The Pirates released outfielder Matt Gorski, per the MLB.com transaction tracker. Pittsburgh designated him for assignment last week to open a 40-man roster spot for reliever Yohan Ramírez.
Gorski has been on the Triple-A injured list since late May. Injured players cannot be placed on outright waivers. Once Pittsburgh designated him for assignment, a release was essentially inevitable. Assuming Gorski clears release waivers, the Bucs could try to bring him back on a minor league contract. He’ll have the right to pursue other opportunities as a free agent though.
The righty-hitting Gorski is a former second-round pick. He has power and speed but has had issues making consistent contact throughout his minor league career. The Indiana product got out to a hot start this year with Triple-A Indianapolis. Pittsburgh called him up in late April.
Gorski blasted a 434-foot home run off Tyler Anderson in his first major league at-bat. He recorded two homers and a triple in 15 games, but he also struck out 16 times while drawing just one walk. Pittsburgh optioned him back to Triple-A on May 17; he suffered the undisclosed injury a week later. He has hit .195 in 41 major league at-bats and is a career .254/.313/.509 hitter in parts of four Triple-A seasons.
Someone else will fix him & we’ll see him in next year’s Home Run Derby.
The Pirates just won’t give these guys chances! What have they got to lose? The guys on the Major League roster aren’t hitting either!
Yeah, just look at all those ex pirate hitters tearing it up!!
There’s, uh, Kevin Newman, and, uh, Elias diaz and, uh….
He’s been available in the last 2 Rule 5 drafts and nobody picked him. That doesn’t mean somebody won’t ‘fix’ him but is an indication that other teams may also not see him as a future MLB player as drafting him would have been an extremely low risk move even if to just see him in spring training. Me thinks Pirate fans (me included) are way to concerned about losing Gorski.
I doubt that. Dude couldn’t break the Pirates OF… That’s a very bad outfield.
As someone who has watched Gorski for a long while (since he was in Altoona), it’s pretty evident the guy doesn’t have much chance to be a viable MLB player. His ceiling is a guy who might be able to fill in on the MLB roster during an emergency and maybe pop a HR or two, strike out a ton, and be somewhat competent in the field. (Which is exactly how he made it to the majors in the first place.)
Gorski will be 28 in December. How long do you need to give a guy to make adjustments and not strike out nearly 30% of the time against minor league pitching, where 3 out of every 4 guys won’t ever get a whiff of an MLB roster? Somehow someone is going to figure him out? Even if they did, he might have 3, maybe 4 years of prime ability left in him.
Both Gorski and the Pirates are better off parting ways. The Pirates need to move on to provide opportunities for younger players, while Gorski still has a chance to latch on elsewhere (perhaps overseas) and have a few more years to chase the dream.
You’re kidding, right? Hague retired in 2018
Oh boy. He’s their hitting coach man.
He’s frequently seen laughing it up in the dugout as the Pirates swing at pitches in the dirt or taking strike 3.
Can’t imagine how difficult it is to hold it all in, game in and game out.
Time for Nutting to unload anyone making a decent salary.
I think you mean the 1st baseman who came up and inexplicably made an error against the Cubs one beautiful Sunday afternoon that you wouldn’t see in little league. I can’t remember the young man’s name now but he was sent down and never seen again. Poor kid.
Will Craig.
It’s going to be an interesting deadline time, Buuba. I’m looking forward to it. Will they unload everyone and burn it all down, as they should, or will we hear that hey, they’re just a hitter or two away from contending, as we usually do from the GM?
Better than any soap opera
Two years away from being two years away
Gorski soon to be 28 so not really younger. Suwinski younger more ceiling. Canario even younger more ceiling. Not that they are likely to be anything they are likely not. But better than Gorski. Why do you need 3 of the same player that isn’t good?
Who cares how much $ Nutting gave Cherington. He would have just signed Pham instead of Hays Tauchman.
Pirates fans even worse. They would have spent money on Santander Profar Conforto. Yikes!!!!!!
Yeah, you’re probably right. We’ll never know
go make some money oversees.
