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Neal Huntington Analyzes the Pirates’ 2016 Shortcomings

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PITTSBURGH — With the Pirates having lost 10 of their last 12 games and falling to 5.5 games out of the National League Wild Card race, general manager Neal Huntington’s Sunday press briefing quickly turned into a postmortem.

In the 12-game losing stretch, the Pirates have a negative-35 run differential. The problem hasn’t been limited to one area of the field, either. At times, they’ve struggled with starting pitching, relief pitching, hitting, base running and fielding. Huntington was asked if he could find a common thread.

“It’s clearly why we’re a couple games under .500, and we’ve talked for weeks that the team that goes 8-2 is going to separate itself,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve been the team that’s gone 2-8. You can go six weeks back, and these teams have been clustered at around .500 for 30 games, around .500 for 20, and around .500 for 10. Unfortunately, we were the team that had the tough stretch, and some other teams have had good stretches, and they put some distance between themselves.

“There’s any number of reasons why we’ve hit at times and not pitched at times, we’ve pitched at times and not hit at times. If we could flip a switch and fix it, we certainly would. Every time we seem like we’re falling in the wrong direction, we seem to right ourselves, and every time we right ourselves, we seem to take a misstep. I think we’ve been the streakiest team in baseball this year, and our goal is to spend some time figuring out how we become more consistent, and keep the good stretches long, and the not so good stretches shorter.”

He was asked specifically if the defensive advantages gleaned from the team’s ground ball focus and defensive shifts had eroded some over the years.

“In general, our infield has done a nice job of continuing to turn balls that they’re supposed to turn into outs into outs,” Huntington said. “We’ve thrown the ball exceptionally well from the corner of the outfield. That’s been a huge difference. We’re allowing base runners to steal bases against us. That’s not necessarily on our catchers only. It’s on the pitchers and the catchers. We got hit early. When the exit speed is up, it’s harder to turn balls put into play into outs. Your positioning is that much more important or your range is that much more important.

“The pitching has certainly righted the ship in the second half. You turn over the entire rotation; that may be a part of it. You turn over a significant chunk of the bullpen; that may be a part of it. I don’t know if we can say it’s the defense’s fault if we’ve turned over 1/2 to 3/4 of our pitching staff.”

While Huntington has in the past admitted that he probably should have added more pitching to the team before the season, perhaps the biggest issue for the team has been the regression of stars such as Gerrit Cole, Andrew McCutchen and Tony Watson.

At least in McCutchen’s case, Huntington expects this to be a one-year blip and the 29-year-old outfielder to be back to career form in 2017.

“You absolutely saw very positive signs in August,” Huntington said. “We had another month where there was very strong offensive numbers, but the month of April was such a struggle for him that it was hard to recognize that he was having a pretty good month. Again, another guy that you still see the bat speed, you still see the explosiveness. There’s been more life and athleticism in the second half of the season, and we see every positive indication that he’s going to bounce back and be the Andrew McCutchen of old.”

Huntington seemed to think the pressure of being the team’s offensive leader and failing to live up to that billing had as much to do with McCutchen’s fade as his age or some other issue.

“It is hard to walk up there, for any player, and see the numbers on the board every night below where you expect them to be, especially a player of his caliber,” Huntington said. “There’s no question that he’s put more pressure on himself to try to do more, to try to have eight hit games and five home run games, and to get his numbers back quickly, because that’s what he’s accustomed to. He’s a great player, he’s a great person. He’s also human, and has tried to do more at times instead of just trusting his abilities and letting them play.”

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