DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The vanishing scout

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The vanishing scout

[Music] [Applause] At the end of the day, in any draft, in any sport, the general manager has the ultimate say, and thus the general manager gets the ultimate credit or blame. But when it came to Connor Griffin, when it came to Seth Hernandez, the Pirates passed two first round picks. Both of them touted around the industry. The credit that I was hearing went to Justin Horowitz. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovich 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 offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this. Horowitz was hired, promoted really, to be an assistant general manager with the Nationals after two years as scouting director in Pittsburgh. That’s a pretty impressive rocketing under any circumstance. He’s a young dude, but he also made quite an impression. That’s how things go. The baseball industry is insular. It’s all knowing. Everybody’s aware of what the other one’s doing. And there’s no way there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of questioning being done about who was it that got that hitter in Pittsburgh. Not to mention who got him at number nine overall. Now granted, eight other teams have to make a mistake for the young man to be available at nine, but somebody still has to be able to see through the smoke that gets created in such a setting. In other words, you start having your doubts. Hey, hang on a second. Why is nobody taking him when we can all see that he can hit? What’s the fatal flaw here? What are we missing? You have to have some real conviction between this pick and then Seth Hernandez this past summer, the pitcher. The perception in general, and by the way, the perception from the very top of the inside of the organization has changed quite a bit. The view of the drafts internally from way above had not been rosy to say the least. that changed here. Again, before I continue, I’m going to make this point once more, but with emphasis, we don’t know, can’t know who was principally responsible for the drafting of Griffin. And again, at the end of the day, the credit/blame goes to the GM. That’s just life. But there does have to be in this specific process an individual who’s really doing the cooking. And by every accounting that individual, the chef, if you will, was Horowitz. Well, Horowitz is now gone. Horowitz’s principal skill number one at the very top was as a talent evaluator. If you’ve listened to what I’ve been saying about the Pirates and Ben Cherington in particular over the past few months, I’d like to think it hasn’t all just been screeching and ranting. My number one criticism of Cherington has also been, not coincidentally, my number one wish for whoever would be his replacement. and that would be someone who can be a talent evaluator. You don’t have to look at Cherington’s rosters to see that he doesn’t have a talent evaluating bone in his body. All you have to do is listen to him talk and listen to the way that he defers on these things. Now, on one hand, it’s always nice whenever you’re the guy who’s giving credit out and making sure that certain names get mentioned, and he’ll do that on occasion. But when he says things like, and you’ve heard this now multiple times from him, if you can still summon the strength to stay in tune with him, that as of the past couple of years, we have changed the way we’re evaluating hitting. He has said that on multiple occasions in almost exactly those words and he has said it on his team produced weekly radio show in season. He has never elaborated on what that means. He’s never elaborated on what magical discovery the pirates might have come up with to separate horrendous hitting evaluation from being able to correctly identify Griffin. But the timeline’s identical, meaning that’s when Horowitz came in. It was exactly two years ago. It was November 2023. So when the Nationals get rid of Mike Rizzo and the Nationals make it clear that the reason that Rizzo lost his job was a series of poor drafts. The Nationals go out of their way to hire people, including Horwitz, and promote them and presumably, I would think this is obvious, pay them more, which is of course, and you knew I was heading here, precisely what could have or should have happened in Pittsburgh. I’m not saying that Horowitz has the qualifications to be a GM, let alone be a GM right now. There’s a lot to that position that has nothing to do with the amateur draft or even scouting, but I I still see what’s foundational about the GM’s role in any league, any sport, anywhere, is being able to walk onto a sand lot and saying, “That kid can play.” walk into an ice rink, walk onto a football field and say that kid can play. No one bats a thousand on this stuff. No one. But you got to be able to hit more than you miss. And you can’t, absolutely can’t have no clue about it and then lose one of the people who did have a clue. When we come back, J1Q. 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. No one wants their unsecured gun to be used in an accident, a suicide, or a crime. 