*t's sad that a team like the Astros, who began the series 46 games under .500 and had some of their better players traded away, can find the motivation to come out and dominate the Pirates, who supposedly were fighting for .500 and respectability. I feel that they haven't even hit rock bottom yet, there is still a month left in the season and the team is showing zero signs of life. There is the potential for a huge losing streak based on how this team is hitting.

The top of the batting order, Jose Tabata, Alex Presley and Andrew McCutchen, was hitless in 11 at bats.

Not totally true...McCutchen was HIT BY a pitch!

Seriously Bob, could you regain your senses and push for a investigation into the PBC once more.

At what point does it become apparent that the PBC is nothing more than the Washington Generals of MLB.

At what point does it become apparent that the Nuttings only care about profit and to heck with the taxpayers who funded PNC park (BFD's ballpark )

This season I am more ticked off than ever...I lost my jaded view of the PBC and actually dared to hope for a while ... ....I truly feel suckered by people I told myself I never would be

People have made the claim that Anti's aren't real fans cause they have a negative view. I claim that it is the Nutting enablers/supporters/defenders that are not real fans. How anyone can stand behing this ownership and front office is beyond me. They have turned a once proud franchise into a laughingstock!

I was checking my spelling and typos and saw I typed pwnership (as o is next to p). I almost left it that way cause in the anguage of todays kids (mostly gamers) ....

Nutting and the front office has really PWNED all the fans and taxpayers!

Well, they did play the SF Giants head to head 4 games in a row just before taking on the Pirates. Giants played desperate ball, threw fabulous pitching at em, and split the series. Astros playing quality baseball. Sure did not look like a 90 game losing team as I watched em for the past 8 days approx!!
AS TO A REAL GAME. Lordy, watch the Red Sox and Yankees, OMG, the crowds, the intensity, every pitch is a must. Lordy Lordy..... We are just little puppies in the world of big dogs I am afraid.
Cheers
III

What can you say, simply appalling.

I stupidly thought that they were turning things around.

They have some players with heart and talen but way too many holes on this team.

I don't understand the terrible hitting. Hard to believe that they were actually worse this August than the 2010 version.

The club has a few core players but they desperately need another overhaul.

If this keeps up poor Huntington is going to take the fall but it goes back to the top, If you don't spend, you don't win and you can't limit spending to draft choices that are years aay from maybe making the major league team.

Hard to watch!

A real shame how this team has collapsed.

Remember when McCutchen dogged it on a play and Hurdle benched him early in the season? Is the same thing happening now -- but with Hurdle looking past it?

I'm only asking because I work morning, noon and night and don't get a chance to see the Buccos on the tube.

If guys are mailing it in now and Hurdle isn't calling them on it -- then the culture of losing has infected him -- and there is no bottom in sight either this year or next.

Pirate fans deserve better. They turned out in droves last year to see absolute garbage. Then they sold PNC out when they got a respectable team. Nutting ought to be doing his best to give them a good product -- instead of being a sleazy car salesman and trying to screw them for as much money as he can get.

The Astros are not the worst team in baseball. Worst record, maybe....but the REAL worst team in baseball is the Pirates. All the goodwill from earlier is lost and forgotten. This is the 2010 team, the team they SHOULD have been all year.

And I really think it's time we stop calling Andrew McCutchen a "superstar." He's a very good player, and may become a great one - but he's not even close to that level yet.

@PittPanthers90: I am right there with you on all points.

There will be no serious attempt to improve the club at the major league level. Suggestions to resign Lee and or Ludwick as if we would be lucky to have them only sicken me all the more.

I seriously worry that NH may have indeed already been extended. I doubt Nutting is in any way disappointed and if I hear any more spin from FC I'm gonna puke.

I really thought this was finally going to end this year.In the words of Estelle Costanza "I've [we've]been duped!"

The night McKenry hit the bottom of the 8th home run off of Marmol, I truly thought this was the year .500 was going to be met and exceeded. I was on Mt. Washington that night and heard the call in my car. The excitement in the air that night was palpable. Looking back, it was a lot of fun. Now I can't believe it ever really happened.

What did our fanbase do to deserve this?

Perhaps the Pirates have hit rock bottom, but judging from the listlessness of their play there appears to be plenty of stink left in this team. - BS

That sums it up.

Much as I'd like to point the finger at Nutting, et.al., this stretch of putridness is squarely on the guys on the field and in the dugout. The permeation of stench in the Bucs dugout would turn even Hunter Pence into a .200 hitter.

