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Kang, Like the Pirates, Hoping to Rescue Season in September

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PITTSBURGH — Jung Ho Kang’s 2016 season is a bit of a metaphor for the way things have gone for his entire team.

Kang missed the entire first month of the season while recovering from off-season knee surgery. He came back early — probably too early, general manager Neal Huntington has admitted — but he was red-hot out of the gate.

In his first month of action, Kang hit .298/.371/.667 for a 1.038 OPS. Those are pretty serious power numbers and represented a dramatic improvement in his 2015 numbers.

But then, the cracks started to show. Kang was accused of committing sexual assault in Chicago on June 17. Whether that has affected him or not — the matter is still under investigation — Kang’s batting average started to slide at that time.

By the all-star break, he was hitting .244 after a three-week span of sub-.200 hitting. I asked him in the first series of the second half in Washington if his knee was still bothering him. He admitted that it was, but felt that it was only affecting his defense, which to that point, had been excellent. He had committed just two first-half errors.

Offensively, Kang muddled through the rest of July and August, with his batting average bottoming out at .230 before ending up at .243. But his defense completely fell off the rails. He committed 9 errors compared to only 13 assists in the month of August.

On Aug. 20, he was injured sliding into second base foolishly trying to stretch a single into a double. After a fairly abbreviated rehab stint, he’s back in Pittsburgh. He admits frustration at the lost season, but is hopeful that something can be salvaged of the last month of the year.

“I’m done with rehab. Seriously,” he joked through interpreter H.K. Kim. “I’m just happy to be back in the big leagues.”

He’s realistic about what hey may or may not be able to accomplish in that time. David Freese has usurped most of Kang’s playing time at third base.

“Prior to the injury, I felt really good about my swing,” Kang said. “The situation here with the team, I’m just sorry I couldn’t do anything while I was on the DL. I just want to help the team win.”

Like Kang, the Pirates 2016 season seems to be running out of opportunities to make an impact. The Pirates’ ugly 12-6 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals left them under .500 and 4.5 games behind the Cardinals for the final NL Wild Card spot.

The offense, which started 2016 looking like the strength of the team, went missing for most the three-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers, where they scored just four runs. With an offense built on connecting hits to create runs, the season-long slumps of expected heavy contributors such as Kang and Andrew McCutchen have created holes in the lineup.

“We were putting up runs at a pretty decent clip in the first half, and it wasn’t because we had nine guys on pace to hit 30 home runs,” general manager Neal Huntington said Sunday of the design of his offense. “Here’s different ways to construct lineups. Given what was available, given what we had, given the construct of the club going forward, we felt the additions we made were the right additions. At times, it’s played out that way. At times, it hasn’t.”

The starting pitching, which in April looked shaky, has turned a corner, and has done so with a trio of promising youngsters in Steven Brault, Chad Kuhl and Jameson Taillon, a reclamation project in Ivan Nova and a quality starter sitting right under the Pirates’ nose in Ryan Vogelsong. Excepting Kuhl’s two-inning outing Monday, they starters have kept the Pirates in more games than not recently despite their lack of pedigree.

“The young players and Nova, since the acquisition, have done a very nice job,” Huntington added. “I think it’s a credit to Ray, Clint and our staff, and a credit to our pro staff, our amateur scouts, our pro scouts. The work that they’ve done to allow these guys to come up and help us win games. … That’s a good sign for our organization.”

But much like when one part of Kang’s game failed to compliment the others, the Pirates can’t get all cylinders firing together. In Monday’s loss, the offense dinged Cardinals’ ace Adam Wainwright for four runs and added two more against the bullpen, but never got close to sniffing a victory because Kuhl and Jeff Locke combined to allow 10 runs through five innings. Friday, Taillon was hung with a loss despite he and three relievers holding the Milwaukee Brewers to three hits and one run.

The Pirates have 27 games to play, including five more against the Cardinals. There is time to turn the season around. But that turnaround needs to start sooner than later.

“You have to fight every day for success,” Hurdle said. “What we’ll continue to deal with the issue that we had today — where we came up short, things we need to do better — improve for tomorrow and put all our focus into playing a better game tomorrow.”

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