Welcome to Paul Zeise’s weekly mailbag, where the Post-Gazette columnist and 93.7 The Fan radio host answers your questions about sports, life and everything in between. If you want to ask Paul a question, tweet him @paulzeise or email him at pzeise@post-gazette.com. This feature will run each Wednesday, so you have a whole week to submit questions.
Let’s get started:
Craig W., @PittPenguin44: Here's one seriously how many people are really buying what the pirates are selling? Lower payroll than last year, crick sent down? Brentz p/u by the mets?
Zeise: Not very well, judging strictly by the way ticket sales are going. The Pirates have a credibility problem. They need to win some games early or this will be one of their lowest attended seasons in a long time. The Pirates cannot with a straight face sell what it is they are trying to sell. Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t capture lightning in a bottle. Maybe all the young pitchers have great seasons, the two new regulars hit and all of them suddenly become good fielders. That could happen, I suppose, but it isn’t very likely. This looks like a team with a ceiling of about 80 wins. That doesn’t even take into account the fact that if they are a few games back in July, they will dump players like Josh Harrison and Jordy Mercer, so even getting to 80 could be tough.
Vince Rodemer, @V_Rod35: If say three years from now, Capel has a sub-.500 record, will he get a 7-year extension?
Zeise: I see what you did — you mean like Pat Narduzzi coming off a 5-7 season. If you have your coach, can see the progress and feel like he is the best man for the job, you support him. I could give you countless examples of coaches whom fans wanted to give up on early on in their careers and the school stuck by them and it paid off. Two great examples are Mike Krzyzewski and Frank Beamer. Narduzzi is 21-17. There is no question last year’s team got immeasurably better from the start of the season to the end. It looks like they have a quarterback of the future now and there are a ton of excellent young players in place. It looks to me like the best years of the Narduzzi era are all ahead of us, so why wouldn’t Pitt extend him now? If Capel makes progress in the first three years, they should extend him.
Chris Boehme, @Cboehme2: Paul, in your opinion, how long do you think it will take for Jeff Capel to get Pitt to a tournament contending team again?
Zeise: If he recruits well and is able to retain the best of the current players, he could have Pitt in position to get to the NIT by Year 2. I know that isn’t a very aggressive timeline, but it is realistic. He has an absolute dumpster fire to clean up. Kevin Stallings left him some good players, so that will help. I could see Pitt making a run at the NCAA tournament in Year 3. Any timeline that is quicker than that is probably unrealistic. That’s not to say he couldn’t do it, but expectations should be realistic.
michael mcintire, @mci9813: Players are withdrawing from transfer but not sure how many Capel will want to return any ideas?
Zeise: He probably will try to get them all to stay, or at least the majority of them. He may let a few leave to open up some scholarships, but he doesn’t want to be in a position where he has to recruit nine players in one class like Stallings just did.
timbo mason, @TimboMason: Just curious what your thoughts are about how Pitt has handled this whole process? Is there anything that has surprised you or is this how you felt it would go back You seem to be one of the voices of reason that us Pitt fans listen to.
Zeise: Pitt did a good job. The school went hard after its first choice and didn’t get him and had a number of other candidates in mind and pursued them. They did a few “due diligence” interviews to make sure they weren’t missing anything. They understood what the fans wanted. Then, when it came down to making a decision, they pulled the trigger quickly and got it done. As I always say, though, the result is what dictates how well the process went. They could have taken until August and if they ended up with an excellent hire — like Jeff Capel — the process would have been deemed a good one.
First Published: March 28, 2018, 4:20 p.m.
