ST. LOUIS -- "He’s a guy that’s going to be huge for us this season and for years to come.”
That was Mitch Keller, praising his friend JT Brubaker for following up his fine start with an equally encouraging big-league debut in the Pirates' 5-1 flattening of the Cardinals on this sweltering Sunday at Busch Stadium.
But Keller could just as easily have been saying precisely the same about Nick Burdi, who closed it out with an 11-pitch, strike-out-the-side clinic.
Or even Derek Shelton, whose first managerial win after a lifetime in the sport was celebrated by being doused by booze, then by delivering the quote of the young season to date: "Yeah, I got a pretty severe beer shower. I think anybody that knows me knows I’m pissed that we wasted that much beer. I got baby powder and orange juice and apple juice and just about everything. It’s probably the best shower I’ve ever taken."
Yeah, Pittsburgh's going to like this manager.
Heck, the city might end up liking this whole team. Someday. Eventually.
And even the broader plan at hand.
Look, I'm not stupid: I completely get why this fan base is the way it is. It's got every right to cynicism of the highest order, and that applies doubly in a year where the team's payroll is the lowest in Major League Baseball at $23,597,408 or, extrapolated to a normal year for perspective, $57.2 million. The public loathes Bob Nutting, and it'll doubt everything that happens under him.
Fine. I'm not arguing either. But I'll offer these two reminders:
1. He fired everybody.
He was urged to do so, from what I've heard, and he did. All of them. All the way up. Manager. GM. President. Poof.
2. He hired good people.
Haven't heard anyone anywhere dispute that, inside or outside the industry. All of them. All the way up. Shelton. Ben Cherington. Travis Williams.
So maybe, just maybe, after this sigh of relief sends the Pirates back to PNC Park at 1-2 for their home opener tomorrow against the Brewers, it'd be a swell time to take a step back and try to see what's actually occurring, what's the actual intent of those involved.
Start with this: No, there isn't a rebuild. Not a true one, anyway. There might be one, but it isn't underway yet. If it were, based on the rebuild/turnover models we've seen set for years by the two Florida franchises, we'd already have seen the last of Josh Bell, maybe even Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman. That's how the Rays and Marlins roll. When they push the plunger, the whole structure comes down, all in the name of acquiring elite prospects and trusting their system.
Cherington's got a lot of that in his background. And if all else were equal and he hadn't arrived as late as he did in 2019 -- remember, Nutting didn't exactly fire everyone right away -- I'm betting Cherington might have at least tapped that plunger a time or two more than just the Starling Marte trade.
But he didn't, and here's why: He doesn't yet know what he's got.
John Schuerholz, the legendary GM of those annoying perennial Atlanta winners, once wrote in a book that the most important talent any sports executive has to evaluate is his own. And it's the truest statement I've ever heard on the matter, one that Neal Huntington and Co. would've done well to heed in advance of giving away Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, Shane Baz and, oh, yeah, Gerrit Cole, Charlie Morton, Jose Bautista and still more.
Cherington doesn't know. He can't know. One day last December, when I asked about options that he had related to a certain position -- can't remember which one -- his reply was simply, "It's December. There aren't many."
So he did the right thing. He's doing the right thing. And in a year where a pandemic's wiped out two-thirds of the big-league schedule and every single inning of the minor-league schedule, he's doing the only thing that'd be right by the organization as a whole.
He's waiting. He's watching. He's learning.
“I think we want to be really honest and clear, and this is really, truly, how we feel: We came here to win, period,” Cherington spoke Sunday of his front-office operation. “That's why we’re here, in Pittsburgh. We expect to do that. We have to hold ourselves to that standard."
After a slight pause, he added, "Part of holding ourselves to that standard is being honest about where we are, what we need to do to get better. Getting feedback from the games is part of being honest. If we’re getting beat in a certain area, let’s not pretend that we’re not getting beat in a certain area. Let’s do what we need to do to improve that area so we can get to winning. Let’s really be focused, pitch to pitch. Let’s teach ourselves to win every pitch, and while we’re doing that, if we lose pitches… then let’s be open and honest about why that is so we can find the ways to get better and move forward.”
That, my friends, isn't outcome-based. Certainly not in the short term. Cherington wants to see players perform, whether that's for better or worse. He wants to see them face "really good teams like Cleveland and St. Louis," their only two post-shutdown opponents to date, "because it teaches us, because it makes us better." And to that latter phrase, the one he and Shelton cite relentlessly, he'd obviously rather see the better than the worse.
Which is to say, all concerned would love to see more games like this beauty.
Because it wasn't just about the what. It was about the who.
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Keller wasn't at his best, and he admitted as much, with his velocity hovering at 92 mph rather than the usual 95-96. But the kid, entering his first full season with an expectation of becoming the staff ace -- he used that term himself when he told me that in Bradenton -- picked apart St. Louis' peak lineup for five innings, conceding two singles and one cheesy run when he and Colin Moran miscommunicated on a bouncer to first base.
Still, less than his best occasionally looked like this slider to Paul DeJong:
Check out Jacob Stallings' mitt. That's savage.
Keller pushed through 87 pitches, through a 102-degree heat index in this place, and, oh, yeah, through the burden of preventing his team from flying home 0-3 in a 60-game season.
I broached that with Shelton, and he replied, "You know, DK, that’s probably the most important point of this game. We’re talking about a 24-year-old kid. We’re down. We're 0-2. The manager doesn’t have his first win. For him to go out there and execute, to make pitches ... and the only run he gave up was on a close play at first. He stayed consistent. When he realized certain things weren’t working, he went to other things. Most importantly, what I take out of the game is another maturation step for Mitch Keller.”
Yep. There it is again. They won, but they also learned.
