Bad acquisitions, idiotic roster situations and nonsensical placements have the Pirates filled with “What if?”

The Pittsburgh Pirates ousted San Francisco Giants starter and reigning NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell from Wednesday’s game before he could complete the fourth inning with the bases loaded. Bryan Reynolds immediately hit a grand slam to relieve Sean Hjelle

In the top of the 5th, Jared Jones, who wasn’t having the best control, gave up a leadoff double, followed by a single by Jorge Soler with a runner on. Jones fastened his seat belt and limited his injuries to just one.

Then it all went to waste.

The Pirates lost 9-5 and had no one to blame but themselves.

They asked their young starter, for whom they were trying to manage innings and count pitches, to go one more frame, he did, but he pitched two more runs. They were encouraged to do this because they lacked a human in the pen. They were missing a player in the bullpen as they have 14 position players on the active roster.

They had 14 position players on their active roster because they wanted to promote Ji Hwan Bae, but they refused to count out Rowdy Tellez, who had a .483 OPS.

The shorthanded bullpen marred the game as the most expensive piece of the most expensive bullpen in team history, Aroldis Chapman, threw 14 pitches, 12 of which were balls. Chapman walked 20 batters in 15.2 innings.

Oh, and they functionally eliminated two guys from the bullpen, making the intentional low-staff operation even more astonishingly stupid.

Despite all this, they were still one shot away from winning yesterday’s match.

Colin Holderman, who statistically was the team’s best shortstop with a 0.60 ERA in 15 innings, came on in relief of Chapman and allowed just 1 in a bases jam with no one in, which he inherited in the eighth inning, before returning to the game to throw ninth and got Luis Matos on the last hit before hitting left fielder Bryan Reynolds, who jumped up and allowed Matos to advance to second, who immediately scored on a single to right by Lamonte Wade Jr.

The attack calmed down peacefully at the end of the 9th, and Carmen Mlodzinski completely fell apart in the 10th game. He struggled with command, was often lagging in counts and ultimately gave up four runs before Kyle Nicolas came in and struck out the last one.

The icing on the cake was the fact that the Pirates offense racked up 18 straight outs, striking out nine times, before Oneil Cruz ended the streak with a walk in the 10th inning.

I hope my disdain for everything this leadership group has put forward is heard here. It all adds up to a set of “what if?”

What if the budget for acquiring players in the off-season was higher? What if we spent it more wisely?

Bottom line… this is not good. The Pirates spent a total of 31.8 million to acquire Rowdy Tellez, Aroldis Chapman, Michael A Taylor, Martin Perez, Marco Gonzales, Yasmani Grandal and Josh Flemming. Ouch.

Tellez ($3.2 million) is off to one of the worst starts in the history of a Class 1B team, Chapman ($10.5 million) is completely unreliable, Perez ($8 million) is the worst starter on the team, Marco Gonzales ($2.75 million) earns Taylor ($4 million) was fired twice this offseason due to concerns over former Tommy John’s injury and a possibly career-altering nerve injury he had fresh out of surgery and unsurprisingly got hurt after just a few starts. Taylor ($4 million) is an excellent defender but has an OPS of .536, Grandal ($2.5 million) has had his moments, but at age 35 he is no longer a great or even good defender and his OPS is .638. Josh Fleming isn’t even on the team.

Would things be different for this team, just two games shy of the final wild card spot in the domestic league as we approach the end of May, with a different cast of characters?

Would it matter since Andy Haines is still the team’s head hitting coach? If they had fired him like they should have last year, would Henry Davis and Jack Suwinski have struggled as hard? Both are now in AAA after the Pirates announced that Jack Suwinski was selected and LHP Jose Hernandez was recalled. At least they’re no longer operating on a stent to keep four different players on the roster with an OPS below .600.

Would they have won yesterday’s match with better squad management and player placement? I don’t really understand why Reynolds, who has been one of the worst shortstops in baseball this season, wasn’t eliminated in the ninth along with Edward Olivares.

What if they had hired Matt Arnold instead of Ben Cherington? Arnold was reportedly among the finalists for the CEO position. He has served as general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers for the past four seasons and has served as the highest-ranking member of its baseball operations department for the past two seasons.

I could do this all day. The question “what if?” a franchise and front office that continually shoots itself in the foot drags on forever.

As I write this, Paul Skenes is about to take the mound in the rubber game against the Giants. I’m excited to watch him throw. I’d be more excited if Rowdy Tellez wasn’t still here, still watching the field.

Who, once again, is having one of the worst seasons in franchise history for a starting 1B in as many games as he has under his belt.

In today’s game, Tellez’s OPS of .483 is the fifth-worst in Pirates history among players who spend at least 50% of their time at 1B and appear in the same number of games.

Ben Cherington still won’t take away one of the worst players in baseball to give himself a better chance of winning the game in front of them. This is clearly never a priority.

I have run out of rational explanations for this situation. It’s just stupid.

Tellez Update: After three terrible at-bats so far in which he chased pitches right in the eye, stared at a meatball, a third with a runner on third and one out, another meatball came up with bases loaded and hit a roll of the bat in the second at-bat, OPS Tellez is now down to .471. Overtaking Ben Cherington’s other acquisition, Yoshi Tsutsugo, he finished third worst on the above-mentioned list.

Pirates Update: After going up 5-1 and then 6-2, the Pirates did it again. 7-6 Giants in the top of the eighth with two outs. I can’t.