Tim Benz: When Paul Skenes shows up, it'll be nice if other Pirates also start showing up

Pittsburgh Pirates fans are just going to have to twiddle their thumbs and wait for first-round pick Paul Skenes to show up for his Major League debut Saturday.

That wouldn’t be quite so bad if all of Pittsburgh wasn’t also waiting for the rest of the team to show up for the start of the season.

Unfortunately, it started a month and a half ago.

After a lineup-wide collapse that began once the team visited the New York Mets on April 15, the Pirates went from 11-5 to 14-15.

There was reason for optimism, though, seeing as how the Pirates were about to play three straight series against some of the bottom feeders of Major League Baseball: the Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Angels.

However, against those three lousy opponents, the Pirates only went 3-6, getting swept in Oakland and dropping two of three against the 14-23 Angels.

Now the Pirates have to turn around and host the Chicago Cubs (22-16) for three games this weekend before going to Milwaukee (21-15) for three and returning the visit to Chicago for four games at Wrigley Field.

So that’s 10 consecutive games against the two teams currently in a virtual tie atop the National League Central. The Pirates, at 17-21, are five games back in a third-place tie with the Cincinnati Reds.

Good luck with all that.

In the Pirates’ three games against the Angels, they won 4-1 on Monday thanks to a grand slam by Edward Olivares, on Tuesday they were shut out 9-0, and on Wednesday, they fell 5-4, scoring all four of their runs in the bottom of the fifth.

That means over the course of 26 innings that they batted against a 26th-ranked Angels pitching staff (4.73 ERA), the Pirates failed to score in 24 of them.

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“The big inning is nice,” Shelton said after Wednesday’s loss. “But we have to be better than that. We have to create more opportunities.”

To stretch out that previous stat even further, dating back to the start of the series against the A’s, the Pirates have had 79 turns at bat. Seventy of those innings have ended without a run.

To the point of waiting for Pirates hitters to start showing up, specifically, you can look at Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Jack Suwinski and Andrew McCutchen.

Sure, gripe about Rowdy Tellez’s .200 average all you want. And, yes, many Pirates fans are doing exactly that. Often.

But the fact that he and Olivares (.222), Joey Bart (.195), Jared Triolo (.208), Michael A. Taylor (.221) and Alika Williams (.239) are all regulars in the lineup is much more of a commentary about roster construction and the organizational plan of the franchise than it is about those players themselves.

Reynolds ($10.2 million) and Hayes ($7 million), though, are the two highest-paid hitters on the team. They need more than a .240 batting average out of Reynolds and one homer with 11 RBIs from Hayes.

Suwinski had 26 home runs last year. He has just two on the season and none since April 14. That’s not enough out of him, especially if he has 25 strikeouts and a .178 batting average.

As for McCutchen, at 37 years old, it’s easy to say, “Well, what can you expect?”

Understood. But if all he can yield is six extra-base hits against 34 strikeouts and a .184 batting average in 98 at-bats, what I should be able to expect is for someone else to be better so he can play less.

Or at least not have to bat him leadoff or cleanup, which he has done a combined 15 times this year.

Oh, and since we are talking about waiting for first-round picks, let me know when Henry Davis is worthy of putting on a big-league uniform again after his demotion. I won’t be holding my breath on that one. Based on his .162 performance to start the year, it looks like it is going to be a minute.

If there is a positive to be gleaned, it’s that Oneil Cruz may finally be coming around. He’s 7 for 22 in May and starting to show up with some timely hits. He had two homers against the Rockies and his fifth-inning bases-clearing double against the Angels on Wednesday momentarily gave the Pirates a 3-2 lead.

“(Hitting) curveballs off the machine and focusing on the strike zone more,” Cruz said after the game in terms of his recent improvement. “I’m in a way better spot now (with my hands).”

Shelton says Cruz may be rounding into form after missing almost all of last year with his broken fibula on April 10.

“This kid is a good player. He has missed an entire year,” Shelton said. “We just have to keep him fresh and ramp up at-bats. He’s a talented kid, and we are seeing that over the last five to seven days.”

Like everyone else in Pittsburgh, I’ll just be over here in the corner counting down the hours until Skenes shows up on Saturday. With the possible exception of Cruz, though, I’m a lot less optimistic about any of those other guys showing up at all to help him out.