BRADENTON, Fla. -- Back home, Pittsburgh's still abuzz over the NHL trade deadline, one in which the Penguins once again made clear they're gunning for nothing less than another Stanley Cup.
Also back home, the city's abuzz about Ben Roethlisberger throwing a single toss in a six-second clip, one which has a whole lot of of Steelers Nation, fairly if way early, fantasizing about another Super Bowl.
And then ... there's that other team.
Bring up baseball back home, in pretty much any context, and prepare to be buried. Bob Nutting. Payroll. Hundred losses. More Nutting. More payroll. Maybe 110 losses.
I'm not here to dispute or even debate any of that, much less get defiant about it. Not today. Certainly not on this sunny, spectacular Tuesday at LECOM Park, where the Pirates fell to the Phillies, 6-2, in Grapefruit ball, where Joe Musgrove threw a few promising curves, where a whirling wind made a mess of the fielding and ... yeah, precious little of what occurs between the white lines will matter for another few weeks.
But I am here to express this much: The home team, meaning Pittsburgh's home team, clearly couldn't care less what anyone anywhere thinks of them.
And I do like that.
Almost as much as everyone likes Cole Tucker:
Yep. What he said. And then some.
Again, I'm not here to dispute or debate. I'll just share three cold facts:
1. The same outfit that finished with 93 losses amid a ridiculous second-half collapse of injuries and unrelated weirdness, those guys also were a game under .500 and 2.5 out of first in the Central. With a convincing character behind it, fresh off back-to-back beatings of the Brewers. Heck, they'd even just taken a series in Houston, presumably without the help of banging trash cans.
2. Most of them are still here. The two losses are significant -- Starling Marte to the Diamondbacks, Felipe Vazquez to jail -- but they're the only two.
3. They're infinitely more focused, with faith, on the first-half Pirates from 2019.
"We were right there at the All-Star break, and we remember that," Steven Brault was telling me between hums of the song playing in the clubhouse speakers. (No, really, dude never stops singing.) "It's funny, like, people forget that ever happened. And I understand because of the way the second half played out, but we had a bunch of tumultuous stuff happen and, you know, it just got worse. We had a horrible month and a half, like the worst you could possibly have."
No question. As in, 8-30. One of the most hideous stretches in franchise history.
"But I also think we'll be stronger for it," Brault kept going. "We've been through that. Now, as a team, we'll know how to better combat those stretches, how to nip them in the bud."
He paused.
"Look, we aren't that team everyone saw in the second half. We just aren't. We're the one you saw in the first half, and people are going to see that again. We'll be better than that."
Others expressed it similarly.
"I don't think outside expectations affect anybody in here," Colin Moran told me. "We all have our own expectations, and we expect to be good individually, good as a team."
"The expectation for us is to go out there and compete every day, regardless of what outside sources are telling us," Kevin Newman essentially echoed. "We're going to go out there, prepare the best we can and get better every day. And I think we can surprise some people. People say what they say, but we're the guys in here, we're working every day and, you know, we're going to go out there and just compete our asses off and see what happens."
One thing I've noticed, and this goes back to my first tour down here when pitchers and catchers reported earlier this month, is that no one will cross the line into some grandiose prediction. Most of it comes across like Newman's. They'll compete. They'll work. They'll surprise.
Anytime the responses are that common, in any team setting, I suspect they originate with the one most responsible for setting such a tone. So, in this case, I asked the new manager about the team's spirit in this very early going.
"I think it's really good," Derek Shelton replied after the game. "I think they're together. I think the energy we have is good, is consistent. You know, when we've been on the field with our core group of guys, I think we've executed plays and we've executed pitches."
It's then that he predictably flipped to pure baseball. This is who Shelton is, by the way, a product of the Minnesota way, where it's fundamentals first. All else, including the confidence, comes from that.
"I mean, to say that through five games down here that we would throw the ball this well, you know, that that makes me smile. When you walk away every day and realize that the execution of plan and everything we've talked about, probably about 90 percent of it we've done ... anytime you have this early in the spring, it shows you a lot."
