Starting out, this was going to be a column about new faces in new places – Bud Norris, Scott Feldman and Francisco Rodriguez in Baltimore; Jake Peavy in Boston, Alfonso Soriano in New York, Jesse Crain in Tampa Bay, Jose Veras in Detroit, Ricky Nolasco in Los Angeles, Ian Kennedy in San Diego, Scott Downs in Atlanta and Marc Rzepczynski, the walking eye chart, in Cleveland.
It could have been about Alex Rodriguez and his Biogenesis friends, but Major League Baseball’s plans for them and their possible reaction to those plans were too fluid to write knowledgeably about that subject. The world has read and heard too much speculation already for me to add more uncertainty to the environment.
It wasn’t long ago that news media reports were saying as many as 30 players could be suspended, a development that would devastate baseball and possibly cripple its future.
As I write this, baseball is close to announcing its action, but there still are not enough facts to deal with. There will be time to write about that ugly subject as Commissioner Bud Selig is determined to punish players who have dared to sully his new world of steroids-free baseball.
Selig was late to the party, and he’s trying his darnedest to try to make everyone forget that he wasn’t there when the party began.
But another development cropped up. Well, it didn’t exactly crop up. It grew slowly and steadily until this week when it burst out in reality and demanded not to be ignored.
Only 10 days from the beginning of their flameout ending last season, the Pittsburgh Pirates engaged the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with the major leagues’ best record, in a five-game series and shockingly won the first four games with the fifth to be played.
The outcome of those first four games gave the Pirates the majors’ best record and catapulted them two and a half games ahead of the Cardinals.
This is the team that represents the franchise that has established a professional major league sports record with 20 consecutive losing seasons.
There are thousands of fans in Pittsburgh who have never seen a winning Pirates team in their lifetime. I have a nephew, a lawyer, whose son Blake is one of those. There are many thousands of others who can’t remember the last time they saw a winning Pirates’ team.
The Pirates have gone through a succession of general managers and managers in the interim, and I readily admit that I was among the skeptics who doubted the ability of the current regime to turn the team around.
My skepticism began when Frank Coonelly was hired as the team president in September 2007 and Coonelly hired Neal Huntington as general manager and Huntington hired John Russell as manager.
Coonelly’s only baseball experience was as a labor lawyer in the commissioner’s office. Huntington had no real front office experience, having preferred outside work scouting players. Russell had been a minor league manager but had never managed in the majors.
The combination didn’t look promising, but Coonelly and Huntington are still in their positions, and they have replaced Russell with Clint Hurdle. They are responsible for the dramatic development of the 2013 Pirates.
When I look at the front office in the context of this season, I have to look at the Tampa Bay Rays. When Stu Sternberg bought the Rays in 2005, he was not a baseball man. He came from Wall Street and he brought with him two colleagues who had no baseball experience, Matt Silverman as president and Andrew Friedman as general manager.
The neophyte regime took over a franchise that the previous owner, Vince Naimoli, had tried his best to destroy. The new guys learned on the job and quickly built the Rays into a contender. The only thing missing was a decent park, but the Rays have overcome that, too, though a new park would mean more fans, which would mean more revenue to run the team.
The Pirates have a new park, a terrific park, if not the best park, among the best parks in the majors. They needed more fans to fill the seats at PNC Park, but to get more fans they needed better players. Their attendance of just under 100,000 for their first three dates with the Cardinals, one a doubleheader, was a promising sign.
They had promising signs on the field, too. Brandon Cumpton is a 24-year-old right-handed pitcher who had started three games before starting against the Cardinals in the second game of the doubleheader Tuesday. He allowed three hits in seven innings in a 6-0 victory.
In the first game of that doubleheader, an 11th-inning single by Alex Presley, a little-used outfielder, drove in Russell Martin with the winning run. The next night Martin singled home a two-out run in the eighth for a 5-4 victory.
In the first game of the series, a 9-2 romp, Francisco Liriano allowed one run and four hits in seven innings for his 11th victory. Third baseman Pedro Alvarez hit his league-leading 27th home run.
A series like that one can put things out of proportion, stirring excitement and raising expectations. The Pirates and their fans, though, know better than to get ahead of themselves.
On Aug. 8 last season, the Pirates had a 63-47 record, less than eight weeks from a winning record. Only 19 victories in their last 52 games would break their ignominious streak. The Pirates won 16 games and finished with a 79-83 record for No. 20.
It’s an old story, but the Pirates are on their way to writing a new one. Not that they are overconfident or cocky, but the Pirates did not participate in the player-acquisition game teams played before last Wednesday’s non-waiver trading deadline.
It was a good sign because the Pirates used to play the game, trading away their good young players so they wouldn’t face having to pay them in the future. The Pirates have a different future now.