyed the three-year window of winning that preceded last season so much that they were going to start throwing money around.
And if they made the decision not to trade former star Andrew McCutchen because they thought they might get a bigger return at the trading deadline, his .226 batting average coming into the weekend doesn’t make that look like a very good idea,
The way McCutchen is going and has gone since the end of the 2015 season will make moving him nothing more than a salary dump and that’s only if they can find a team dumb enough to take him.
Gregory Polanco went 2-for-4 Friday night and raised his average to .233. He also drove in his fifth run. Pretty embarrassing for a cleanup hitter.
Starling Marte is serving a suspension for PED stupidity and wherever Jung Ho Kang is, we hope he’s not driving.
Other than that, April was a Bucco bundle of laughs.
If the Pirates are going to get back to the glory years of 2013-2015, when they actually won more than they lost after 20 seasons below .500, they’re going to have to do it with prospects who are now playing in the minor leagues.
If you’ve paid attention at all to the Nuttings’ business practices, you know that they won’t be bidding for big time free agents.
They’re way too smart for that.
The big market vultures might already be circling the Pirates only star right now. That would be Gerrit Cole, who was expected to be a much bigger star by now and is just a pretty good starting pitcher.
He made the cover of the New York Daily News sports section last week as a guy the Yankees could have their eye on at the trading deadline. The Yankees have been one of the big surprises this season and, instead of doing a rebuild, could be looking to follow Yankees tradition and try to buy an instant winner.
And there’s no better endorsement of the Nutting business plan than this sentence written by Daily News writer John Harper: “But sooner or later (the Pirates) are almost certainly trading Cole, an elite power pitcher who will be a free agent after the 2019 season, because they won’t be able to afford to sign him. So the question is when.”
That sentence also tells you all you need to know about what a joke Major League Baseball is.
MLB’s ridiculous economics may not bother you but they affect owners who know they can’t compete.
Scott Boras is Cole’s agent. He has a business plan, too and it doesn’t include signing away his clients’ free agent years.
Here’s what he told Tom Verducci of SI.com: “Rule number one in baseball is that no team has ever gone broke. Rule number two is that there’s never been an owner who didn’t make money when he sold the team. And rule number three is that there are no recessions in baseball.”
And, as Verducci points out in his story, a re-setting of the market is coming and it’s not good news for teams such the Pirates. Players approaching their free agent years have turned down $100 million offers to extend their contracts.
By 2021 MLB’s biggest stars will be making $40 million a year.
Hope you enjoyed 2013 to 2015. It might be a while before the Pirates contend for a championship.
Unless they pull off a miracle and win one this year, it will be 39 years without one.
I’m old enough to remember when the Steelers were a laughing stock for having gone 40 years.
The Pirates have a realistic shot at 50.
• Watching Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin play against each other, it’s easy to see why Crosby has always been a better player. When Crosby doesn’t show up on the score sheet, because of all the other things he does, he’s not invisible.
Ovechkin’s just invisible.
• Eleven years from now, PNC Park will be 28 years old, only three years younger than Three Rivers Stadium was when it was imploded. If the Pirates’ championship drought has reached 50 years, how about a nice new ballpark?
• Now that the WPIAL has ruled that the sons of Mike Tomlin and Joey Porter did not transfer from North Catholic for athletic intent, even though they transferred about 20 minutes after North Catholic coach Jason Gildon was fired, no player should ever be ruled ineligible for transferring for athletic reasons.
John Steigerwald writes a weekly column for the Observer-Reporter.