Where are you seeing this report? Player payroll and front office payroll are not tied together in ANY sport so I’d like to know which outlet said such a thing. Honestly it sounds like another lie by the “writers” over at Rumbunter or FanRecap.
Baseball reporting has nothing to do with politics, mainstream or otherwise. The media in Pittsburgh does follow in lockstep with incredibly misleading statements and opinions issued by the MLBPA regarding the ownership of the team.
Some examples:
The owner is “cheap” because he’s worth billions and doesn’t spend any of it on the team. The truth, which is almost never reported, is that Nutting cannot spend his own money above his required contribution to the team budget based on his stake in the team – to do so would require him to force the rest of the ownership group to invest in kind, which they are (apparently – and wisely, given the actual Pittsburgh market) unwilling to do. Also, using the “worth” logic, let’s say the total of your assets (car, house, property, etc) is valued at $500,000. The MLBPA would rip you for not buying a Ferrari, because of your net worth, when the reality is that you either have equity that you’d need to borrow against or you’d need to liquidate an asset for cash to buy the car.
“The Pirates don’t spend the money they get from revenue sharing”. This argument is essentially akin to workers in a factory complaining the company doesn’t buy the latest and greatest equipment year after year while ignoring what the company spends in utility bills. The MLBPA knows better, and they know most other people don’t, payroll is typically around half of the team’s operating costs, which means the Pirates generally have $70-$80 million in other expenses (at a minimum) that aren’t mentioned when the players union peddles the lie.
The point being, it’s in the media’s interests to sell papers – and they do so by keeping the players happy and getting access, and by pushing an opinion that’s become popular because people don’t want to actually look into anything. As long as people are buying the MLBPA papering over the sport’s economic problems by blaming a few owners, the fans will never get a truly competitive and balanced sport.
Let’s start with the owner not be willing to spend. One need only google the term “cash call mlb ownership” to get a reasonable explanation of what has to happen for any owner to add additional funds into the team’s budget. The operating rules make it pretty difficult for one owner in a group to spend out of his own pocket. The easiest way to describe this would be that Nutting would be issuing a loan to the team, with ownership shares being the collateral for the other owners to contribute their share. If the other owners can’t meet their obligations, they forfeit their shares to Nutting.
While it is common sense that one’s net worth has little to do with what they can afford at any specific moment, last time I checked, there was no Scrooge McDuck money bin atop the mountain at Seven Springs. There is little likelihood that Nutting (or any other billionaire) has a few million in their checking account. He would either have to sell something or borrow against his assets to add cash to the Pirates’ budget.
The MLBPA does not complain that revenue sharing is not needed at all, but rather files grievances about it not being spent on payroll – a tacit admission that markets such as Pittsburgh and Oakland cannot generate the same amount of revenue as larger markets. Any time the union mentions an owner’s net worth in the context of payroll, it is with the knowledge of the above – and therefore a wholly disingenuous presentation regarding why a team isn’t spending.
You can look up the Atlanta Braves’ operating costs and subtract the MLB payroll to get a fair sense of what it costs to run a team. Compare the demographics and census data between Pittsburgh and other baseball markets objectively. The Pirates ability to generate revenue – even with a great product on the field – can never match any of the big markets and cannot be sustained due to the overall decline in population combined with the aging of the population. In that sense, even Tampa and KC are not fair comparisons because both have younger, growing populations, which makes a return on investment more likely. If you can find me anyone outside of Dejan in the local media who has reported any of this stuff, I’d welcome reading it, because Mark Madden churns out the same “Nutting is cheap” garbage with none of these things ever mentioned at least 4-6 times a week.
You really think analytics are the problem? lol.
The best teams in baseball are pretty strong analytically.
But you know what most good teams have? Owners that spend money. If anything is stupid, it’s the Pirates owner refusing to spend. Just like my Reds, the owner is the biggest problem.
The best teams spend money, and rely heavily on analytics and scouting. The best teams that don’t spend money on players heavily utilize analytics with strong scouting.
Analytics aren’t the issue – the owner is.