In the big picture, sure, this FO and prior FOs are the culprits for 19 years of effluvium. But for this one month of August, the reek is on Hurdle and the 25 guys he supposedly commands.

Somebody get some Glade.

Why anybody is surprised by this current streak of futility by the Pirates is beyond me. For the "magical" 9 weeks earlier in the season they were clearly doing it with mirrors and the stars aligned for their pitchers. I mean really, did we really think that Jeff Karstens had turned into Greg Maddux?


The offense has been dreadful all year and once the pitching turned south it was just a matter of time until this type of slide took place. The sad thing is that there really is no hope for the future. There is absolutely no power in the organization, no near term replacements for any of the major holes at 1B, SS, 3B, and Catcher and no indication that the FO will provide any free agent success.

The FO took all of the life out of the team by not making a substantial acquisition when the team was in contention, once the life was gone, the real talent of the team (which is very minimal) resurfaced and their current play more aptly represents the state of the club.

The question that has to be answered is:

1. Are even the stripped down and gutted Astros team better than the Pirates?

Or......

2. Has Hurdle lost this team and the players have quit on him?


Either scenario is extremely bad.....very very very bad.

Hard to believe, but welcome to your real 2011 Pirates, just as bad as ever.

Don't hold out much hope for the Cubs series. Expect the Cubs to sweep and the Pirates to fall to a permanent 5th place position, where they belong.

What steps is Bob Nutting prepared to make to avoid seeing this team lose another 90+ games next year and for years after that in an unbroken string?

Next goal? Thirty losing seasons in a row under Nutting ownership?>

This is now officially a disgrace of magnificent proportions, and the blame falls squarely on all that are involved in....The Nutting Regime.
This horrific excuse for a sports ownership has once again shown us that they present barnyard baseball year after year after year, that specializes in low payrolls and extremely high losses.
PNC Park ....Originally a field of dreams....Is nothing more than a field of screams of horror. Once again it houses a team that would barely scratch the surface of most Triple A utility roster fillers.
Anybody and everybody that visibly backs this Regime has an agenda that has nothing to do with winning.
Strange and unusual would be an under statement in describing the gluttons for punishment that sing the song of Nutting on a daily basis.
The Nutting Regime presented us with four supposed "weapons" in the off-season in the names of Olsen, Overbay, Diaz and Correira.
One of them is on the DL, and the other three are simply gone.
These so called weapons turned out to be no more than spit balls in a game of rich talent and high stakes.
The Regime got lucky (courtesy of lightening in the bottle), and sat on their fat wallets as the summer wore on, while watching a team die an ugly death in late July.....Culminated with a losers snoozefest of an August.
I don't care what anyone says...This all starts at the top, and trickles down to the very bottom.
And the bottom is just where this franchise (formerly known as the Pittsburgh Pirates) will always find themselves, as long as the name Nutting continues to pilfer every breath of life he can choke out of this franchise.
Every real Pirate fan should pound their fist on a table every time this team loses and yell ..... "Relinquish the franchise Nutting!!!"
In the meantime.....8=19!.....What else could one expect from the worst ownership in the history of sports.

What you are seeing is much more than the odds evening out or pitchers becoming physically tired. Do most of the pitchers just happen to get tired at the same time at the half way point? What is not shocking is the overall statistical numbers in the post All Star break. What is the huge difference is situational pitching and hitting in a few key games. Pitchers have gotten careless with some awful backbreaking down the middle pitches which have cost games and contributed to the demoralizing of the teams. Do not underestimate the power of peers fighting with a combined unified spirit.

This is my theory. Pirates got initially lucky where all the good things coverged for a while. The team got such an emotional lift from the shocking success that they started to create their own success with situational succcesses. When a Pirates pitcher is in a tough situation, it might be easy just to cave in an convince yourself that you can make it up later. But when that pitcher knows that eveyrone else on the staff is succeeding, you do not want to be that first person to break the chain. So you mentally tough it out in that situation. This results in closely won games instead of games that are close till the 6th inning only for the PIrtaes to be blown apart at the end. But this kind of mind over matter stuff can only last so long. We saw that fraying of the edges of this success as the Pirates were approaching the all star break. NH should have sensed this team just barely hanging on and rewarded a once in a two decade successful run by getting super aggressive at the trade deadline. That may have given the club a second wind. Sure, no guarantees. But you gotta try.

