17 and counting: Pirates as bad as ever at break
By Alan Robinson, AP Sports Writer
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates hid the signings of their manager and general manager to new contracts. They misled their fans about the recall of top prospect Pedro Alvarez. They were ridiculed nationally for firing one of their racing mascots.
Celebrating the golden moment in franchise history, they couldn't even get the final scores of the 1960 World Series correct.
All this represented a single week in yet another miserable first half for the Pirates, one that greatly resembled those in the record 17 consecutive losing seasons that preceded it.
As the Pirates (30-58) jockeyed with bad-all-season Baltimore (29-59) to own the worst record in the majors at the All-Star break, they crammed a full season's worth of ineptness into only 3 months.
"It's awful," reliever Joel Hanrahan said. "This definitely isn't what we expected coming out of spring training. We need to turn it around in the second half and start playing together."
Manager John Russell and general manager Neal Huntington were given contract extensions following a 99-loss season last fall, but the team didn't reveal the news until last month because it feared negative fan reaction.
Their starting rotation was a mess. They still haven't hit a home run with a runner on base since June 8. Their second baseman didn't hit his weight. First baseman Jeff Clement didn't hit, period, and was sent back to the minors. And starting outfielder Lastings Milledge went three months before hitting a homer on a team that recently had a 12-game losing streak and is currently in a six-game slide.
They tried rebuilding on the fly, calling up top prospects Alvarez, Jose Tabata, Neil Walker and Brad Lincoln and starting them immediately. Walker and Tabata settled in quickly; Alvarez and Lincoln struggled. Not that it made a difference; their 10-32 record after they began recalling prospects was far worse than it was (20-26) before the kids started arriving.
"Any time you get the young guys up here, you want to win with them," Hanrahan said. "You don't want them to fall into bad habits."
Alvarez, the franchise's top power prospect since Barry Bonds, probably didn't know if he was coming or going. A few hours after Huntington told reporters he wasn't close to being ready for the majors, he was brought up. He's hitting .214 with 35 strikeouts in 84 at-bats.
The gaffes weren't all on the playing field, either. One of their in-game pierogi racers, Andrew Kurtz, was fired for criticizing the front office on his Facebook page. He was brought back to the part-time job when it was determined he wasn't properly terminated.
If only the Pirates had the same safeguards in place when they let Jose Bautista and Matt Capps go.
Bautista, cast off for long-gone backup catcher Robinzon Diaz, leads the majors with 24 homers for Toronto. Capps wasn't tendered a contract last winter because the Pirates didn't think he was worth a $500,000 raise; he has 23 saves with Washington and won the All-Star game on Tuesday night.
Then there were the Aki Iwamura and Charlie Morton messes.
Iwamura was acquired from Tampa Bay despite a $4.85 million salary and a major knee injury. He was so limited defensively he could barely field his position, and he was hitting .182 before he was benched and replaced by Walker, a former first-round draft pick who had been repeatedly passed over for call-ups.
Want to see the Pirates' highest-paid player? That requires a trip to Indianapolis, where Iwamura is playing in Triple-A.
Morton (1-9, 9.35 ERA) stayed in the rotation far after he proved he wasn't ready, apparently because management didn't want to acknowledge its mistake for acquiring him.
The first-half highlight proved to be the back-to-back wins against the Dodgers to begin the season; the lowlight was a 20-0 loss at home to Milwaukee that finished off a three-game sweep in which the Brewers outscored them 36-1.
"The level of disappointment is so high I can't accurately give you a word for it," team president Frank Coonelly said.
The bullpen was a strength, led by All-Star reliever Evan Meek and closer Octavio Dotel. However, much of the bullpen's good work came in games that were already decided because of the bad rotation. Morton, Zach Duke (3-8, 5.49 ERA) and Ross Ohlendorf (1-7, 4.22) all disappointed as the Pirates lost 15 games by margins of seven runs or more.
"We haven't been playing up to our capability," infielder Bobby Crosby said. "Even though we have some young players, we're still not playing the way we possibly can. Step it up a little bit, to say the least."
Even their most popular promotion of the season was executed poorly. A commemorative drinking mug honoring their '60 championship contained incorrect game results that indicated the Yankees, not the Pirates, won the World Series.
If nothing else, their failed first half suggested there's no World Series soon for the Pirates to repeat that mistake.
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