Talking Baseball Vol. 10
Sometimes expectations change and you need to take advantage of that.
Let us open this with a cross-sport analogy and step into Doctor Brown’s Delorean and go back to the 2007-08 NHL season. Specifically that year’s trade deadline. Even more specifically, the Pittsburgh Penguins at that year’s trade deadline.
The Penguins were an on-the-rise team with a couple of young cornerstone, franchise-changing superstars (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin) at the top of the lineup starting to hit their stride and become the forces everybody hoped they could and would eventually be.
When that season began, the Penguins were pretty much universally seen as a promising team that was eventually destined for greatness, but maybe not in that exact season. The expectation was that they might need another year or two to fully grow and become bonafide Stanley Cup contenders.
But then they kept winning.
Then they kept climbing the standings.
Their core all of a sudden looked better than even the preseason expectations.
Rather than just being happy with being ahead of schedule, management decided to push all of its chips to the center of the table and make a blockbuster trade, acquiring Marian Hossa (and Pascal Dupuis) from the Atlanta Thrashers. Hossa was the big-ticket player at that deadline, and when deadline day began it seemed to only be a fantasy for the Penguins to actually get him.
Then they did.
It immediately changed expectations and put the Penguins on the map as a bonafide Stanley Cup contender that season. Suddenly, next year was this year. While the Penguins did not ultimately win the Stanley Cup that season, they did end up reaching the Stanley Cup Final, gained valuable experience against a Detroit team they would eventually beat in the Stanley Cup Final the next season, and sent a message to everybody that they were going to be all in.
The 2024 Pittsburgh Pirates should be at their Marian Hossa moment.
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