DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Better ball

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Better ball

[Music] [Applause] Winning is winning is winning and your favorite ball club has been doing plenty of that for the past couple of weeks. Good morning to you. Good Thursday morning. I’m Dan Kavajic of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday if you’re into football andor hockey. I also offered daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this Pirates 3 Dodgers zero last night at PNC Park. Strange kind of game. Brian Reynolds and Andrew McCutchen hit early solo home runs and the Dodgers just kept putting people all over the base paths, but to their credit, Braxton Ashcraft, Mike Burroughs kept right on stranding everybody. Dodgers would have 11 base runners in all five hits, six walks. Not one of them would make it all the way around. And that left your Pirates with W’s in the first two games of this series against Major League Baseball’s billiondollar team, a chance to sweep tonight at PNC Park with Paul SK on the mound, 10 wins in the past 13 games, and a fair amount of good feel. This was Cut afterward. you know, good baseball. So, uh, boys has been grinding. So, yeah, it’s good to, uh, be able to be at home and get the get the two wins in the fashion. So, um, score some runs live yesterday and, uh, you know, shut out today, three runs on the board. So, it’s a overall good win for us. Winning, winning, winning. There’s nothing that solves all problems like winning does when it comes to professional sports. But the craziest part of this specific scenario is that the Pirates have done this winning and in fact in this game evened out their record under Don Kelly at 51 and 51. while the roster itself has been semi dismantled. Think about this for a second. What did the Pirates get for David Bednar? Right? What did they get for Bailey Falter? What did they get for Isaiah Kiner Falefa? What did they get for Brian Hayes? Just keep going. Just keep going. And what you have, or at least what you should have had is a worse team. You should have had a team that no matter what you thought of the various players who were sent out wasn’t going to leave Kelly more options but less more depth but less. And in focusing on Bednar alone, we’re talking about a guy who for 2 months was the major’s number one closer at which point poof, he was gone. So, full credit to all concerned, but I’m going to throw one name at you today that I’d place above all the rest, and that would be Kelly. Because Kelly has been stuck with, you want to talk about a situation, he instantly inherited a team that had already seen its season get shot. This, of course, being back in May. He had four and a half months to navigate of a season that was declared dead. Worse, he had himself and by the way still has himself the majors worst offense. They’ve hit a lot better of late, but they sure didn’t when he took over and for the longest longest time. And no single facet sucks the life out of a group of baseball players quite like being unable to hit. Kelly kept that going. Not the clubhouse, not any veterans in there. Kelly. And nobody has to wonder about that. All they have to do is walk around from stall to stall as I’ve done and ask the players themselves where it comes from. They’ll all point toward the manager’s office. They’ll all cite Kelly, his energy, his enthusiasm, his passion, his his realness, and they’ll tell you that he wouldn’t let them quit. They’ll tell you that he wouldn’t let them just go through the motions. Not me, them. Now, this doesn’t at all change my mind about Kelly. I’ve felt this way about him for a long, long time. When the Pirates promoted him, I felt even more strongly upon seeing how he handled the first few days on the job that he’d be the choice moving forward. And I’m talking about regardless of who’ll be in the front office. Now, the the very very very small handful of you who still support Ben Cherington as general manager might ask, “Well, you can’t do that. You you can’t just single out the manager. Where’s the love for the GM? He’s the one that built this. No. No. Again, that’s the strange part here. All the Cherington’s done since Kelly took over was to piece by piece by piece make the team worse, at least toward the 2025 season. In most cases, openly acknowledging as much. You don’t make a trade like the Bednar trade that has no pieces currently in Pittsburgh and say that the trades made you better or that the GM made the team better and that it would have had something to do with the 2025 season or this late little surge or the team being 51 and 51 under Kelly. All that gets highlighted here is that Kelly is a good manager and that Kelly is the right manager moving forward. If Kelly were to be working with a functioning GM, imagine the difference on top of what we’ve already witnessed when we come back. J1Q. [Music] If you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. Located directly across Federal Street from PNC Park, next door to Mike’s Beer Bar, Northshore Tavern is Pittsburgh’s home for steak on a stone. Enjoy your steak finished on a hot lava stone in front of you, where you ensure each piece is cooked to exactly your liking. or try their rotating selection of entre, hot sandwiches, salads, and burgers, all while enjoying the ambiance dedicated to the great players and history of the Pittsburgh Pirates all around you. Come see why everyone’s talking about Northshore Tavern and Steak on a Stone. It’s Gun Storage Check Week. Help prevent unwanted access to your firearms. 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Message and data rates may apply. [Music] Today’s J1Q is as predictable as it comes. Craig asks, “Don Kelly is 51 and 51 now. DK, please tell us that this will not exonerate Ben Cherington in Bob Nutting’s eyes.” I’m not in a position to do that, Craig. as I’ve stressed time and time and time again, as I’ve been asked time and time and time again to recite the information that I received back when Derek Shelton was fired about Cherington’s future, about Nutting’s feelings on Cherington. All of that is now 4 months old. I’ve not had any further conversation on that matter. None. What I was told then unmistakably made Cherington dead man walking. What I was told then made it beyond stunning that he was still employed. But what I was told then doesn’t mean anything compared to how the one individual who make this decision feels about it on any given day. He could roll over this morning out of bed and say, “You know what? this Cherington. He’s all right. As soon as he traded all those players for nothing, we all got better. I I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t control it. Everybody, it feels like everybody’s always wanting predictions from reporters as opposed to just reporting. This is why I don’t do them. I report to you what I hear. I report to you the information that I have and I do that in the most timely manner available to me. So, if I don’t say anything about this conversation and then let’s say the end of this month comes along and Cherington gets fired and I tell you, “Well, guess what? Hey, 4 months ago I was told.” You’re going to go, “Oh, right. Shut up.” Seriously, the business is reporting. That means finding stuff out, sharing it with you as soon as it’s confirmed enough to do so responsibly. That’s it. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. That’s what I did 4 months ago. As such, if Nutting chooses to keep this GM based on, I don’t know, feeling good about things in September of an absolutely abominable, outright embarrassing season from top to bottom in the organization with the notable exception of Connor Griffin’s rise and Paul Ski going for the Sai Young. I I then he can do that. it’s his team. He owns it. If he wants to do dumb, damaging things to the team, if he doesn’t care about winning, then yeah, he can keep the guy. So, no, I can’t tell you, Craig, respectfully, that this is going to exonerate this or that or whatever. I can’t I can’t do that. I couldn’t do that four months ago. I couldn’t do it two months ago. I can’t do it now. I won’t be able to do it at the end of the month. The Pirates happen to employ the worst general manager in all of professional sports. If they decide they’re okay with that, there’s nothing any of us can do about that. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Pirates. We’ll have another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

It’s been better ball of late, for sure.

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