I actually believe while the offense is playing to its skill level, the demoralized spirit has the pitching peforming under their potential at this point. People like Karstens or McDonald will have more wins if they move to a club like Philly. There really is no reason to keep Hanny on this staff since wins are scarce.

My boycott of the Pirates is back in force now.

The solution is simple. Play Chase and Saint Michael and call up Matt Hague. That Thompson kid should pitch every other game.

I think Brad Lincoln will cement his role as stopper with another nice game against the Dodgers today. With a strong finish, he will be the front runner to be the Pirates opening day starter in 2012.

I wonder, now that the trading deadline has passed, will we see much of Doumit or Cedeno the rest of the way?

This reminds me of the Pirate lowlight from a couple years back during interleague games against Kansas City- "The Pirates avoided being swept by the worst team in the major leagues by replacing KC as the worst team in the major leagues"

Don't blame the players---they are just not good enough. Most of this team is AAA and Huntington and Coonelly need dismissed. Cheap Nutting is not going anywhere but Huntington has been horrible. Nutting is disgusting but look at the awful FA moves Huntington has made. And, some of his drafts are below expectations, even the choice of Pedro is in doubt.
Nutting needs to sell and pressure needs to come from everywhere to try to get him to sell. NOTHING WILL CHANGE UNTIL HE IS GONE. Blah, blah, blah on a continued plan.

The Pirates have walked the plank. The Astros, the worst team in baseball? They were in the series a few seasons ago. The Pirates? 32 years. Outside of the Leyland years, some real clunkers in those decades. The teams in 80's were users. Now the pushers (the BMTIB)is running the show. They rake in the profits while we continue to support a crappy team.

It's been awhile since the Big 3 were in front of the camera. During the winning period, they were everywhere.

Fire NH!

These guys are making John Russell look like a better manager every day. Poor Clint Hurdle must finally be understanding what Russell went through last year. Maybe we Pirate fans should all get together and send an apology to Russell for the way we have trashed him.

As for the team, I see absolutely no leadership on that field at all. Even though they are a young team someone has to take the bull by the horns and show some leadership, whether it be Andrew McCutchen or someone else. Clint Hurdle can't do it all himself, and he must be feeling pretty beat down by now.

There is still a little time left to at least kind of right the ship a little before the end of this season. I would sure hate to think that this thing is going to end up on this total downward spiral, if so, next spring will make this years criticism seem like childs play.

I wouldn't be surprised if Clint Hurdle quit during the off season citing a personal family crisis.

Ray Searage was practically a co host on 93.7, he got interviewed so many times. Bob Nutting gave interviews on every station in town.

My how times have changed.

Remember during the All Star, Break, Bob Nutting ent on a media tour, was on radio stations crowing and touting. He'll be nowhere in sight now.

Cream rises to the top and dead weight sinks to the bottom.

For those of you who support this yearly disgrace, Bob Nutting thanks you. Yes Nutting is the n top of the Pirate hill, but if you support his team, you support him. Make whatever reason or excuse you want, but you are nothing but a Nutting Enabler. Dont worry, you can support him again next year for the nice round number of 20 years in a row of losing. Enjoy....Bob Nutting thanks you!

...

Much as I'd like to point the finger at Nutting, et.al., this stretch of putridness is squarely on the guys on the field and in the dugout.

Foolish boy.

Who picked the guys on the field and in the dugout?

If they play bad for a few days, shame on them.

If they play bad for years on end, shame on the guys who run the team!

Hey everyone, it's buc night..support me

Pirate forecasr, mostly cloudy with a 100% chance of losing!!!

Who saw an 11-30 stretch coming with no relief in sight and 7 weeks ago we were talking about contending for the division and being buyers at the deadline. Now we are preparing for year # 19 and probably another off season of signing the Lyle Overbays and Matt Diaz of the world and they'll go for the magic number of 20 losing seasons next year.

Can any one in the government please declare PNC Park a disaster area?

All of the comments are perfect. Please, DFA Cedeno today. What a waste. He has some talent, but his head will always get in the way. Pearce=Doumit=Lee=Ludwick...how far could that list go.

Can we DFA TBMTIB ?

@PittPanthers90

I suggested as such yesterday, and got hammered for it

This team has appeared to have quit, run out of gas, or what ever term you want to use. I agree to the point made that the team has no field leadership. That goes with the lack of a proven vet on the team that can step up.

The really tragic thing here is that I beleive, that as soon as Nutting starts to lose his profit margin, he will sell the team, the team will be moved, and we will all be without a baseball team in Pittsburgh. This is the slow death of a great franchise.

