ST. LOUIS -- You know, maybe everyone's right.
Maybe the Pittsburgh Baseball Club's 134th season, which formally sets its strange stage here tonight before an empty Busch Stadium, will be every bit the disaster so many expect.
Maybe the Pirates won't win a third of their 60 games, won't so much as sniff one of the now-16 spots in Major League Baseball's expanded playoffs, and won't even match anyone's definition of 'getting better,' the one phrase Ben Cherington, Derek Shelton and all on the inside cite as the chief goal for 2020.
Maybe Josh Bell won't rediscover anything resembling his Willie Stargell-like form of early last summer.
Maybe Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman will hit sophomore slumps.
Maybe Adam Frazier really did somehow flip from all-bat-no-glove to the opposite.
Maybe Colin Moran really will hold down third base in lieu of more promising options, notably Ke'Bryan Hayes.
Maybe Jacob Stallings' pitch-framing excellence won't make for such a pretty picture at the plate.
Maybe Gregory Polanco is precisely who he's mostly been, meaning in absentia.
Maybe the starting quartet of Joe Musgrove, Trevor Williams, Mitch Keller and Derek Holland will, in fact, 'suck,' to borrow Holland's own defiant reference the other day.
Maybe the bullpen, which is now missing Felipe Vazquez to justified incarceration, Keone Kela to coronavirus caution, and Kyle Crick's velocity and command to unknown causes, also will suck.
Maybe Dovydas Neverauskas will make this roster.
My God, wait, he did:
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Maybe all of those guys above, individually and collectively, will suck.
See, I'd thought about approaching this column from the standard upbeat manner that generally accompanies the mood after any spring training. But this obviously wasn't just any spring training. It was two socially distanced phases, separated by four months and a health crisis and societal unrest unlike any we'd seen in half a century. And in its wake, a lot's changed, both in the world and with the woebegone local baseball franchise.
The one thing the 2019 team could least afford, amid actual contention through the All-Star break, was to lose players.
Not coincidentally, that's the one thing the 2020 team could least afford. And yet, here we are, opening without Chris Archer, lost for the season to surgery, as well as Kela, Polanco, Hayes, backup catcher Luke Maile and utilityman Kevin Kramer. The latter two are depth pieces, so they don't matter as much as the rest, but they do matter in the singular context that the remaining depth is still swimming through the sewage of the Neal Huntington/Kyle Stark minor-league system.
All of these missing players matter in that context. It's roughly a quarter of a roster that had no depth in the first place.
And yet ...
(Brain: You're tapping fingers on the keyboard. This is never good. Don't type what you're about to type.)
And yet ...
(Brain: No, seriously, dude, just don't.)
And yet ... there's a part of me that still finds hope here.
(Brain: That does it, I'm out. You're on your own. Again.)
Here's the thing: Shelton doesn't have to dispatch 30 players onto the field at 8:15 p.m. today. He just needs nine. And in my mind -- or the heart or wherever hope keeps permanent residence -- I'm confident he can cobble together ... what, half of a legit, big-league roster?
Hey, don't laugh. It's far less than half a season we're about to witness. More might not be needed.
I'll take a top five in the batting order of Newman, Reynolds, Frazier, Bell and a richly motivated Polanco, provided he can get back in the literal swing soon. There's enough on-base, enough pop, enough flexibility from both sides to rival most teams in the National League, and that's supported not by hope but by statistics: The Pirates were sixth in the majors in batting average last season, mostly with this lineup.
If these five stay on the field and stay career-norm productive, nothing outlandish, the offense will be fine. If there are contributions from the DH, which is sorely needed this summer by this team, and Moran and Stallings can ... do maybe a little more than last season, now that's seven, possibly eight deep. And that'd clearly be better than fine.
Something Bell told me this summer resonates: "We'll hit. There are too many guys here with a history of hitting for us to not hit. And I think we can all improve on last year, myself included."
I'm buying. But I'm also selling on most everyone on that bench, save for Jose Osuna, who ought to do most of the DHing. If Shelton tries too hard to involve the depth, as most managers are wont to do, it'll do all kinds of damage. It's 60, not 162, and adjustments are mandatory.
That's easier said than done with pitching, of course, but the same principle's got to apply.
Musgrove, Williams, Keller and Holland all have to run up the innings. No more exits in the fourth or fifth. There's nowhere near enough middle relief to build any bridge and, heck, there's now even more worry about the back end. All of the top four have talked the talk, and now's the time to walk the walk ... after six or seven. Counting on the piggyback duo of Steven Brault/Chad Kuhl, or the solid camp showing of JT Brubaker, that's too ambitious for my taste. It's on the top four.
If that up there doesn't happen, forget the rest. All of it. It unplugs every other scenario.
And in the pen, if Kela returns in short order, if Crick rediscovers top form, if Richard Rodriguez can get the ball back down without taking two months as he did last year, if Nick Burdi's breathtaking stuff blossoms in a big hurry ... it's a ton of ifs. It's not impossible, but it's also not ideal.
The pitchers, as with the position players, don't come with parachutes. They won't get bailed out by Neverauskas and Co. They'll be as dead as this team's chances before the first talk-show caller declares he or she is done with the the Pirates forever.
Maybe that's where this is headed. Again, maybe everyone's right.
I guess what I'd most want to see is that 'getting better' thing, which Cherington brought up again yesterday.
"I know that, as we get into the season, every day we hit the field, we need to be prepared and believe we can win," he spoke via Zoom once his roster was completed. "And whatever the outcome is, we're going to come back the next day and find ways to keep getting better. Focus on our coaching, focus on our preparation, focus on our process. Over time, we feel like that will put us in the best position."
If that sounds like Huntingon-esque nothingness to anyone, so be it. He most definitely isn't Huntington. Also, he most definitely isn't rebuilding. What he's doing is waiting, watching, seeing who might be a piece to the puzzle moving forward, who might be a piece to trade, who might be a piece to discard, and amid that he benefits on all fronts by superior performance.
By "getting better."
It makes sense.
Shelton's very much on that page, too. He was asked yesterday about Cole Tucker's recent excursion into the outfield, and somehow that morphed into this: "He’s taken to it. He’s enthusiastic. Not worried at all about him being out there. Like we’ve talked about, people are going to make mistakes. Not just Tuck, but all our guys. We just want to make sure we continue to learn and grow. That’s really the most important thing. The most important thing for us as a club is that we get better every day."
Funny thing: If they do that, especially their most essential players, they can win 30.
Funnier thing: If they can win 30, they can contend.
Funniest thing: If they can contend in this cataclysmic year, with just 60 games, with no home-field advantage anywhere, with barely any big-money opponents within the two Central divisions they'll face, with a bevy of other weird circumstances ... they can make the playoffs.
Take that, brain.
MORE PIRATES COVERAGE
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• Playoffs expanded to 16 teams
• Holland: 'Keep telling us we suck'
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