The Tartan

Lord, I’m so tired of being a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The astute amongst you may notice that I am not esteemed Sports Columnist Kyle “the Kriminal” Hynes. Unfortunately, Kyle took one look at the Pirates record and immediately dropped out of Carnegie Mellon, hoping to get as far away from this trash fire as humanly possible. I’ve heard he’s running free with a farm team upstate, actually enjoying baseball.

This team is nothing but pain and agony. It’s a Sisyphean task that I’m not sure anyone on this planet deserves, and yet, year in and year out, we few and we brave suffer at the hands of Bob Nutting and a team that tears our hearts out.

You may think I’m being dramatic. You are correct, I am being dramatic. But this drama is more than merited, because I feel nothing anymore and my senses have been deadened to such an extent that an alcoholic would be jealous.

Before we left, Kyle “Won’t respond to my texts” Hynes had his own depressive spiral over the Pirates, and in the three months that the Tartan has not published (presumably, in solidarity with its hurting columnist), things have only gotten more painful.

The Pirates spent most of the summer chasing .500, a number which, with some good luck and bad play by other Senior Circuit teams, would leave the Pirates with a slight chance to get into the playoffs. They were doing well when, in the middle of July, the team finally poked its head over the .500 mark and started playing like a baseball team, and not a sad joke of an organization that thought the strikeout was the most important outcome in an at bat.

That hope lasted until the first week of August, at which point the Pirates sunk, the team went on a 10-game losing streak, and proceeded to turn into a flaming trainwreck almost immediately. The Pirates fell eight games below .500 by mid-August and have remained there to date. It’s sad, it’s pathetic, and it’s the worst tragedy to face this nation in its history. I think my good friend, the slimy rat Kyle “I did not get his permission to insult him” Hynes, would agree.

The team’s batting average, a whopping .236, is 23rd worst in the majors, and something that has completely destroyed the team’s ability to stave off the terrible pitching that seems to rear its ugly head in high leverage situations. David Bednar needs to never be trusted with a pitch again because I’m pretty sure I can do better and I can’t throw more than 50 without turning my shoulder into rubber.

Meanwhile, they’re slugging .372, 25th best in the Majors, and 20 points worse than they were slugging in 2023. Their OBP is somehow worse, 12 points below 2023 and a whopping .303, giving them the 26th place OPS of .674. It’s miserable, it’s sad, it’s lethargic hitting, and even more lethargic batting, a combination that is nothing but deadly for any team hoping to get itself out of a slump.

Like Kyle “Ghosted me for a month” Hynes said, it’s not just that the team is bad, plenty of teams are bad, but the Pirates are so ineffectively bad, a team which keeps trying to be good and gets no support from outside, a team that just tries and fails miserably each time, and leaves us a little hope.

And the problem lies in two figures. The first is Derek Shelton, an inept joke who purports himself a manager and has continued to mess up every single time he’s been asked to make any logical decisions, and KEEPS SENDING DAVID BEDNAR OUT THERE. He’s bad at his job, and it’s obvious to anyone who’s following baseball that he simply does not know what he’s doing.

The other problem is of course, the owner, Bob Nutting. Yes. That is his name. Bob Nutting is bad at his job. Bob Nutting does not like spending money. If you ask for money, you will be getting nothing from Nutting.

The complete lack of ownership support is genuinely a huge factor in keeping the Pirates from reaching the playoffs, a drought that will hit nine years this year. I don’t expect much from the Pirates, but somehow, I’m still disappointed.