To Make This Work, the Pirates Must Ensure They Secure a Foot Hold

7-17-21 – By Gary Morgan

I love to cook, its literally something I’ve done all my life and when you enjoy it as a pastime as I do you tend to start believing you’re smart enough to make changes to recipes. A pinch of that, a dash of this because you know, you’ve been doing this for a while and you know better right?

My mom gave me the family recipe for the sauce I grew up eating, I was delighted and got right to work. Followed the recipe, well, mostly followed the recipe. My wife who had become addicted to it as well since our marriage began ate it with me and smiled politely, but later admitted what I already knew, it just wasn’t the same.

See I replaced an ingredient, just one, and it wasn’t even a large quantity, it didn’t make it inedible, but it certainly didn’t scratch that itch. It was good, just not a winner, ya dig?

The Pirates have one ingredient of their own, and if they try to replace him with anything less, man, it might be ok, might even be good, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Bryan Reynolds has been a very good player in his time as a Pirate, I mean if you look back through his documented career he’s always been a good player. What he’s doing this season, yeah, he’s a bit more than that.

He’s played 88 ballgames this year and last night eclipsed his personal best for home runs at 17. A power surge like that tends to come with a drop off in average, but he’s just keeping that where he’s comfortable, over .300.

Reynolds isn’t going to be a free agent until 2026 and most of you know, I’m pretty patient when it comes to this system rebuilding stuff, but it’s time to open the checkbook and lock this guy up.

I’m all done downplaying him, or acting like he’s just an on base guy, he’s doing things that very few ever achieve, and if the goal here is to build a team that competes for the World Series, I want the 26 year old leading the charge.

Can they be successful if they don’t get this done? Sure. I can make that sauce the way I tried as well, but if I want to ‘win’ replacing integral ingredients isn’t smart.

I’ve seen this rebuild pragmatically, it’s not that I’m excited to see players I value leave, but I’ve understood it. The system needed talent, and waiting for the draft alone to provide it would mean an even longer process. In fact if they didn’t make the moves they did, and probably will make, I’m not even having this conversation.

No matter what the Pirates do on this front Bryan Reynolds and Ke’Bryan Hayes will be part of it’s culmination, but if you want it to last, and give yourself the best shot at reaching the goal I suggest Reynolds be your foot down.

Don’t worry, I know nobody is going to do anything because some blogger wrote about it and I certainly don’t think I’m writing something any of you will find controversial.

That said, calling for something like this, with purpose is an outcome we as a fan base need to stop being afraid to broach. We’ve bought into the rebuild. We’ve understood moving on from some guys that weren’t going to factor in to anything meaningful.

The time has come to start making the case for what we expect in return. So, I’ll start with locking up a superstar who directly said he wants to be here.

I can already hear your comments, why not both? Hayes is important too!!! (you know you love those multiple exclamation points)

I can get behind that, but to start this journey of deciding what the core of this team is, I’m starting with the best of the best. I want my switch hitting, power and average threat, heart of the order hitting, quiet leading, star outfielder first.

I don’t want the waters muddied here, I want Reynolds locked up, first things first.

I won’t put some timeline on this or else they’ve failed. But I will say he gets more expensive every single day. Do it.

Open. The. Checkbook.