I agree 100%, of course
But even under the constrictions Nutting has undoubtedly placed on his GM, the biggest problem here has been the incredible failure of the player development department. I’m sure they’ve drafted and traded for prospects whom scouts gave glowing reports. Other than pitching, their farm system has produced literally nothing. No impact players at all
For a team that drafts high each year and that has traded for boatloads of prospects, that’s almost unbelievable
I heard an interesting discussion on the radio between Jason Mackey and Jack Wilson regarding some of Jacob Wilson’s numbers this season. As a former MLB player and a long time coach, Jumpin’ Jack astutely pointed out the flaws in analytics, such as UZR failing to account for where the team has positioned a player in the first place.
The best teams that don’t spend money understand what analytics are pertinent to a specific player and which ones are not. A player who is able to consistently soft-serve an outside pitch to the opposite field for a hit is punished by OPS, exit velocity and BABIP to name a few. Teams see that player crushing mistakes for HRs and assume he has power potential to unlock, and begin tinkering to coax out the power. The next thing you know, you have a player who was fully capable of batting .320 while being a clutch hitter and a tough out turning into a guy who pulls a ton of grounders and occasionally runs into one – becoming a “bust” by any measure (Henry Davis comes to mind).
I tend to think that the Pirates’ unabashed faith in analytics is their biggest failure, there are too many examples of trying to coax out a specific trait at the cost of others – sure as the square peg, round hole approach to pitching under Searage.
In the development arena, I see a heavy focus on “correcting” flaws (especially with hitters) as opposed to attempting to mitigating them. It is to a pitcher’s advantage to have at least 4 different offerings, even if not all of them are good. Instead of shelving the worst pitch and giving hitters more of a chance to key on a certain pitch, you throw that pitch in an unexpected situation to “show” it to a hitter, giving him something else to think about. The Pirates don’t typically do that – to the point where I sit at home and sequence out the whole at bat and watch the pitcher follow it to a T and give up a hit, because if I know it (as a fan and youth coach), you can bet a MLB player knows it too. If the analytics say a guy can’t hit a slider, it’s wrong because not all sliders have the same shape and the hitter knows he’s going to see them. Once a player knows what pitch is coming and in what location, the chances of success spike and the analytics fail.
One of the more striking recent examples of this was Jared Jones’ slider. He relied on it too much in specific counts, never located it for a strike, etc. Guys stopped swinging and forced him into the zone or took their walks. The analytics say the slider is elite, the application of the analytics is where the breakdown occurred.
Standing ovation, Pundit. Thanks so much. For years I have tried to reason with the “analytics king” here, to no avail. I understand that analytics play a vital role in today’s game. No question. But so does the eye test. So does understanding the game, mechanical issues and fundamentals
Thank you for this concise rendering
As someone who coaches youth baseball, I can tell you that there is no analytic to measure a player’s ability to process and apply feedback, which can really hamper the usefulness of analytics in general. Analytics can be informative about specific patterns, but if they are not evaluated in context, they mean nothing.
Case in point: a Player 1 hits a bill with an EV of 101 mph, another hits a ball with a 78 mph EV. The “analytics king” would trend toward Player 1 being the better player. In context, Player 1 rolled over a 2-strike breaking ball on the outer half to the pull side and hit into an easy double play, while Player 2 took the same pitch and dunked into in the opposite field for a run-scoring hit. Player 2 would consistently show a lower expected batting average with lower EVs, but the stat does not account at all for the game situation.
To take that further within the realm of MLB development, Player 2 would be taken aside to make adjustments to hit the ball harder, Player 1 would be tagged as “unlucky” for a low BABIP. You could show Player 1 a two-strike approach which sacrifices EV for more hits, but the analytics (out of context) say otherwise and they don’t account for whether the player will listen or even has the ability to execute. Then you end up with two players stepping into the box with a lot on their mind – the wisdom of Yogi Berra says “you can’t hit and think at the same time” – and my experience is that statement is true nearly all of the time.
The Pirates seem to really struggle with the idea that analytics have to be in context and just blindly do what they say (Shelton was a major offender of this, Kelly less so). Other teams have the same analytics, so they know what you’re up to – akin to the scene in the Waterboy where the opposing coach is holding his opponent’s playbook and laughing.
perhaps he can use an impact driver better than a baseball bat….Firestone, be all you can be.
