It was quiet enough in the Pirates' clubhouse late Thursday night that one could hear the sound of Gregory Polanco bitterly whipping a small ball of crumpled tape into the trash.
From across the room, no less.
"It's frustrating," he'd tell me later, though it might as well have been anyone from the lineup that had just limped through a 1-0 loss to the first-place Cubs at PNC Park. "I'm trying. We're all trying."
The conversation got no further.
And talk about quiet: The only thing that registered fewer decibels than the straight-line-EKG crowd of 21,783 were the home team's actual bats. Six hits. All singles. One runner in scoring position. Ten whiffs. And so much soft contact they might as well have been fluffing pillows.
Really, this was the entirety of their eighth inning:
The Pirates aren't done.
I know, that isn't exactly the thought that leaps to mind upon watching that sizzling sequence, much less recognizing that they've lost four in a row, have fallen back to .500 at 61-61 and, since that 11-game winning streak, have lost 12 of 20. Even Chris Archer, the unfairly anointed saint/savior of the franchise in some eyes, has mostly flailed through three starts.
It feels over.
But here are three reasons why I can't go there, at least not yet:
1. There are now 40 games left, a quarter of the season, and the Pirates are 6 1/2 games out of the National League wild card. That isn't likely, but neither does it require some mathematical miracle.
2. No one in the league's soaring off with anything. These very Cubs, the best of the bunch at 70-50, are on pace for 94 wins. That's a fine season, but the bar only lowers from there. And in particular, the wild card grouping -- while intimidating in scope because there are nine teams 6 1/2 games apart, also speaks to some serious season-long mediocrity for all involved.
3. What's gone wrong with the Pirates of late ... really shouldn't ever go this wrong. Meaning, of course, the offense.
I wrote on the eve of this 4-6 trip they just made through Denver, San Francisco and Minneapolis that the one thing that could keep them in contention was the offense. The starting pitching's been too inconsistent, the middle relief is a whole lot of Dovydas Neverauskas and, most important, the offense has shown itself to be outstanding for significant stretches.
Don't call the Pirates' hitters streaky. Not when they've rattled off what they've rattled off for weeks at a time. Not when they led all of Major League Baseball in home runs for July. They aren't the best bats in the bigs, but there's no question that's the side with the strength.
Until now.
Yeah, there were three 10-spots on the trip, but one was at Coors Field, another at AT&T Park that was more of a garbage-time rally, and one legit. In the other seven games, they put up a total of 17 runs. And going month-over-month, from July to August, the team OPS has plunged from .800 to .686, from sixth to 21st in the majors.
Individually, it's that much more damning: Polanco, a human solar flare through July, is now in a 7-for-51 slump (.137), including four more fruitless at-bats on this night. Starling Marte, the roster's most consistent performer at any position, is in a 7-for-47 slump (.149), and Corey Dickerson is in an 8-for-44 slump (.182). And let the record show those three hold down the top of Clint Hurdle's lineup, making the three most important spots combining for a collective .155 slump!
But it isn't just them. Heck, beyond David Freese, I can't count a solitary residual from that glorious July.
So change it up, right?
Ha!
I'm laughing only because the better part of the public has been pleading with Hurdle to stick with a set lineup and, now when pretty much everyone's dragging, there are bound to be a few who'd rather, you know, 'see the kids' or something.
I brought this up with the manager afterward, asking if he'd consider benching some of these slumpers or if, as he'd done once already with Polanco, he'd ride them through to the other side.
"I mean, these guys have gotten us to this point in time in the fight," he replied, referring to his top three. "You're going to sometimes ask guys with less experience to come in, maybe match up, maybe do other things. It all depends on what you're looking for, what you hunt. What I want to do right now is to hunt with the guys who've been in there and have fought. And if it gets to the point where I think they've lost confidence or something like that, then maybe it'll be time. But when they're up there, the grit's in the box, the fight's in the box, they want to be in there ... that's the lineup I wanted to run out there today."
He'll probably run them out there again tonight. And he should. Not just for the loyalty he cites, and not even just for the hidden vigorish within realizing that, the longer they slump, the closer they come to emerging. But also because ... wow, who'd replace them?
