The Pittsburgh Pirates have lost ten games in a row. We’re not at the level of the Chicago White Sox yet, but it’s not looking good. A few weeks ago, the conversation turned to the Pirates’ chances in the postseason. Now we’re wondering if Paul Skenes can even secure a Rookie of the Year win against the red-hot Jackson Merrill of the even hotter San Diego Padres.

The Pirates haven’t had much going well lately. They currently sit at 56-64 on the season and are 12.0 games out of first place in a highly competitive NL Central. If there is a silver lining, it’s that Pittsburgh is somehow not quite out of the Wild Card race yet. The entire National League has been in a bit of a tailspin this season, so despite their relegation, the Pirates are still eight games out of the final Wild Card spot. There are 42 games left in the schedule. We can’t write off the 2024 Bucs just yet.

We can start writing that final chapter, though. Just to get a head start. It’s getting harder and harder to imagine the Pirates turning this thing around. If we’re being honest, a quiet trade deadline doomed Pittsburgh to this fate. Skenes coming back down to earth is an unfortunate (if inevitable) development, but the Pirates are so bad because the offense just can’t keep up with real teams. Unless the Pirates absolutely overrun opponents on the mound, this team simply has no chance of competing.

Here’s who we can blame for this disaster.

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It’s fun to blame players, and often that’s the right thing to do. Coaches can only do so much from the sidelines. It’s up to those on the field to internalize instructions, execute game plans, and win ball games through a combination of attention to detail and old-fashioned competitive spirit.

However, the blame eventually gets shifted back to the coaching staff. When players aren’t prepared – when the team seems completely inferior in a certain category – it’s only natural to look at who’s taking the lead there.

Andy Haines is the hitting coach behind baseball’s weakest offense. The Pirates rank 25th in home runs, 23rd in RBIs and 24th in batting average this season. Pittsburgh’s offense has real power, but Bryan Reynolds has played well below his season average in this 10-game series and the rest of the team has followed suit.

Noah Hiles and Andrew Destin from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette both expected multiple coaches to end up on the hit list if the Pirates don’t finish above .500 at the end of the season. That’s the way it goes, and the ongoing disappointment this offense is generating won’t help Haines’ case.

The general manager is often given an impossible task – to take full and total responsibility for a roster that was not entirely assembled by him or her. It would be naive to think that Ben Cherington single-handedly assembled the Pirates roster. He receives input from various departments and support staff. He reports to the owners. The manager always has a say. This is not be Team and be Team alone.

However, when the finger is pointed, the GM is always the first to be punished. Cherington has led the Pirates’ front office since November 2019, and since then Pittsburgh has finished above .500 exactly zero times. In fact, if this season ended today, it would be the second time in five years that the Pirates have finished above .400.

Cherington inherited a deeply flawed roster with cheap ownership, which limits his power as GM’s chair. It can be extraordinarily difficult to build a contender in a small market. While others in comparable markets have found ways to thrive, the Pirates have nonetheless toiled in mediocrity behind lame offenses, inadequate pitching staffs and a stubbornly mediocre farm system.

We’re starting to see the fruits of Cherington’s top talent — Paul Skenes and Jared Jones are long-term aces of the highest order — but while the Pirates are making progress in the bullpen, the offense continues to lag. Both at the MLB level and in the minors. And as good as the Pirates are at developing young talent, it won’t matter if the front office can’t bring in the right veterans to put together a competitive roster. That hasn’t been the case during Cherington’s tenure.

It’s time for a fresh voice in the Pirates’ front office. Fundamental changes are necessary.

Another figurehead must go. The Pirates brought in Derek Shelton in 2020, the same season Cherington took over as GM. If you fire the GM, you’re probably firing his hand-picked manager, too. All the problems with poor performance apply to Shelton, too. He can’t build the roster – he has to play the cards he’s been dealt, so to speak – but more often than not, Shelton has played those cards wrong.

It can be difficult to distinguish how much blame should be placed on the front office or the coaching staff. The Pirates’ bullpen has been a mess this 10-game stretch, but that has as much to do with Shelton’s matchup management as it does with personnel. Joe Starkey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summed it up nicely in his latest opinion article.

“I actually don’t think it’s fair to judge Shelton on his first three years, as the club was in tanking mode. But since the start of last season, he’s 132-150, which is a .468 winning percentage. That’s 76 wins in a full season, which is obviously not good enough. His bullpen management has been rightly criticized, and while he likes to boast about how hard his team plays, it certainly hasn’t looked that way lately.”

Shelton is clearly a victim of Cherington’s poor team building. Is it a sin to use Connor Joe as the third batter, or is the fact that Joe is even a viable option at the 3 spot the real problem? How about giving Yasmani Grandal meaningful ABs in 2024? Those are decisions Shelton is almost forced to make due to the state of his roster.

Ultimately, both have to go. Shelton hasn’t done enough with his spare parts. The Pirates had a real chance to break through this season, but fell apart when things got serious. The month of August was a true display of incompetence from top to bottom. The Pirates, with their season on the line, looked both listless and out of balance. Something has to change internally. in the dressing room.

Shelton’s term is coming to an end.

Finally, we get to a real member of the roster. Well, actually, we can blame that a bit on Cherington, not to mention Shelton’s chronic abuse of his bullpen pitches. Aroldis Chapman was signed as a free agent with the Pirates for one year and $10.5 million. The idea of ​​Chapman has always been popular – he’s the original flamethrower, a trendsetter in many ways – but the product has been mediocre at best in recent years.

It’s just another example of Cherington squandering the few resources he actually uses. Chapman is a 36-year-old pitcher coming off the worst season of his career. The Pirates needed pitchers with leverage in the bullpen, but Chapman’s speed can’t make up for increasingly erratic position control and a crippling walk problem.

We all saw Chapman crack 105 with the gun a week ago. This stuff is undeniably fun.

Chapman ranks in the 99th percentile in strikeout rate (36.9) and expected batting average (.167), so it’s impossible to call him a “bad” pitcher. But when he’s also in the first percentile in walks (16.9%), it becomes a problem. Chapman slips up too often to dominate late in games, and yet the Pirates were ready and willing to give up a key role in the setup.

David Bednar’s shaky performance this season has only made the Pirates’ problems in the bullpen worse. They just can’t win close games. Chapman will draw interest from free agents until he decides to call it quits, but it’s hard to imagine the Pirates (perhaps under new and improved management) begging him to come back, and there’s an equally good chance Chapman would rather move on to a more established contender at this stage of his career.