Looking ahead at 2012. Assuming there is no informal mandate for the Pirates to spend X amount of dollars, I would strongly suggest the Pirates go with this opening day lineup:

1 Pressley, lf
2 Tabata, rf
3 Cutch, CF
4 Pedro, 3b
5 Walker, 1b
6 McKenna/Jaramillo, c
7 Harrison, 2b
8 d'Arnoud, ss

Doumit, Snyder, Jones, Wood, and Pearce are not on the team. They should seek a couple of veterans to come off the bench.

The rotation would look something like this:
1 Lincoln
2 Karstans
3 Free Agent/minor leaguer
4 Correia (only because he's under contract)
5 Free Agent/minor leaguer

Maholm and Ole are gone. MacDonald is the long relief guy. If Morton is still on the team, he's a right handed relief specialist.

I think that if they build around speed they can do very well in the NL Central.

We can b***h and moan all we want but the Pirates will not change with the current ownership. For the most part, I don’t blame the players as they are simply pursuing a professional playing career and find themselves on a bad team with no veteran leadership and a lot of unproven young players. I even have some empathy for the FO as they are operating under the restrictions of a cheap owner in a system rigged against their achieving success as a small market. They celebrate past Pirate glory days of ’60, ’71 and ’79 at the ballpark and rightfully so. But think about the mix on those teams, veterans with young upstarts. Since ’92, every Pirate team has been little more than a collection of marginal major leaguers and career AAA players. Throw in the occasional ineffective, apathetic aging free agent and that paints a picture of every Pirate team in the last 19 years. And it also points to the future. The last homegrown Pirate to play at least 10 years with the team was Dave Parker. Dave Parker! That fact speaks volumes about how big an effect free agency and lack of a salary cap has had on MLB. Even if the Pirates are able to begin developing top notch talent in the minors through the draft, what good is it when those players will move on to greener pastures after 6 years? It is more than coincidence that the last Pirate winning season of 1992 was also the last losing season for the Yankees. There is a statue of Bud Selig in Milwaukee but they should also erect one at Fenway and Yankee Stadium for all he’s done for those franchises.

heartbeatsing's team would be lucky to go 40-122.

"the team will be moved"

Where's it gonna go?

...

We can b***h and moan all we want but the Pirates will not change with the current ownership. For the most part, I don’t blame the players as they are simply pursuing a professional playing career and find themselves on a bad team with no veteran leadership and a lot of unproven young players. I even have some empathy for the FO as they are operating under the restrictions of a cheap owner in a system rigged against their achieving success as a small market.

In other words -

IT ALL STARTS AT THE TOP.

Loss #82 now projects to game 149, the last game of a nine game homestand.

Maybe we Pirate fans should all get together and send an apology to Russell for the way we have trashed him.

HB: Russell sends his sincere blank stare and mumbled thanks right back at you! Now back to his regularly scheduled coma.

heartbeatsings:

Kdro is not good enough to bat clean up for Indy. What leads you to think he should be the Pirates clean up hitter?

Kdro is not good enough to bat clean up for Indy. What leads you to think he should be the Pirates clean up hitter?

@msb46: that's just how I roll. Pedro is the goods, I think he'll get back on track. As I have often posted, I would have batted him 4th or 5th the whole year hear. I think he was mishandled and overcoached.

Where is Bud Selig in all this? Mr. "The Pirates are on the right track" has been noticeably quiet.

It was generally thought that signing McCutcheon, Walker and Tabatha to long term contracts was a great move to solidfy the "core" and give the Pirates regime "cost certainty". Frankly the latter is a term that translates to, now I know how much thinner I can slice the bologna. I have got to think these modest contracts were done to keep the player's union off its back and provide political cover for Bud Selig to not get involved.

For the past three Russell seasons, I could not determine whether it was Russell or the FO that was responsible for the post trade deadline swoons. With Hurdle as manager, I can only conclude it is the FO that is responsible for these meltdowns. 4 years in a row the same general behaviour. And this year with a team that looked like it could have a respectable year and maybe contend is playing at the same level as last year's record-setting pace.

The nonsense that Lee and Luudwyck are weapons is the same hyperbole over Overbay and Diaz. While Nutting has said no one should question his commitment to winning, how do you justify NOT going for a big bat to bolster an offense that not even hitting guru Hurdle can fix? Only if you do not give a rat's a**e over winning and are countig your pennies like Scrooge McDuck. But at this point, NuttingHostage can take a better bite out of this apple than I.

