Jul 12, 2018 4 min read

The Pirates would compete with the Energizer bunny for the amount of times they beat their drum of being a small-market team.

It’s true.

They don’t have the means to spend with such teams as the Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees.

Mistakes have a maximized impact. There’s a smaller margin for error.

Spending $100-plus million for a single player over a given amount of time isn’t going to happen.

That makes drafting and developing talent much more crucial.

They are, in a sense, handcuffed.

Notice I didn’t say they are cheap – which they are – incompetent – which they have shown to be time and again – or blatantly dishonest. Let’s not get started on how they will “add” to the team when attendance increases.

As Milwaukee and the Pirates began a five-game series Thursday night at PNC Park, I can’t help but think about how the visitor embraces the label of small market and the host uses it as a crutch.

Operating in a small market in Major League Baseball doesn’t make that team incapable of winning. It just makes the ability to consistently win nearly impossible.

Just ask the Kansas City Royals, who won the World Series in 2015 but were 26-66 entering Thursday night.

For an organization so analytically based, the Pirates are ignoring the most important numbers, win totals that have’t eclipsed 80 in either of the past two seasons. Those two seasons were immediately following a 98-win team in 2015.

Instead, after trading their two best players in Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole, general manager Neal Huntington said this:

“Our belief is that if we get there as frequently and consistently as possible, we give ourselves the best chance to be that team,” he said on MLB Network’s “High Heat.”

“As we looked at this ’18 club, our thought was, ‘Let’s make a hard baseball decision but, in our minds, the right baseball decision. Let’s go get a return that can help us become a consistent playoff-caliber team, hopefully quicker than later, but certainly for a longer stretch of time.”

But has the Pirates’ future looked more bleak over the last few seasons than it does now?

Manager Clint Hurdle and Huntington were given four-year extensions after a 78-win season.

Gregory Polanco can’t find any consistency at the plate, all the while being clueless in right field and running the bases.

Tyler Glasnow has turned from potential ace into another guy in an already abysmal bullpen.

Austin Meadows, who has shown promise since making his major league debut earlier this season, has been out of the starting lineup in six of the last seven games. He could be demoted back to Triple-A sooner rather than later because of the Pirates’ so-called “surplus” in the outfield.

And the worst part for the Pirates is that the NL Central is continuing to get stronger, including Milwaukee, where the principal owner, Mark Attanasio, has made it a tradition to write an open letter to the fan base after every season.

So, when 2015 ended, and Milwaukee finished 68-94 and fourth in the NL Central, Attanasio’s letter apologized to the fans. He went into detail about the overall philosophy of why they made the moves they did and how it was for a more promising future with the hope of bringing back a World Series to Milwaukee.

This past offseason, the Brewers signed outfielder Lorenzo Cain and did the unthinkable, traded prospects to acquire outfielder Christian Yelich, and are sitting in first place in the division. But unlike the Pirates, who slammed the window on their fingers when they could have added, all indications have Milwaukee being all-in at the trade deadline.

The Brewers have been transparent in embracing a small market.

It’s time for the Pirates to do the same.

Luke Campbell is a sports writer for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at lcampbell@observer-reporter.com.