28 with 41 career MLB AB’s and no position on the field is definitely the ‘younger guys’ most teams try to keep around… Pitching is always needed. I mean blaming Cherington is fun and all, he has been rough on acquiring talent other than the draft, but this has not the slightest bit of impact on this team or Cherington at all.
Well 3 years ago the Brewers had a lot of these type of guys on there roster Adames, Urias, Wong, Voit, Ruf Vogelbach,Weimer, Taylor, Narvaez and others. Then went to the more contact and guys putting in play. They get probably 12 more at bats a game . Forces teams to have to make plays on them. Which gives them atleast a chance to score. It amazes me that if a lot of these players would change their 2 strike approach they could actually have a career.
^^ This 1000%. Putting pressure on the defense and pitching is the purest and most time-tested recipe for winning in baseball. It’s had many names over the years, but Moneyball, Whiteyball, the Baltimore Chop are all essentially built around the ideas that putting the ball in play consistently, and forcing pitchers into the zone make mistakes a statistical certainty.
In today’s baseball versus days gone by, mental mistakes are far more common, further increasing your odds of success. There remains but one way to reach base on a strikeout, the odds of that are remote – 0.05% of all strikeouts (an OBP of 0.0005) versus roughly a 31.5% of getting on base on a batted ball (BABIP + errors).
Rather than sacrificing power for putting the ball in play, you again achieve a near statistical certainty that more pitches and more batters in any given game increases the number of mistake pitches and how many of those will land in the bleachers. Given the idea that a pitcher throws a “danger” pitch at a given rate and players hit a HR off that pitch at a given rate – if you get 10 chances instead of 5 per game – you would theoretically hit an extra HR every six games.
This was the major flaw with Shelton, a manager who did little to put pressure on opponents. Kelly is at least trying to bunt runners up, steal, hit and run, hit to opposite fields etc, but the problem with this group of players again is the amazing fact that so many are clueless.
Things they should have learned in Legion ball, at least, are mysteries here. Here are things one sees almost every game:
– plate approach – with runners on base, close game, having a plan
– understanding what pitcher is throwing
– understanding what pitcher is trying to do in a given situation
– understand strike zone as per ump
– understand mechanics of bunting, hitting and running, pushing ball to opposite field
– understand how to “shorten up” with two strikes and runners on/in scoring position
-understand how to run bases, slide, draw throws
The list is endless. Just what goes on at the farm level, anyway? Has anyone here learned anything from their time on the farm, or was it just a case of getting reps?
Go watch youth baseball. Any fundamental you see is either an accident or a result of the player himself actually trying to learn the game. You’ll see no teaching of any of what you mentioned. Because if you do try to teach it, it might cost wins, and you’ll be replaced as a coach. (I’ve personally been made aware of complaints lodged against me with the league’s board for not “trying to win” hard enough.)
I still stick to my consistent messaging that knowing what to do is so much more important than the execution, smart players will nearly always beat out athletic gods with no idea what they’re doing.
For example, I gave my son a quick primer on watching the swing and contact of a batter while he was playing third base, then watched him apply that knowledge to turn a bases-clearing double down the line into an easy, inning-ending force out at 3rd by simply positioning himself correctly. All the while, the other coach bemoaned how “unlucky” his player was (one of his best hitters).
I tell my hitters to “pick your patsy” as you walk up to the plate, find the kid out of position or not paying attention and make a concerted effort to hit it to that player. In that sense, I consistently added strikeouts and failed opportunities for the longer-term goal of building a sound approach for each at-bat. Not only am I an exception in youth baseball, I’m one of the few people who actually know the game well enough to teach it – an undesired quality among coaches these days.
We have similar backgrounds, and my involvement was for over 35 years. What you write of was not always the manner of coaching. I’m sure you know this. There was a time that fundamentals were a large part of any coach’s practice regimen—-and still were within my planning
There was a time that you had one coach hitting ground balls to a single file line of players. Or fly balls to lines in the outfield. There wasn’t much coaching going on
That changed with the idea of multiple coaches, multiple stations, partitioning of the field. Coaches and their assistants had to have knowledge of fundamental techniques and how to impart the info.
