DK's Daily Shot of Pirates: The difference between the Pirates’ old/new hitters

0:00And the outrageously unlikely event that someone in Saturday night live would want to put together a skit. Your favorite baseball club and during the 2026 season. Boxer resulted from that game last night in Cincinnati. Good morning to you. Good Tuesday morning. I'm day on college, which of DK Pittsburgh sports. This is daily shot of pirates presented by our good friends at the North Shore tavern. Almost steak on a stone. Program comes your way right and early every weekday if you're into football and or hockey. I also offer daily shots of Steelers and penguins that I hope you'll also check out reds to pirates nothing. And that's just not what you want. See, I'm still in New York. I covered the penguins game here.

1:09Last night against the islanders just about 10 minutes down the road from where the met's play. The islanders arena is and I'm not going to lie when I'm covering one sport. I do keep a side eye on the other. So up there in the press box at the game that I was covering was out of this world. The penguins went eight to three, you know, huge consequence kind of event. And I had the pirates live file from our DK Pittsburgh sports app sitting there next to my laptop and just it wouldn't move. I kept like shaking it, nudging it, red scored twice in the fourth inning off Braxton Ashcraft. And that's it. It stayed to nothing all night long at Great American Paul Park. And if that's not an ugly enough reminder, and this is the part where the SNL people would want to jump in,

2:12I would craft a script in which all of the new guys hit and none of the old guys did a blessed thing. So here you have the piers with zero runs, four hits, five walks, they struck out 11 times. Brandon Lau went one for two with two walks. He reached base three times when nobody else was doing that at all. Well, almost nobody. I'll get to that in a second. He's now batting and is early, okay, it's it's the end of March. He's batting 429 with a 1700 OPS. Neither of those is going to hold up, but it's funny, right? So Ryan O'Hern, other big bat acquired goes one for two with two walks, also reaches base three times. As if it's not that hard, right? He's batting 438 with an 1151 OPS. His also will not hold up, but insert laugh track.

3:23Because in this same game, O'Neal Cruz is put it lead off, he goes over four with two case. Jared Triolo, who almost nobody thinks should be starting for any amount of time, at least not outside the organization, over four two case. Henry Davis, over three, three case. Brian Reynolds, over four with a K. I mentioned the numbers for the new guys. Cruz is batting 143, Reynolds 167, Triolo 118, Spencer Horowitz, who looked really off in the three games that I covered here in New York, 091, and Davis is at 182. And even then, it's not just that. When you're watching the entire plate of parents, and when you're covering the games in person and you're doing it,

4:24with the live file, in this case, I wasn't the one reading the live file, I was the one generating the live file from city field, you're really intensely in on what's happening, pitch by pitch by pitch. And all of the approaches that I noticed from the older guys just look like the same approaches, and why wouldn't they? They haven't changed, the hitting coach hasn't changed, the general manager and his hitting approach hasn't changed, whereas Laos shows up, O'Hern shows up, Jake Mangum, who didn't play last night, he shows up, and they all look like what they looked like elsewhere. The question that I have, and I promise you, I'm being sincere when I ask it, I'm not, you know, trying to sound like Bill from Blonox calling some AM radio talk show, is how much longer until the new guys get unduly influenced by what's around them, or what's next to them, or what's being taught to them,

5:32or what the analytics that the pirates people produce show them, I don't know, I don't know, I have pounded one point above all others, through the entirety of the off season, right up until the final day of spring training, and that was this, you can get as excited as you want about the new guys, they can come in and be awesome, and I allowed for that possibility, and I applaud the fact that through four games they have been that, they really have, they've been impressive, but I just kept pointing to the same names and saying you understand the two thirds of your lineup, two thirds of the lineup that Don Kelly's most likely to fill out on a given day, was part of by far, the worst offense in Major League Baseball in 2025, and unless someone were to invent some magical potion to transform that,

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9:01PSJ1Q comes from Brad. Who says decay I thought? Racks and Ashcraft pitch really well. Unfortunately, he had no run support. Isn't that the consistent theme for this franchise? No, it's been that for a while, my man. But only since the consistent theme was that they couldn't hit or pitch or catch the ball or really do anything. They do appear to have gotten to the point as an organization where they're going to pitch one of the things that stood out to me from my handful of days covering the team when they were here in New York. Where are my talks with Ashcraft? I mentioned and glanced over it really on a prior episode, but super bright kid.

10:04Really expansive in the way he thinks about the game and even within just the prism of the pirates, the way he thinks about what his contribution can be. I look at his numbers from last night. I see six innings which you love to get out of your young guy. His first start of the season. I don't say that lightly. I understand what that sounded like in 1966 as opposed to 2026, but these are different times. He gave up two runs, four hits, three strikeouts, four walks. The walk total isn't great. It's also not the end of the world. Even out of the two runs that he gave up, one was on a sack fly. It's the fourth inning. US pitcher will happily give that up as a result to get the out.

11:08When I hope for more than anything in these early games as it relates to the pitching, because I fully expect that the pitching is going to stay solid. I don't know if it's going to be spectacular. I'm not into predicting anything in baseball to be spectacular this side of Paul schemes, but it's going to be something that you can hang your hat on. And that if you have yourself a competent offense, you can compete. After Ashcraft, don't forget Isaac Matson came in and pitched a scoreless inning as did Justin Lawrence. Remember that they weren't rewarded either. They didn't get any offensive support. And what you don't want, especially among the younger guys like an Ashcraft, you don't want them getting beaten up by outcomes. Or variables that are either partly or all the way out of their control.

12:10And that's one of many reasons that I've enjoyed watching the development of Ashcraft of Bubba Chandler, who takes the hill tonight. Carmen Maginski, who showed pretty well here in New York. They have a good working relationship all for those guys. When I say four, I'm including Paul. I'm purposely omitting Mitch Keller, not because he's anti social or something. Mitch is very much a team guy. It's just a little bit different when there's a certain generation and you see the four younger guys kind of hanging together. You got to hit. You got to hit. I tell you right now, the J1 cues that I've been getting. You can ask whatever you want. It's your feature. The J1 cues that I've been getting since the first pitch of the season was thrown here in New York last week.

13:13Have been an almost 50-50 split between some variety of boy do I hate, O'Neil Cruz. And why don't they move this guy to that position or change the batting order to this or that, not matter. That last part, that last line of thinking doesn't matter. All that matters is that they hit. You can talk about Cruz at lead off or five or somebody getting all worked up about Jared triolo hitting one game. He was at lead off another. He was at ninth. Another one. He was at fifth. The fifth one really offended everybody. I know nobody likes when I say this, but there is data to prove. I mean conclusively prove that the order in which you put hitters on that card makes precious little difference. In the production, you ultimately end up getting over the course of 162 game season. If you optimize your lineups with a computer, if you put them in what the computer determines to be the perfect order, game by game by game by game, it'll get you an additional two wins all year.

14:38Two out of 162, what people talk about it as if your entire season hangs in the balance with every card you fill out. It's not the case. What matters? What is relevant? And supersedes every other discussion related to a position player is whether or not that position player is hitting. Right now, the only guys hitting are the ones who are still getting comfortable in the new uniform. Appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening. The daily shot of pirates will be back with them not one of these tomorrow.