Suffice it to say that like Max and others have said, losing begins at the top and Nutting is a loser.

I wonder if Dana Eveland will get rewarded with a Major League start this year?

Nothing like getting beat by a career cast off that you cast off...Priceless

In the end, water finds it's level.

The Pirates played above their level for two months and below it for two months. In the end, their overall record speaks to who they are.

Speaking of 19 losing seasons in a row, want to know an even more pathetic stat about the PBC?

After posting a winning season in 1983, the Pirates from 1984 on have posted exactly 4 winning seasons since, all with Leyland as skipper. that's 4 winning seasons out of a possible 28 (including 2011) or 4-24.

"The last homegrown Pirate to play at least 10 years with the team was Dave Parker. Dave Parker!"

really? that is really bad but completely understandable MLB being what it is.

@heart-given that your suggested lineup would cost less than $35 million in payroll, the odds are good you've picked the opening day lineup for 2012. I think that lineup and starting rotation loses 100 + games; hopefully, you're right and they contend.

Only thing I can say to those who want to retain Sain Huntington and Pope Coonelly............... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!

I'm certainly not one of those, and I also want to get rid of the hitting coach in favor of more of a "see ball, hit ball" type. Is there even one player on the Pirates who's gotten better from working with their hitting coach? They take first pitch strikes down the middle and then swing at breaking balls in the dirt. Pedro does it, Cutch does it, Jones does it, everybody does it.

Things I think I think about the free falling Pirates on Sept 2....

--I bet Bob Nutting wishes he would have announced his increase in ticket prices for next year on July 20th

---If FC gets canned (and he won't) it will be because he didn't announce the ticket price increase July 20th or at least soon after the team crossed the magic .500 mark on the positive side...

---Because unless they win their first game in 2012 they may not get there again (above .500) with this roster or the roster likley to leave ST in April for another year.

---The Pirates should immediately promote any "prospect" within reason from Indy and play them as much as possible so they can spin the September portion of their free fall on seeing what they have for next year.

---They should immediately shut down Charlie Morton and Jeff Karstens and insert Indy call ups because I am sure both Morton and Karstens have exceeded their innings and pitch counts according to the four M's (Modern Magical Measurement Methods)...

---They probably want to continue sending out Karstens because if he continues to get bombed in September they will have some protection against a HUGE salary increase he will get in arbitration this offseason....that is if they don't find a way to unload him sooner if he doesn't capitulate to a huge "compromised" and hometown discounted contract to avoid arbitration. I think they have one more year of REAL control over Morton where they can still pay him something near the MLB minimum before he can extort more $$ in the arbitration process.

---This free fall promises to make the upcoming offseason even more interesting now that even the FO spinmeisters here can't just sell the idea that the internal PLAN is on track and the Pirates don't need free agent or any other outside help (i.e. increased payroll) to build a truly competitive MLB team.

---That pffffft sound we keep hearing is the lightning dying in the bottle.....or the air escaping from BN's, FC's and NH's big heads watching the team's free fall. RIP Pirates 2011 miracle season.

buccs72, What a jerk, You just revealed TBMTIB's Plan
gphismon... agree, but is it the hitting coach or are our hitters just not that good? Ray Searage was a God (to me) about 4 weeks ago... Now what? As I always stated, was a miracle regarding our pitching success, and Hanrahan's MVP type performace. But I agree with the general thinking....See ball/Hit ball.
heartbeatstrings.... I generally agree with your thought on Alverez... Last night started a essay on what really went wrong IMHO... But deleted twice If wanna see it, post up and I will put that paragraph together. Yes its been there dun that coach jones thinking Non reply means you have a life, not a insult hahahahaha.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, its time for a change in that front office. Nobody can do any worse. God Bless Huntington and Connelly for all the running around, making efforts with what they had from Nuthouse and then limited baseball management skills they posses. But its time to get real management in that office, someone that will stand up to Nutcase, and someone who can put a team together that can be a consistant .500 while working towards being a playoff team IN 3 YEARS. Thanks for what you left us, we will take it from here. All the best.
David

P.S.
Everyone should be thanking the baseball gods on the collapse... It would have been nothing but a 2010 San Diego Padres De Ju Vou' all over again!! Everyone, including me, thought their management had turned the corner and was gonna put a team together. WRONG, best fled via free agency, and their management sat on their butts off season like ours does each year.... My buddies in San Diego are devestated this season.... At least now we know about 2012 in advance
III
YES JUST HAD ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE, its a vacation day till Tuesday morning!!