Pirates manager: 'People don't let you win in September'

PITTSBURGH -- Even the manager plays hurt at this point in the playoff race.

Unlike the players, Pittsburgh's Clint Hurdle has little choice but to let everyone else see it, managing in another sometimes exhilarating, sometimes gut-wrenching September finish to the baseball season.

"Our message has been strong, clear and consistent from Opening Day," says Hurdle, who's visibly battling an arthritic hip that needs replacing – but not until after the season. "We don't ratchet it up a notch when we play the Cardinals. We don't knock it down a notch when we play somebody else.

"Every team can beat you. People don't let you win in September."

Amen to that, say fans of the Pirates, the Atlanta Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers. They're the three main protagonists – currently, anyway - in the race for the National League's second wild-card playoff spot.

None of them can win enough to allay the angst and indigestion among their fully invested fans but – to believe those closest the field -- it's merely even-keeled, dead-pan business as usual. Tonight's win, yesterday's tough loss?

Just another game, they'd have you believe.

"We lost a nailbiter, had our opportunities … blah, blah, blah … show up tomorrow, try to get it done."

That's Pirates MVP candidate Andrew McCutchen's reaction to a one-run loss this week in Philadelphia.

"Is it frustrating?" Braves outfielder Jason Heyward said after losing at Washington. "We lost. We didn't win. Tomorrow is another game. We still have something to play for. That's our responsibility and that's the way we look at it."

Heyward's manager, Fredi Gonzalez, isn't buying it.

"No, no, no, you want to see urgency," Gonzalez says. "You do see it. You see guys coming in every day and they're looking at box scores. You want guys who want to get in (the playoffs). This is what we shoot for. We play 162 games to get into the playoffs. Here we are. We have a shot. Intensity is good."

Maybe it's the mark of a wild-card race – these teams, after all, are the ones who have shown by this point in the season they're not quite up to winning a division. They have, as Gonzalez says, "pimples and warts."

That's why it's such a roller-coaster ride. The Pirates have done nothing but streak – in both directions -- for nearly two months. Entering Wednesday they hadn't won or lost just "one in a row" since July 22 – just winning streaks of from 2-4 games, losing streaks ranging from 2-7.

That's why Milwaukee, which led the NL Central for 149 days – until Sept. 1 – has lost 13 of 14 and is tenuously hanging on to even be a factor for the league's last playoff spot.

That's why Braves general manager Frank Wren, who at this point has even less inning-to-inning control over what happens on the field than his manager, paces near the Braves clubhouse after another loss.

"We knew we'd be a streaky team," he says of an offense prone to the double-edge sword of power and strikeouts. "This is streakier than we thought."

And there's another game tomorrow.

"It's easiest for the players," Gonzalez says. "I'm a little removed from the players but the further you are from the game, the less control you have. I have some control during the game but not totally. The front office has even less so it's tougher for them. They're frustrated, they're pacing. Then you have the fans, who are just watching, flipping out."

Still, there are only so many days, a finite number of games – 15-20 for most teams right now.

"You just need to understand you have to meet the demands of the games," Hurdle says. "When you run out of games, the demands can be a little weightier, but the consequences are weightier. You need to keep focused on trying to win the game, not playing on your heels, playing to win."

The managers say it's their job to fret, the players' job to maintain that flatline approach that sometimes can irritate passionate fans.

"I walk around that clubhouse like we've won 115 games and we're going for No. 116 today," Gonzalez says. "I try to exude that confidence. You're managing two runs down and you're pinch-hitting, pinch-running. (The players) don't miss that."

And you look for positives.

Before Wednesday's game at Washington, Gonzalez was excited because his team scored four runs the previous night against Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann. Never mind the Braves lost for the seventh time in 10 games to fall a nearly insurmountable season-high nine games behind Washington in the NL East.

The division race, remember that?

Even with Atlanta's 6-2 victory later Wednesday against Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals, it's pretty much about the wild card now.

"You look forward to maybe tagging on three or four more in a row," Gonzalez says, eyeing a weekend visit to Texas, the worst team in the majors.

Was he grasping at straws when he took positives out of the loss to Zimmermann? Or did he really see the start of something good?

"You see it," Gonzalez says. "You see them getting better swings."

And you hope.

Hurdle has been on all sides of this, from playing September spoiler with out-of-contention teams to managing one of the more remarkable finishes in recent memory – the Colorado Rockies' 21-1 run that took them to a 2008 playoff berth in a tiebreaker game and through Division and League Championship Series sweeps.

Clint Barmes, current Pirates infielder who was on the Rockies roster, says that's an aberration.

"That happened so fast, the coaches just kind of stayed out of the way," he says. "But Clint is the same as he's always been with this team, too."

You also can throw out a team's place in the standings or past performance this time of year.

"I've had (also-ran) teams that played well in September on paper but I'm not so sure we played that well," Hurdle says. "The teams in the hunt didn't play well. They were playing with urgency. They were playing with some trepidation. They had more on the line, so it comes back to the point of just playing good, solid, aggressive baseball. You have to execute."

And hope you can keep saying, "Hey, there's another game tomorrow."

White also reported from Washington.​