Meaningful baseball in September for Pirates is here
PITTSBURGH — Meaningful baseball in September for the Pirates? It’s here.
When August ended, the Pirates were trying to determine their own postseason roster instead of stocking someone else’s.
Even with a sub-par August, the Pirates remain in the hunt for the wild card spot. They’re in the race as the season heads into its final five weeks.
The last 19 seasons have been a blur of losing and disappointment, so it’s easy to forget the Pirates were in a similar position in 1997. That was so long ago they were still playing at Three Rivers Stadium.
There will probably never be a reunion for the 1997 Pirates, and that’s too bad.
They didn’t win. They didn’t even finish .500. But they were the classic little engine that almost could.
Given a roster stripped down for financial reasons, the ’97 Pirates competed until the end of the season for the National League Central title against the Houston Astros, who had significantly more talent and money. It was the one season in the franchise’s 19-year losing streak that provided some entertainment — and hope — for fans.
“It was a fun year,” Gene Lamont said recently. “A lot of good things happened to us.”
Lamont, now third base coach for the Detroit Tigers, was the manager of the ’97 Pirates, taking over after Jim Leyland left for the Florida Marlins.
The expectation was that the Pirates would come close to 100 losses after paring the payroll from $21 million to $9 million. The purge started late in the 1996 season when pitcher Denny Neagle was traded to Atlanta. Orlando Merced, Carlos Garcia and Dan Plesac went in the off-season.
The last high-priced players left when Jay Bell ($5 million) and Jeff King ($2.5 million) were traded to Kansas City on Dec. 13, 1996. The only significant return in that deal was Joe Randa, who took over at third base with a comfortable $220,000 contract.
The Pirates’ biggest investment was free agent shortstop Kevin Elster, signed for $1.65 million. Elster started 39 of the Pirates’ first 40 games, but his season ended on May 16 because of a broken wrist.
“I think if Elster hadn’t gotten hurt, we would have had an awfully good chance,” Lamont said. “He was kind of the glue to our defense, and he had gotten some big hits for us. It hurt us, but we had some pretty good young players who weren’t intimidated by anybody.”
Kevin Polcovich, a non-prospect who had been a back-up at Class AA, replaced Elster and hit .273 until he was also injured.
The starting pitching staff was inexperienced, but included future 20-game winners Esteban Loaiza and Jon Lieber, along with Jason Schmidt, who would post 17 and 18-win seasons with San Francisco, plus a 3-1 postseason record.
The best was probably Francisco Cordova, the mysterious Mexican who combined with Ricardo Rincon on a 10-inning no-hitter against Houston on July 12.
They caught lightning in a bottle when Rich Loiselle took the closer’s role after John Ericks was injured.
“You could see that Jason was going to be good,” Lamont said. “Lieber, I didn’t know that he was going to be a 20-game winner, but you could see that he would be a good pitcher on a good team. Rich never really did a whole lot after that, but he had a good year that season.”
After the Pirates lost 11 of 15, they swept the White Sox in an interleague series that had Three Rivers Stadium rocking.
Albert Belle of the White Sox made $10 million that season, more than the Pirates’ entire roster.
When Lieber struck out Belle four times, the Washington Post led its sports section with a story hailing the Pirates as “the biggest minimum-wage employer without a drive-through window.”
Lamont said by August, he was starting to believe the Pirates could pull off the impossible.
“It just didn’t look like Houston was going to pull away,” he said. “You start thinking that maybe it was some kind of magical thing. It didn’t end up that way, but when you look back, it was quite a year. We had a $9 million payroll and we stayed in there.”
In the long run, the fun was probably costly. Ownership failed to recognize the fluke nature of having the entire division backslide and misread what had happened.
That launched the Pirates on the path of trying to patch together a competitive team instead of focusing on development.
“It’s funny, I remember (coach) Joe Jones said this might be the worst thing that could have happened,” Lamont said. “We played over our heads and maybe now that’s kind of expected.”
The Pirates finished 79-83, five games behind the Astros. Since then, they haven’t that close to .500 or closer than 13 games to the division winner.
They should erase that this season, and should break the 19-year losing streak. More importantly, it looks like the Pirates finally have a core of talent that can compete for several years.
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The NHL labor talks ended Friday with no future negotiations planned. With the current agreement due to expire on Sept. 15, things don’t look good for starting the season on time.
There was a report last week that Sidney Crosby might play overseas if NHL players are locked out.
After missing much of the last two seasons because of concussion-related issues, there’s the grim possibility that another big hit could end Crosby’s career.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if that happened while he was playing for some team in Russia?
John Mehno can be reached at: johnmehnocolumn@gmail.com