(Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
The Decade That Was:
Pirates
Dec. 23, 2019
What a hideous, wonderful, discouraging, delightful, scandalous, miraculous and infuriating decade it was for the Pirates.
Hideous. The 2010s began with John Russell's crew losing more games (105) than any Pirates team since 1952 and ended with the worst overall season (on and off the field) since the drug-trial year of 1985.
Wonderful. The Pirates broke the longest losing streak in American sports history (20 years) in 2013, resurrected a dead fan base, and two years later posted their highest win total since 1991.
Discouraging. Failed to win a division title or a playoff series. Kept running into the brick wall that was the St. Louis Cardinals — and then a few more in the form of Madison Bumgarner and Jake Arrieta.
Delightful. Andrew McCutchen won NL MVP in 2013, and his team turned winning into a habit. The Pirates won 280 games from 2013-15 and were one of three teams to make the playoffs all three years.
Scandalous. Jung Ho Kang's DUI-fueled demise, team president Frank Coonelly's DUI and the arrest of star closer Felipe Vazquez on sex charges were awful stories.
Miraculous. Anybody who attended the NL wild-card game on Oct. 1, 2013, will vouch for that. Something far beyond the standard big-atmosphere enveloped PNC Park that night.
"Man, it was 20 years of built up rage,' " Josh Harrison recalled five years later. "All of it, we felt. We felt the excitement they had. And we fed off it."
Infuriating. Somehow, as the 2010s fade, the Pirates have squandered much of the goodwill they engendered from 2013-15. Proof: They have lost more than one million paying customers over the past four years.
People were livid with owner Bob Nutting when the decade began. They still are.
A closer look at the decade that was ...
Click a category below.
Late Monday night, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was where he usually is, right in the middle of his players and coaches, laughing, backslapping, pouring champagne and beer on each of 'em and loving every second when they doused him right back.
"I wanted to embrace the moment," Hurdle said. "I wanted to be a part of all of it. I wanted to be soaked. I wanted my eyes to sting."
Ordinarily, this would have been perfectly normal. The Pirates had just done what so many of us thought was impossible by clinching their first playoff spot since 1992. But this wasn't an ordinary baseball celebration for Hurdle. He is a recovering alcoholic.
"[Been sober] going on 15 years," he said.
— Ron Cook, Sept. 25, 2013
"(The) trade that sent Neil Walker to the Mets is more than just dubious on its baseball merits. ... This is a trade that rips the fabric of the region's relationship with its baseball team. Though it's very early in another dreary offseason, it says here the Pirates will be taking a step backward because of this — in wins, in attendance, and in TV ratings. ... Walker was the most visible contemporary component of the region's sports heritage, galloping across WPIAL football fields in the bedrock Western Pennsylvania tradition, turning up in the Post-Gazette's enduringly fabulous Fabulous 22. That he would one day draw comparisons with Bill Mazeroski seemed like the plot of one of those fresh and juvenile baseball novels that once filled so many boyhoods."
— Gene Collier, Dec. 10, 2015.
"I don't think of Pirates owner Bob Nutting as a malevolent miser. He's not Mr. Potter from ‘It's a Wonderful Life.' I think of him more as an oddly disengaged executive bean counter who can't see beyond his pile of beans. And I don't think that's going to change. Were he to look up, Nutting might notice his baseball team falling off the grid. I mean, he obviously knows that attendance (down more than 20 percent since 2015) and TV ratings are plunging like punctured parachutes. I'm just not sure he's getting the message. Or realizes that a fix might begin with him."
— Joe Starkey, Sept. 14, 2017
"I'll be back with the Pittsburgh Pirates or retire."
— A.J. Burnett, who did neither after the 2013 season and signed with the Phillies
"Today was an embarrassment. We should all be embarrassed to have Major League Baseball uniforms on our back today. It was an atrocity."
— Brendan Donnelly, after 20-0 loss to Brewers
"People in this league understand there is a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes. Obviously, last weekend we were grape squashers."
— Mike Tomlin, two days after season-opening blowout loss at Baltimore in 2011
"I spoke to the cooler, apologized personally, and he's forgiven me as Christ forgives all."
— Sean Rodriguez, after fight with Gatorade cooler
"Pittsburgh is about to burst. [Zack] Cozart is in the box. Look at this sea of black! Flags a wavin'. The pitch . . . one-hopper to second . . . on to first! Raise the Jolly Roger and meet me in St. Lou-ee, Lou-eee!"
— Greg Brown on last out of wild-card win over Reds
"Even though I didn't lose for the last 20 years, they make you feel like you did. That's all you hear. You hear it every single day — 'When's it going to change? You think this is the year?' You get sick and tired of hearing that. It's awesome that there won't be any questions anymore."
— Andrew McCutchen, after the Pirates snapped 20-year losing streak
Tony Sanchez doesn't regret his time in Pittsburgh.
The fourth-overall pick from 2009 played just 51 games here before his 2016 release.
A bust? Well, yes, but Sanchez never quit. He has played in seven organizations since leaving Pittsburgh, crediting his worth ethic and reputation for the longevity.
"I think all that started in Pittsburgh," he said. "My time there did not go as planned. Not nearly as planned. And I look at it sometimes like: 'That was terrible.' But I have to look at it in a different lens now because I'm still supporting my family playing a game, and my wife and son are happy, so I've got to look at my Pirates time as . . . it was worth it."
Sanchez, 31, could have done without the social-media dust-ups. He sometimes wishes he'd worried less about pleasing people, deleted his Twitter account and just let his hard work do the talking.
But what fun would that have been?
Fans and teammates alike — he's still close with Brock Holt, Russell Martin and Jaff Decker — cherished his outgoing personality. The man chose "Let It Go" from Disney's "Frozen" as his walk-up song and celebrated playoff berths by double-fisting beers in the clubhouse and pouring a Budweiser on Neal Huntington's head.
"I knew it would be funny. I knew people would love it," he said. "It was kind of a mixed bag. People wearing me out for not contributing to a playoff run. But I was there, and that beer? I'm allowed to drink it. So I'm going to have a little fun, right?"
Currently a free agent, Sanchez would love to return to "The Show," but he'd settle for something less.
"If I can get paid to continue playing baseball," he said, "why wouldn't I do that?"
— Adam Bittner
It can't get worse. That is the first thought as the Pirates move into the 2020s. They very clearly and very emphatically hit rock bottom in 2019. Bob Nutting responded appropriately by cleaning house atop his organization. New team president. New GM. New manager. Each came highly recommended.
Now to the major questions . . .
Also worth noting: The club's lease at PNC Park, according to the original agreement, ends Oct. 31, 2030.
The Pirates averaged 79 wins per season in the 2010s. They made the playoffs three times.
They won neither a division title nor a playoff series. They can do better than that.
But only a hardcore optimist would bet on it.
— Joe Starkey
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