Cherington needs to deliver relief to Bucs
It comes down to pitching.
In the major leagues, it always comes down to pitching.
It’s a line that was likely uttered by Abner Doubleday while he was pacing off 90 feet between bases for the first time, and it has held true all these years.
Pitching has helped get the Pirates in the playoff race. It’s also the reason why the National League’s highest-scoring team enters the weekend two games out of the final postseason spot in a muddled wild-card scrum.
The Pirates’ starting rotation is good. At times, very good.
The bullpen, not so good. Too many times, it has been downright awful.
That’s why general manager Ben Cherington has to make a trade, or trades, to acquire relief pitchers. This is not breaking news. Everybody in baseball knows this to be true.
Cherington did plenty in the offseason to boost the Pirates’ offense but his plan for the bullpen hasn’t worked. The Pirates went into the season with holdover Dennis Santana (2-4, 5.80, 2 saves) as the closer. He failed miserably and Gregory Soto (5-2, 4.05, 12 saves) was the next in line. Soto has been mediocre at best.
The Pirates’ relief pitchers have 19 saves. And 17 blown saves. That’s not a playoff-caliber ratio.
The pressure is on Cherington to deliver pitchers who can be reliable in setup roles and closing a game by the Aug. 3 trade deadline. And with so many teams in playoff contention, and everybody in need of relief pitchers, the price will be steep.
The names being mentioned most often by Pirates fans are Boston’s Aroldis Chapman, San Diego’s Mason Miller and the New York Mets’ Luke Weaver.
Boston has played its way into a tie for the final wild-card spot in the American League, so Chapman is unlikely to be on the trading block. If San Diego falls any further behind in the NL, Miller could be shopped around. He would be the home-run acquisition for Cherington, but the Padres gave up so much to get the hard-throwing Bethel Park native that the asking price might be significantly more than the Pirates are willing to give up.
Weaver is a former starter who has very little experience closing games, but does a terrific job in a setup role. His Mets teammate, Devin Williams , is a former all-star closer but is having a bad year. Maybe a change of scenery is all he needs to get back on track. The Mets also could make veteran lefties A.J. Minter and Brooks Raley available.
The Pirates’ relief pitchers must be better, no matter who they are, come August and September. Maybe it would help the bullpen if the starters would be allowed to throw, say, seven innings or 110 pitches in a game. This is the drive for the playoffs, so you want your best pitchers on the mound, and in Pittsburgh those best pitchers are the starters. Yet they are starters who throw 80 pitches and look for the cavalry to come in. That’s an understandable formula with Jared Jones because he’s coming off elbow surgery, but the other starters need to lengthen their outings.
• PIAA executive director Mark Byers recently spoke to several PIAA committees and cleared up one part of legislative proposal House Bill 41. The bill defines boundary schools as traditional public schools and non-boundary schools as charter, parochial, and private schools. Byers noted that local enrollment practices, including tuition and transfer students, do not change those definitions. So if a public school’s cafeteria worker is permitted to have their out-of-district child attend that school, it doesn’t become a non-boundary school.
• The Pony League World Series continues to have teams filling the 10 spots on the bracket. Chinese Taipei, the defending champion, recently won the Asia-Pacific Zone.
The 10-team Host Area tournament begins Thursday in Mt. Lebanon. The winner will qualify for the Pony League World Series, which will be held Aug. 7-12 at Lew Hays Pony Field.
Sports editor Chris Dugan can be reached at dugan@observer-reporter.com