DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Doesn’t take much

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Doesn’t take much

[Music] [Applause] I mean, it just takes so little offense for this team to to look like this. Throw out your math, please. Just this one time and hear me out. Good morning to you. Good Wednesday 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. Pirates 3 Giants won last night in San Francisco and it was more of the same, just more good pitching, more good in a couple of cases great defense. And you know, they do just enough hitting to get by. There were 12 hits. 10 of those were singles. One of those was Leo Pagarero’s first home run in forever in the major leagues. But really, again, it was about the arms and the gloves. Bailey Falter held the Giants to one run over five innings. Braxton Ashcraft was wow, nine up, nine down with a strike out in there. And Dennis Santana was It was only one inning, but he was really good. I don’t remember the last time I saw his slider have that kind of dominant action. And we’re talking about somebody with a 136 erra. So, he’s been pretty good regardless. And then there’s Krian Hayes, who might as well exemplify the conversation I’m about to have with you here, because here’s Hayes going one for four at the plate. Then the the single was kind of quirky. It was more a mistake really, a series of mistakes on one batted ball by the San Francisco infield. Nonetheless, he’s one for four, 236 average, 569 OPS out of 30 starting third baseman. In Major League Baseball, he ranks 30th offensively. You also know where he ranks defensively. And it’s not just among third basemen. any player, any position, any team, Hayes’s metrics are number one. And he showed again why with a beautiful diving stab. And he doesn’t leave his feet much, and he’ll tell you that. He’s proud of that. Well, he had to on this one to his left. This was in the ninth inning to spare Santana. A rally while Santana’s trying to get a save with only a two-run lead. Just gorgeous. But you go back to the first inning all the way back to the first and the Giants have runners at first and second with one out. Things haven’t gone all that great for Bailey Falter of late and who knows what could have happened here if this doesn’t settle. So Matt Chapman pops up into the infield pretty much between the mound and the third baseline and Hayes gets under it. At the last split second, Hayes looks back over his left shoulder to see what’s going on at second base. Sure enough, Helio Ramos is straying quite a bit, maybe 12 to 15 ft off the bag. Hayes lets the ball just plop into the grass. While he did that, of course, the umpires ruled that this was an infield fly, so Chapman’s obviously out automatically. But that doesn’t mean Ramos or any base runner can just go roaming around at their discretion. So Kei fires it to Nick Gonzalez and the inning’s over. Great. Great stuff. This was what Don Kelly had to say afterward about it to reporters in San Francisco, including our own Joseé Negron. Yeah, that uh real real big play heads up play by key there. It’s going to make Rebella’s year. He’s been talking about that for years and uh you know just uh for Nick to be on the bag and to be able to get a double play in a big situation there for for Bailey to get out of that inning. Yeah, it’s just par for the course with him and he’s one of those players, in fact, he might be the only one in the entirety of Major League Baseball where you can have an argument as to which one is more valuable, offense or defense. To what extent does one cancel out the other? Or you could do this crazy thing that I’ve been putting forth for quite a while now, and that’s to prioritize offense. That means finding yourself a couple of real impact bats, taking the pressure off these guys like Hayes, who aren’t necessarily going to be big production types, but can come through when needed occasionally and can still fill a decent role. Do you want the 30th best offensive third baseman at a position that’s generally speaking that important for production? And remember power? No, absolutely not. But this is why I’m throwing him into this mix here as the model. For all the quirks, and I mean this team’s had as many of them as I can recall covering in any single season. For all the quirks that this collective has come up with over the course of four months, there’s none that stands out for me quite like when they have even just one or two guys going offensively. They look beyond competitive. And who’s the guy or who are the guys who are going right now? It’s really just Tommy Fam. I mean, fam is he’s on a ridiculous tear. He went three for four again in this one. Spencer Horwitz has hit a little bit better of late, but you’re still not getting much from the heart of your order. And what you are getting it, it’s just more sporadic than anything else. But to repeat this, it wins when it happens even a little bit. The problem is that you hit a lot less than a little bit most times. Crazy number for you here. This was the 17th game the Pirates won while scoring three or fewer runs. 17th. So, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that I accept, I’m there’s just a part of me that can’t let go of this notion that if this team had those, I don’t know, two, maybe three additional bats, they still wouldn’t necessarily be good offensively. But my point is, I don’t think they need to be good offensively. just need to not be catastrophically awful. When we come back, J1Q, [Music] if you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. 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[Music] Today’s J1 Q comes from Ethan and it’s in regards to the trade deadline which is coming up tomorrow across Major League Baseball. He asks DK, what could you possibly get back that would be worth sending out Mitch Keller? David Bednar is easily more replaceable than Keller, but I would be wary of any sort of return for Bedar either, especially with Ben Cherington in charge, as you’ve pointed out. Yeah, I’ve kind of pointed that one out a time or two, haven’t I? So, yeah, it’s dependent on whether or not you have a functional GM. You don’t. You don’t. So having Keller be your guy that you’re trading away and with the really I would hope transparent presumption that a bat or multiple bats would be coming back. The only correct answer in this scenario is don’t do it. He’s not going to find you a bat. He doesn’t know what bats look like. If that sounds mean, look at the track record. Read off all his trades and then put special highlighter, yellow bright highlighter pen over the ones that involved bats. There’s nothing about this move without even knowing who’s on the other end that’s worth the risk. But can I share with you another thought that’s been on my mind for a while? It’s the first time I’m going to say it out loud. Let’s never forget who the owner of the franchise is and that nothing happens involving this team in any context that doesn’t begin with a conversation about cash. Now, to Bob Nutting’s credit, Keller’s one of the players that he committed to keeping, and he followed through on that. Keller signed a five-year $77 million extension before the 2024 season. So, that’s a hats off to the owner. It’s also a big hats off to the pitcher, by the way, because as I see it, he’s exceeded what he’s been paid, even though his salary for this season is 15.41 million. That sounds like a lot and it is in the world of the pirates. It’s actually just kind of cost of doing business figures in most realms. Well, Mitch has three more years to go on that extension. And I’m going to read off the dollar figures that are committed to him. 2026, he’s at 16.9 million. 2027, 18.4 million. 2028, 20.4 million. That’ll be his age 32 season, by the way. After that, he can be a free agent. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money. Even if he’s worth it, it’s a lot of money here. It’s more than 55 million of that 77 total for the extension. I’m not suggesting that I know anything here, but I’m also not accepting Cherington’s flat no that he offered over the weekend when he was asked if any of these coming trades might be motivated by money. He has to say that, but we have seen other examples. So, all I’m going to throw out here, and again, based on zero knowledge or inside information, I’ll always tell you when it’s actual reporting versus a hunch, which is what this is. I really don’t like that Keller is the name that keeps coming up the most when he’s so important to what this team needs to do in the immediate future, and yet he’s about to make all this money. If you wanted to trade a pitcher for hitters, you could do it without sending out Keller, you could do it, in fact, by getting even more for that pitcher by sending out a prospect. The problem with that, of course, is that the current GM isn’t even capable of doing that because he can’t identify hitting. Oh man, I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Pirates. We’ll be back with another one of these tomorrow.

Doesn’t take much (offense) for this team to win.

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