Madden Monday: As long as the Pirates have this ownership, 'nothing can be fixed'

To start the second half of the season, the Pittsburgh Pirates (39-61) were swept at home by the worst team in the American League. The Chicago White Sox (35-65) won all three games at PNC Park over the weekend by a combined score of 27-7.

Here are some numbers to consider:

• Chicago entered the series 32-65, 27 games behind the AL Central-leading Detroit Tigers.

• The White Sox had won consecutive games just once this month.

• Pre-All-Star Break, they had just 11 road wins all year.

• Over the first 97 games heading into the break, Chicago could only muster 332 runs, the second-fewest in the AL. They scored 27 over three games in Pittsburgh, while posting a plus-20 run differential for the weekend. Before the series started, the club was at minus-98.

As Mark Madden said during this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, so much for the “Yinzerpalooza” weekend celebration.

“Yinzerpalooza? LoserPalooza. Sweepapalooza,” Madden joked to open the episode.

A lot of Pittsburgh fans are asking the rhetorical question of “How much worse can it get?” The answer is: significantly. After all, the aforementioned Tigers come to town on Monday night for a three-game series.

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Granted, the Tigers are in a bit of a rut themselves, having just recently dropped six in a row before a win Sunday. But the Pirates have fallen in 11 of 12, and Detroit still has the American League’s best record at 60-40.

“I don’t know where it goes from here, because I’m not sure it can get worse, but I’m relatively sure it won’t get better,” Madden said. “I’m amused a great deal by people blaming Ben Cherington, the GM. There’s no doubt he’s incompetent at that job. But there’s also no doubt in my mind that any of the great general managers throughout history — like Joe L. Brown, the Pirates’ best ever — he couldn’t fix this. Syd Thrift couldn’t fix this. Branch Rickey couldn’t fix this. It’s an unfixable situation.”

As much as Cherington deserves scrutiny, Madden says we should blame owner Bob Nutting instead.

“As long as they have this ownership, nothing can be fixed. And even if they did get a new owner — which they won’t, because this guy isn’t going to sell — I’m not sure that would fix it,” Madden said. “They are just permanently broken.”

There has been some chatter recently about Major League Baseball pushing for a salary cap in the next collective bargaining situation. That’s a pipe dream, and Madden says that won’t help the Pirates’ cause that much anyway.

“Even a cap in baseball wouldn’t fix the Pirates,” Madden insisted. “When you have a cap, you have a floor. The Pirates would only spend to the floor. They would spend the bare minimum. The cap would help in that the super teams couldn’t spend as much as they are now, the Yankees, Dodgers, etc. But every team would still be outspending the Pirates.”

Also in the podcast, Madden and I discuss the WNBA collective bargaining controversy, T.J. Watt’s contract resolution, rumors about FSG selling the Penguins, Rod Stewart, Stephen Colbert and more.