Everything inward and yet forward.
• Musgrove pitched the obligatory two innings in his spring debut and kept them clean. Hit Philadelphia's Roman Quinn with his first pitch of the day, but nearly picked off Quinn twice, then watched his catcher, Luke Maile, trap him between first and second in a confident-looking sequence.
Otherwise among his 25 pitches, 18 of them strikes, there was a K, lots of soft contact and lots of looping swings over his offspeed offerings.
"A professional outing for the first time out," Shelton called it.
That includes this filth out of Scott Kingery's reach:
Musgrove's first K, this of the Phillies' Scott Kingery in the first inning, is the curve I'm talking about. 'Late dive' was how Maile just described it to me. A lot more on this coming in the column. #DKPS #Piratespic.twitter.com/PXlKXENCdi
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) February 25, 2020
Musgrove wasn't wild about his slider, but he and Maile both loved the curve. Musgrove told me he's expecting to raise his curve usage in 2020 by as much as 10 percent, largely to keep hitters off his high fastball since both travel the same trajectory a good portion of the way to the plate.
"It dives late," Maile explained.
I asked Musgrove about this, too:
• Gregory Polanco started as designated hitter and appeared comfortable in going 0 for 1 with a solidly struck bounceout and a walk. No big deal, of course, but seeing pitches is meaningful to a player who hadn't played in nearly a year.
"And lefties, too," he told me, referring to the Phillies' Ranger Suarez. "If I see lefties, I see everything."
Why's that?
"Because I don't try to do too much."
Meaning he goes oppo. The best version of Polanco.
"Exactly."
And how's the shoulder?
"So good. Everything's good."
We'll see. I'm waiting on the return of that cannon in right.
• Spring results, meaning the final scores, are insanely irrelevant. Can't stress this enough.
Exhibit A: Musgrove's only expressed regret after this one was that he didn't work with runners on second and third, while adding, "Hopefully, I'll get that later in the spring."
Exhibit B: Poor Williams Jerez, a lefty, was victimized by a classic Bradenton inning in the Phillies' decisive four-run seventh, with the whirling winds and high sun taking over several balls, not least of which was a Daniel Brito two-run home run that saw the Pirates' left fielder, Bligh Madris, correctly break in on the ball. It was hilarious ... except to Jerez.
A lot of things do matter here. The score isn't among them.
• Same goes, by the way, for the Pirates' two-run home run, by third-string catcher John Ryan Murphy in the sixth, that was similarly a passenger of a friendly gust to left.
• No Jarrod Dyson in game action until Friday. Shelton's inelegantly blunt explanation: "He's 35."
Pittsburgh's going to like this guy. Presuming the Pirates improve, of course.
• Weird as it remains to see Neil Walker in another uniform -- always, regardless which one -- it's weirder still to see him trying to make a team. But that's where he is with the Phillies, in camp on a minor-league contract. Which explains why, when home plate umpire Roberto Ortiz rung him up on a laughable call, Walker raised his arms demonstrably in protest. These games matter to him.
His spring is off to an 0-for-5 start, by the way.
• Closing with a positive: Blake Cederlind, the long-blond-maned top relief prospect drawing raves here, delivered a 1-2-3 sixth, capped by this electric strikeout+strut extraordinaire of the Phillies' Josh Stephen:
Blake Cederlind, K Strut 🔥
h/t @KingFish626 pic.twitter.com/GT1tpwrKUi
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) February 25, 2020
He also fell on his backside after one pitch, prompting Newman and others to give him grief in the clubhouse.
"Really?" Cederlind chirped back. "I gotta hear about that?"
He's 24, but he's logged only three appearances at the Class AAA level, so he'll be back in Indy. But he could be up this summer, and it'll be fun if he makes it.
• Mitch Keller's scheduled to start Wednesday, 1:05 p.m. against the Red Sox, also at LECOM. But we'll see about that. Supposed to rain all day here.
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