The MLB playoffs begin Tuesday night without the Pirates for the 26th time in the past 29 years.
Pretty bad, right?
This is much more embarrassing for the Pittsburgh Baseball Club:
It just finished its worst 2½-season stretch in more than 65 years.
Sadly for us, there is no end in sight to the losing.
Bob Nutting should be ashamed.
It’s hard to get past the 101 losses this season. That is such an ignominious number. This was the eighth time in the Pirates’ 140-year history that the team lost 100 games, nine if you count the 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenies of Peek-A-Boo Veach, Crazy Schmit and Phenomenal Smith, who went 23-113. I swear I didn’t cover that team.
I guess it’s a positive of sorts that this season wasn’t the worst of the 100-loss seasons.
The 2010 Pirates went 57-105. That was John Russell’s last season as manager. A question for the ages is what Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington saw in Russell that made them say, “This is our guy!” He had the personality of a pine-tar rag.
The 2001 Pirates finished 62-100 in their first season in PNC Park. That record was especially painful because Kevin McClatchy had said, “If you build us a new palace, I will spend to build a winning team.” McClatchy initially kept his promise, giving a six-year, $60-million contract to Jason Kendall. That deal blew up in his face; Kendall, one of the great gamers, was a singles hitter. McClatchy made the season much worse by having the nerve to raise ticket prices in 2002.
The 1985 Pirates went 57-104. That clearly was the worst season in franchise history for reasons that went beyond the abysmal record. Players were buying and using cocaine in the clubhouse. The sordid details came out that summer during the Pittsburgh drug trails. The city was embarrassed by its baseball club — on the field and off.
This season wasn’t nearly so miserable, although it did have plenty of rotten moments.
The team started the season 12-11 and finished it by going 13-12 in the final 25 games. In between, it went 36-78. It had losing streaks of six, eight of nine, six, 10, six, eight and six games. It never swept a series. It lost games by at least seven runs 19 times, including nine by double-digits. Its run differential was minus-224, second-worst in all of baseball.
Rotten doesn’t even begin to describe it.
It was as if the Pirates were running a tryout camp all season. A team-record 64 players, including 38 pitchers, appeared in at least one game. You really needed a scorecard to follow the action.
The 2020 season might have been uglier. The Pirates finished 19-41, the worst record in baseball. Only the COVID-19 pandemic kept them from one of the worst seasons in franchise history. They were on pace to go 51-111.
This hideous stretch of Pirates baseball started at the All-Star break in 2019. The team resumed the season by going 4-25. Its record in the unofficial second half was 25-48, leading to the firing of Coonelly, Huntington and Clint Hurdle.
You have to go back to the 1950s to find a darker time for the Pirates. The team lost 112, 104 and 101 games from 1952-54. Slugger Ralph Kiner, who led the National League in home runs for seven consecutive seasons, was traded in June 1953 after refusing to take a pay cut. According to legend, general manager Branch Rickey told Kiner, “We finished last with you. We can finish last without you.”
Those Pirates do provide a little hope for these beleaguered Pirates. Dick Groat, Bob Skinner, Bob Friend, Vern Law and Elroy Face played on one or more of those awful teams. They would go on to help the franchise win the World Series in 1960 against the New York Yankees.
Maybe the same thing will happen for the Pirates in, say, 2027. Bryan Reynolds has the look of a star. David Bednar emerged as a closer candidate for next season. A couple of promising kids, Roansy Contreras and Oneil Cruz made impressive debuts last week. The farm system is rated among baseball’s best and has a chance to get better when the team picks fourth in the 2022 draft.
Miracles can happen, right?
Maybe with anyone but Nutting in charge.
