P2Daily: Trial, Error, and Teachable Moments

I feel like the topic of Learning from Failing has come up quite a bit on here. It’s true that sometimes we learn the most from our failures. We’ve seen that a lot this year with the Pirates, especially as the younger players continue to come up.

It’s about trial and error. Try something, if it works, keep doing it. If not, move on to the next idea.

That’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed so much about writing here, Tim’s willingness to try something different. He’s always coming up with ideas, and always willing to give it a go to let things physically play out.

It’s one of the things he mentioned when we talked about me taking a bigger role here on the site, that it would involve a lot of trial and error in finding my grove doing more of the daily stuff.

Some stuff will work, like the Daily Video Rundown, eventually others won’t, and at that point we will adjust and try something else.

P2Daily usually is a single reflective piece on what’s going on in the system. Although it’s best when reflecting on the system, situations sometimes bring a focus on a single player, or issue.

Sometimes, there is enough going on that it can’t be narrowed down to one topic.

There were several things that happened over the course of Friday that I can look back and see a ‘teachable moment’ type theme, whether the mess up was recent or if they learned from something.

This also brought me back to a comment that suggested a ‘Quick Hits’ themed columns with content that’s going around the system. That was a nice touch, as it was the name of my ‘column’ on my personal blog many years ago when I was starting out.

In that theme, here are some ‘quick hits’ from recent events that have the ‘learning from failure’ theme.

Sergio Campana’s Return From Development List

I talked recently about Bear Bellomy and how he has done since coming off the development list. Even though it’s one game, Campana made it count. The outfielder came straight from the Development List on to the field and went 4-for-4 with a home run, two runs and a stolen base.

Campana has game breaking speed and was even hitting the ball a lot harder than you would expect. He’s just struggled to put it in play consistently. That speed, though, I’m willing to give it as many chances as possible.

Teaching Moments From Roansy Contreras, Mike Burrows

Arguably the two best pitching prospects in the system (depending which list you look at if Roansy is still a ‘prospect’) pitched on Friday, and it could have gone better. Contreras didn’t make it out the second inning in the majors. Burrows was mowing down hitters in Triple-A but couldn’t find that one pitch to get him out the fifth and close out the night.

For Contreras, there have been moments were his control has slipped from him, and it feels that’s starting to show up more in the majors, especially with his breaking stuff. Hitters can sit on the fastball in the zone, because it’s close to all he has right now.

Both are very young, and extremely talented, no doubt they will learn from it and be better for it.

Cam Vieaux’s Usage

This one likely stands on its own, but I wanted to mention it. Amidst the blowout, the Pirates decided to stick it out with Vieaux in the eighth in the process, allowed him to throw nearly 60 pitches in one inning.

There was absolutely no reason to leave him in there that long, and I really believe that’s not a great look for letting him pitch that much. Pitchers are ticking time bombs, and most deal with some sort of arm trouble, it’s just a matter of whether it’s during their career or not.

This was asking for trouble.

The Pirates need to do better.