The Pirates aren’t made of pitching magic, but their pitching magic can save them

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been here before, at least. In 2014, they spent most of their first three months under .500. When July started, they were eight games out of the wild card spot they would eventually win, behind four other teams. They rallied, took advantage of a rival’s complete collapse and rounded into shape. It could happen again.

That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be worried this year, of course. The Pirates are .500 and teetering on the edge of irrelevance. They’re as close to the rebuilding Milwaukee Brewers as they are to the second wild card, and they’re spoiling a fine collective hitting effort from most of the regulars. Jon Niese’s ERA is 4.60, which translates to an unfortunate 87 ERA+. He’s, uh, also been the second-best pitcher in the rotation.

Be right back. Gonna make a hilarious “Mrs. Robinson” parody, but with Ray Searage’s name where you’re expecting Joltin’ Joe. You’ll never see it coming.

If they could pitch, the Pirates would be contenders. The Pirates were supposed to pitch, dang it. That was one of the givens, the thing we took for granted. Let’s remember how they spent their offseason:

Underwhelming moves, but most of us figured that, if anything, it would be the pitching moves that worked out. There hasn’t been a better organization for diamond-in-the-rough pitchers over the last five years, as if they were getting karmically reimbursed for the two decades before that. Instead, the hitters worked out, and the pitchers have been a mess, mostly.

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that these problems are a function of their own overconfidence. Ramshackle rotations are what they do, and by the end of the season, you’re often impressed at how polished those nice young men are. That’s why they figured they could squeeze more out of Niese, that they could keep Francisco Liriano healthy and effective, that they could spin Nicasio’s straw arm into gold and that Vogelsong was a workable safety net for all of the above. If any other team tried it, you would scoff. The Pirates had that whiff of Searage magic about them, though. The kids call it Searageage.

In retrospect, that was always a lot dicier of a plan than it seemed. Dave Duncan toiled through seasons where his pitchers dealt with dings, scrapes and wonky mechanics, as did Leo Mazzone and Johnny Sain. Think of the best pitching coach in the world like an All-Star hitter who’s told to swing at the next pitch, no matter what, because the hit-and-run is on. Sometimes he gets a fastball down the middle. Sometimes he gets a curveball in the dirt. Sometimes there’s a pitchout.

So far, the Pirates’ starting rotation has been a pitchout on a hit-and-run. There isn’t any amount of coaching that can fix that. And that’s the story about how the Pittsburgh Pirates were too confident in their abilities to turn below-average pitchers into something more, which led to a wasted 2016 season.

Before we get apocalyptic, though, and assume that the cost-effective complacency doomed the Pirates, let’s bring up the most important part of the relatively quiet offseason: This was an organization that had one eye on the minor-league cavalry the whole time. They settled for Nieses and Nicasios because they had two of the best starting pitching prospects in baseball, and the front office had a guess that they would be ready at some point in 2016.

They still have a chance to be right. The only problem is that the Pirates are fighting the calendar almost as they’re fighting the rest of the National League.

Jameson Taillon is up, and he’s as fantastic as hoped. If it feels like he’s been a prospect forever, it’s because he has.

Baseball Prospectus prospect rankings for Jameson Taillon:

Pre-2011: Rated No. 8 Prospect

Pre-2012: Rated No. 13 Prospect

Pre-2013: Rated No. 11 Prospect

Pre-2014: Rated No. 19 Prospect

Pre-2015: Rated No. 26 Prospect

Pre-2016: Rated No. 51 Prospect

The trend wasn’t as encouraging as it could have been -- and it was at least partially due to Tommy John surgery and a sports hernia toward the end -- but a top-100 prospect ranking for six straight seasons gives you an idea of the Pirates’ patience and expectations. If you’re not impressed by this, the twist at the end of your life is going to be that you were dead the whole time.

Beyond Taillon, the Pirates have Tyler Glasnow, who was even more highly regarded coming into the season. The 22-year-old right-hander has a 1.90 ERA in 13 Triple-A starts, striking out 10.9 batters for every nine innings he’s pitched. While there are some valid reasons for the Pirates’ reluctance to bring him up beyond service-time manipulation (iffy control, a changeup in progress), it’s hard to say that he’s been anything but encouraging.

So while the Toronto Blue Jays are running around in a panic because their second-best starter is going to the bullpen and the rest of baseball is going to be desperate to make a trade for a starting pitcher who doesn’t exist, the Pirates already have their Plan B. Their fallback plan is better than the Plan A of some teams before the season started. Some of you might argue that this was true of the Pirates before the season, that they shouldn’t have been messing around with Niese and Nicasio in the first place.

Maybe, maybe not. The thing about service-time manipulation is that it usually comes with a general organizational philosophy of not rushing your best prospects, which is almost always a good thing. Regardless, the Pirates happen to have two of the best young pitchers in baseball in a season where they can’t seem to pitch. That seems like a big deal.

Even though they’re fighting the calendar, it would be silly to count them out, especially when Gerrit Cole shouldn’t be gone long, when it’s still reasonable for Andrew McCutchen to be Andrew McCutchen again, and when they’re one of the only teams in baseball that can fix their rotation without help from the decimated trade market.

They’re at a crossroads, though. And if this is how they go down, expect the second-guessing to last the entire winter. The Pirates could have made a more substantial upgrade to the rotation in the offseason, or they could have pushed their brightest young arms just a little harder. Instead, they chose a different, still-perilous path. There are 99 games of baseball on the wall, 99 games of baseball. The Pirates can’t afford to break too many more of them, and they have to start pitching as well as they were supposed to all season.

Apparently the Pirates aren’t made of pitching magic, which is why their pitching magic has to save them now. They just need to use the magic dust on the youngsters instead of the veterans this time, and at least they’ll have a couple months to do it.