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That’s joined me.com/hitcodeh hit. [Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Ben Ferrell, who asks, “How much of Brian Reynolds and or O’Neal Cruz’s hitting was impacted in 2025 by the fact that there’s no one in the lineup around them to fear? I know it’s probably a low-level question, but if we had any other offense, someone would have to be pitched to, and I just don’t think that’s happening.” Uh, Ben, you’re both right. and in my opinion a little bit off. I’m going to start with what you’re right about. The rest of the lineup obviously isn’t good, isn’t anywhere near good because those are your at least your two most talented hitters with apologies to Cut at the later stage of his career. And you’re right, of course, that no one would feel threatened in facing any of the rest of them. From there, I’ve got a couple of quibbles. One is that advanced analytics, and I’ve read these studies because I was skeptical about them uh myself when first hearing about them, show that lineup protection, the concept of benefiting from somebody in front of you or behind you in the batting order is really just great big exaggerated baseball mythology. When we think about protection, at least when I think about protection, I remember when the very large headed version of Barry Bonds was cheating the record books and ultimately stealing the title of home run king from the truly great Hank Aaron. He had Jeff Kent in that San Francisco order. And Kent was hailed universally as the ultimate uh support bat guy that would keep you honest and whatever else. But what what occurred anyway was that nobody wanted to pitch to Bonds regardless. And one thing I’ve learned on this job that I’ve had for three decades now is that don’t argue with the players on stuff that they believe in. If the players themselves, and Bonds and Kent both said it many times, believed that there was an effect, then there was one, if only because they were thinking of it. But when you get down to just plain old math and really the driest of possible statistics, it’s it’s not supported by anything. We notice it when it’s happening, and it does happen on occasion, but we probably inflate it when it does. I pause here to remind that a lot of people hate hearing stuff like this because it flies in the face of something that you’ve talked about, believed forever, and you’re just going to say, “Ah, that’s ridiculous.” But if you happen to feel strongly about it, there are reading materials that’ll strongly support the case that I’m presenting here. The second one, boy, I would hope this one would be agreed upon by everybody. The real issue when you were watching both Reynolds and Cruz all through the 2025 season isn’t that they weren’t getting good pitches to hit. And for those of you who’ve been waiting this whole segment for me to say exactly that, here it is. You’re welcome. Because that’s actually what happened. Reynolds was watching pitches go right down the pipe. Cruz was watching the most beautiful hitable pitches of his entire plate appearance. Just zip zip zip. And that would be the end of the at. Both of them were doing this. In Reynolds’s case specifically, and this was thing that just drove me nuts about watching him this past year, was that he was swinging through these things. This wasn’t just a a bad uh take decision. He was getting those pitches to hit and just right through them. The objective of the mythical protection in the lineup is that you get more pitches to hit because they’re less likely to walk you or even just less likely to give you something that’s in the zone, whether they’re trying to put you on or not. But I I’ve got some numbers that I can throw at you on this front, too. I’ve shared with you the meatball percentage statistic. If you think I’m making that up or you haven’t heard it the previous time I referenced it, that’s a real thing. It’s on Baseball Savant, which is an MLB entity, it means exactly what it sounds like. The the percentage of pitches that you see that are just right there. I mean, just dead red. They’re just waiting to be punished. This past season, Reynolds meatball percentage was 8.0. It was the second highest such percentage of his entire career and it was a lot higher than the 6.4% from the previous year. So if anything, Reynolds was seeing more pitches to hit than really ever at any point, while at the same time his meatball swing percentage, also a real thing, was 85.6, six, which was marketkedly lower than his career norm, meaning he watched way too many of them go by. You you get the idea here. If you want further context on this, the average in baseball, like across baseball for getting meatballs, you can call them mistake pitches, whatever it is that you want, was 7.3. Reynolds was at 8.0. he was seeing way more. So, nobody in this lineup was dissuading any pitcher from firing away at Reynolds. I’ve got Cruz’s numbers, too. They’re not as stark, but I’ll read them to you anyway. In 2025, his meatball percentage was 5.9%, which is a lot lower than Reynolds. though they did not want Cruz to have anything that he could hammer for the obvious reason I would imagine that he could hammer it about 600 ft if he’s in the mood. His meatball swing percentage was down 70.6. That’s 13 points lower than Reynolds, which goes to what I was saying earlier, which is that he would just watch these things go by. Again, that has nothing to do with Nick Gonzalez hitting around them. Spencer Horowitz hitting around them. Andrew McCutchen hitting around them. Nothing. Zero. I appreciate the question. Really good one. I appreciate everybody who listens to Daily Shot of Pirates. We’ll be back with another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

Justin Horowitz, the scouting director responsible for drafting Konnor Griffin, leaves for the Nationals.

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