I broached the pressure thing with Keller, too, and he replied, “After last night, I made a point to myself that we needed a win and we needed to go back with at least one. We played well all-around. Defense behind me made really good plays, turned some key double plays, and then we were swinging it. C-Mo swinging it .. Osuna ... it’s awesome to see."
That was a reference to Moran and Jose Osuna -- a-hem! -- blasting the Pirates' first two home runs, both in the fourth inning for a 3-1 lead.
Osuna's was a two-run shot, thanks to Phillip Evans reaching on one of his three hits beforehand.
"That felt good," Osuna said. "When you have a good day, when you help the team to win, it's a good feeling for everybody. It feels good after we lost the first two games."
Sure seemed that way. Watching the dugout from the press box, I noticed more of a looseness.
"The first two nights, to battle against that pitching staff they have over there," Evans said, referring to strong showings by St. Louis' Jack Flaherty and Adam Wainwright, "yeah, it was a good win for the guys."
No one could argue it. But to swing back to my subject here, anything that's outcome-based, realistically, is less relevant than the maturation of key players. So what happened with the young pitchers mattered so, so much more than this spurt of offense or the two later add-on runs on a Bell sac fly in the fifth and an Evans RBI double in the eighth.
Next young pitcher was Brubaker, on for the sixth for his first appearance at the top level, as well as his first official appearance of any kind since missing most of 2019 to a strained right forearm. He's 26, and he had to wonder if he'd make it, even though the recovery was seamless and didn't require surgery.
That, plus entering with a two-run lead, plus taking the baton from his bud Keller ... just imagine.
"It didn’t really hit me until I set foot on the infield dirt," Brubaker, visibly emotional, spoke afterward. "As soon as I stepped on it, it hit me, the adrenaline, the nerves, the excitement, everything that I envisioned growing up through high school, college, then even through the minors. It was everything I’ve envisioned, even without the fans."
Two innings, zero runs, three hits, four Ks. The fastball touched 97 mph, and the slider was nose-diving.
Like this one to retire the Pirates' perennial nemesis Kolten Wong:
Yowza.
That's why Shelton and the coaching staff kept singling out Brubaker through summer camp and the exhibitions. He's got the arm, the command and the poise.
"Outstanding," Shelton called him after this.
"I know he’s probably disappointed nobody could be here for it, but to have two clean innings, his stuff was really nasty," Keller said of Brubaker. "I couldn’t be happier for him."
Brubaker allowed that the only way he'd be happier is if this had been in a start. He's always been a starter, and he was placed in long relief by Shelton primarily for the purpose of piggybacking another starter at some point. But if he keeps this up, the Pirates would be nuts to keep him in the pen.
This was his pitch chart ...
[caption id="attachment_1008075" align="aligncenter" width="440"]
BASEBALL SAVANT[/caption]
... and relievers' pitch charts don't come with five distinct offerings.
Which makes this emergence that much more promising, along with the strong relief outing of Clay Holmes here two nights earlier, as he's also got a starter's background.
"Keller threw a hell of a game,” Brubaker said in returning the starter's compliment. “It was awesome to watch him go out there and dominate. It was a momentum-builder for me."
Michael Feliz pitched a 1-2-3 eighth, which will interest no one, but then came Burdi.
He's got his own comeback story, of course, after that horrifying scene at PNC Park last spring when he collapsed on the mound in tears upon sustaining significant nerve damage in the arm. But he battled back, redid his delivery with an aim of staying healthy and ... and ... my goodness. I'd marveled at his velocity in Bradenton. I'd consciously tried to avoid overstating it. But there it was for everyone to see, a fastball topping out at 99.3 mph offset by a slider topping out at an even more unfair 89.2, and he blew right through all three batters in the St. Louis heart: Paul Goldschmidt, DeJong and Matt Carpenter.
This slider finished the job:
Alex Stumpf dissects the clinic in a special Mound Visit.
Shelton described Burdi's inning as "really sharp" and seemed to downplay any notion that choosing him for the ninth inning -- albeit with a four-run lead, so not a save situation -- set Burdi up to acclimate himself with closing.
But come on, as I said directly to Shelton, there's no way he isn't thinking future closer after witnessing that.
"I'm thinking he's got really good stuff," Shelton replied with a smile. "And I'm excited that he's continuing to pitch for us and he's healthy, yeah. I'm very happy with that."
There's cause. Not just on that front.
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They're not going anywhere.
And no, omnipresent cynics, I'm not referring to the 2020 Pirates, though that might very well prove true. We'll know soon enough. After the three with the Brewers, their next 13 games include a series at Wrigley Field, a home-and-home with the 101-win Twins and a return trip to this place. That'll afford an awful lot of that 'feedback' Cherington covets, and it might be unpleasant.
It also might not be.
“Exhilarating," Shelton glowed about this. "Glad I got it. Glad we got it. It was exciting. It was a really well-played game. It’s a credit to our guys."
Me, I'd rather give Cherington a chance to see what's available before he starts stripping the process down for parts. I'd rather sift through the rubble of the Huntington system and seek out other players derailed by the Kyle Stark development debacle. I'd rather see them flourish in Pittsburgh, not elsewhere once someone else does the fixing.
And if, along the way, something wholly unexpected develops in 2020 ...
“If we’re playing meaningful baseball games this year, that’s good for our players," was how Cherington worded it. "That’s really good for the Pirates long-term."
Good for now. Good for then. Both things can be true.
MORE PIRATES COVERAGE
• 10 Thoughts: They love Shelton
• Mound Visit: Burdi brings it
• Cherington: 'We came to win'
• 'Virtual fan experience' unveiled
• Live Qs at 5: DK's answers
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