The Pirates continue to fall victim to a trend cropping up around Major League Baseball.
Pittsburgh is loaded with promising young talent, but many of them are struggling to find their footing at the dish in the big leagues, despite offensive success in the minors.
Jack Suwinski is hitting a putrid .172 with 62 strikeouts. Henry Davis was fast-tracked to the majors to get his bat into the lineup, only for him to struggle at the plate. Nick Gonzalez is mired in a 1-for-23 stretch entering Tuesday’s action.
Suwinski is one of the more concerning examples given the amount of runway he’s been offered to figure it out in the majors. He broke onto the scene in 2022, and the offense he displayed early on his MLB career perhaps has given him a little more leeway than he otherwise might be getting.
At this point though, Suwinski looks overmatched against big league pitching. The lineup undoubtedly is better when Suwinski is in form, but he has yet to provide that in lengthy stretches this season. In normal circumstances that would have him ticketed for Triple-A, but the chasm in quality of pitching between Triple-A and MLB seems to have given the Pirates pause.
"I think some of it is that,” PIrates manager Derek Shelton said Tuesday in his weekly appearance with Joe Starkey and Paul Zeise. “As we’ve seen, Triple-A pitching is completely different than big league pitching, and I think your point there is right. It’s the largest gap of any kind we’ve ever seen. In Jack’s case, we need Jack to get going, I would 100 percent agree with that. We’re working on that to give him a little bit of runway, then we’ll have to make a decision on what we’re going to do moving forward.
“But I do think the fact that Triple-A pitching is in a situation that it’s so much different than big league pitching, I think we’ve seen that. I’m not making this just about the Pirates, but in the game – but we’ve seen guys who in some cases have dominated Triple-A and put up really, really good numbers, and then it’s a situation where they come to the big leagues and they have struggled. So some of this is about learning how to hit at the big league level.”
With such a bevy of young hitters floundering, the discourse, as is often the case, has shifted to hitting coach Andy Haines. Shelton has repeatedly defended Haines, but so long as the Pirates struggle to hit, he will be under the microscope.
Tuesday was another instance in which Shelton refused to let Haines get all the blame.
“Our younger hitters have to progress. That’s true," Shelton said. "I think we’re seeing, not only with the Pirates but throughout the game, young players are struggling right now. We need to figure out how that translates to being better. Our offense needs to be better, we’re working on it, but I don't honestly think it’s fair to cast the blame on one single person for that.
“Some of it comes on the players too. We have to continue to make adjustments, we have to continue to work on things. And again, it’s not just the Pirates where we’re seeing young hitters struggle. I know it’s the conversation because we’re talking about the Pirates, but throughout the league I think we’re trying to figure out why guys when they come from Triple-A to the big leagues are having issues.”
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