Frazier's not an above-average outfielder, and he's cooled at the plate.
Jordan Luplow's not a big-league player, no matter how many times he drives across I-70.
Jose Osuna, who isn't even around, has been abysmal all spring and summer.
I suppose one could move Josh Harrison back to the outfield, but he's only now clawing out of his own slump.
Could Neal Huntington add an outfielder from the outside, as happened with Adeiny Hechavarria at short?
OK, but again, would someone really arrive with a better chance of breaking out than these three?
"We'll get it done," Frazier told me. "The guys in here have a lot of confidence. We know the kind of hitters we've got. We know the kind of character. We'll be right back out there."
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TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE[/caption]
• Some of the more advanced, ambitious measurements being cited a bit too casually in baseball -- say, exit velocity off the bat -- can mean next to nothing unless one is employed by a team to track such things. I mean, a home run to the second deck will be a home run to the second deck whether it departed the bat at 90 mph or 110 mph. It's equally impressive independent of any velocity reading.
But then there's this, courtesy of MLB.com's Statcast: The Pirates last night hit only five balls harder than 95 mph and hit none -- not one -- that met the service's criteria for a 'barreled,' meaning 98-plus mph.
Anyone got a metaphor fluffier than a pillow?
• If these Cubs are really the class of the league, then anyone's got a chance in October.
They've got some talent, but two numbers I always like to find for discussions like this are a team's record in one-run games, as those invariably even out, and a team's number of comeback victories, as the best of the best tend to not need such trinkets. Well, the Cubs just improved to 20-19 in one-run games, so that's already even, but they also lead the majors with 37 comeback victories, meaning they've won a lot of the figurative games they shouldn't have.
Oh, and since you asked, the Pirates are now 20-16 in one-run games, so they're due the slightest of corrections, and they've had a very ordinary 21 comeback victories. Which adds up them basically being who they are.
Doesn't mean it's gospel. Just sharing something I've followed forever.
• That said, caps off to Jon Lester, his six scoreless innings, eight Ks and predictable poise:
• Since that five-home-run fiasco in Los Angeles in early July, Ivan Nova's been ... OK. He's kept giving up a good amount of contact, with 44 hits over 38 2/3 innings, but his run line's been limited to 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 2 and just the one last night on Ian Happ's home run.
What's been maybe most impressive about Nova, regardless of whether one ever saw value in that three-year, $26 million contract from 2017 -- I liked it -- is that he's been flexible. He hasn't stayed stubborn through a struggle. This game wasn't the gem his line might suggest, as his 6 2/3 innings saw seven hits and more steady contact, but he also worked with Elias Diaz up in the zone to try to counter the Cubs' sinker-swinging tendencies. Particularly the lefties.
"I was aggressive in the strike zone," Nova would say.
It's gutsy. He's got that, too.
• The Pirates' lone rally, runners at the corners with two outs in the fifth, saw Nova, one of the planet's worst hitting pitchers, step to the plate. Hurdle acknowledged that he and Tom Prince had already decided they'd lift Nova for a pinch-hitter if there was one out and a runner in scoring position -- which surprises me, given the closeness of the game and Nova's results to that stage -- but expressed no regret at letting Nova bat with two outs.
"That's a tough one," Hurdle said. "It's not so much sometimes the way your guy's pitching but the way the other guy's pitching. I still felt confident that, if we flipped the lineup over, we were going to score one run."
They obviously didn't, so the hindsight magnifies.
If anyone's still scoring at home, the Pirates are 0-61 when Hurdle's involved in a game.
• Candid question: Why do Cubs fans bother me?
They really shouldn't, I suppose. They're a harmless sort, whether at Wrigley or anywhere else. So maybe it's just seeing them all over Downtown, the North Shore and the Strip, as was the case yesterday and deep into the night. It's just ... uncomfortable.
• Completely unrelated: Is it be possible that any Cubs fan doesn't find the concept of being a Cubs fan nearly as charming now that they've finally won another World Series?
Like, do they not feel as lovable now?
Would welcome first-hand feedback on this one.
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