Somewhere in the last decade or two, the emphasis became playing “travel ball,” which was previously reserved for all star caliber players. Now, any kid with a glove or bat can play at the “travel” level and you’re right, fundamentals have suffered from lack of coaching
Like you, I coached with an eye towards game/situational knowledge, fundamental refinements and a great many intangibles that can and should be pushed by capable coaches in it for the right reasons
The wins took care of themselves. Best of all are the numbers of former players who embraced ideas like perseverance, effort, goal setting and teamwork and have done something with their lives
I’ll stop preaching now. I don’t need anyone to tell me about the ugliness now in youth sports, even at the youngest levels, or how priorities are extremely out of whack.
With college athletes now becoming well paid employees of their respective colleges, it’s only going to get worse
I’ve been trying to “get with the times” by using things kids are interested in to help reinforce learning the game. I’ve been curating a list of YouTube videos that I assign as “homework”, which we discuss at the next practice (Will Craig has taught many a youngster on my teams about the importance of having and sticking to a plan).
In my practice plans, I look at fundamentals and situations and invent a game-like drill to teach it to make it fun and engaging. My team relishes the “get the coach out drill” where I’m the runner going from 1st to 2nd and pairs of them keep track of how many times they’re able to force me out, for example. They don’t even know they’re learning situational baseball, but it makes me proud when I see kids covering their bases without any prompting.
The best compliment I’ve ever gotten regarding my coaching was from a dad of a travel ball kid, who started off by saying he would scratch his head a little at my drills at first, but said his son switched from always wanting to hit to always wanting to practice fielding. My teams have always been 2nd to none in having defensive knowledge, even when the execution is sometimes lacking (mostly due to me moving players around to get them seeing the game from different positions and learning the jobs of that position).
Travel ball teams have become a money-making machine of their own, coached by dads who think their kid ought to be the star or the team. If you’re showing up to coach with your top priority being something other than imparting your love of the game to your team through fun, you honestly shouldn’t be coaching. The only thing most kids learn from youth baseball is the life-lesson that most people are selfish idiots that are looking out for their own interests.
Oddly enough, my older son plays on a team with the son of one of my Little League teammates (whose dad was our coach). We laugh about just how badly our team from then would steamroll even the best of the travel teams nowadays. We knew the game inside and out and whatever we lacked in ability, we made up for in smarts. These days, most players on a travel team would struggle to name more than two players on their favorite team. We watched baseball as often as it was on, and listened to it on the radio when it wasn’t.
Guys like Gorski flaming out, Suwinski struggling, etc. are a product of a system which focuses too heavily on physical gifts with too little detail paid toward knowing how and when to apply those gifts.
Bubba I don’t care if Nutting gave BC money and he used it on analytics.
Take a look at how he’s spent his FA money over the years. Last year was a total waste.
While I don’t deny the existence of these reports you mention I sure would like to read them since I’m a fan and always enjoy reading stories about the distinction
More like should have been fired by now
If it’s any consolation, all travel sports have become this money pit now. From tournament organizers to towns that have built complexes for sports that are designed to host tournaments every weekend, it’s become a cottage industry
In particular, I get a chuckle out of baseball and softball travel organizations that now have kids traveling all over the country from spring through late fall-from high school down to middle school age-with the idea of being seen by college coaches. Most of these kids will end up at I79 corridor schools if they wish to play at the collegiate level. Nothing wrong with that, but it occurs to me that parents could have saved a great deal of money if they’d seen the bigger picture.
On top of that are “super” organizations that pull kids from all over. No practices can be had but they travel from town to town every weekend
I like your idea about how to devise practices. I did the same. There are a great many “used car salesmen” who run clinics and make videos of the same, tired drills that are largely useless. Money-makers that do little for players.
And all of this now in every sport, with parents looking for that pot of gold
You’re right again about the Gorskis and Suwinskis and myriad others.