Skipper Has Pirates Afloat : Leyland Keeping Pittsburgh in Running Despite Key Losses

It would be foolish, Pittsburgh Pirate Manager Jim Leyland said in San Francisco the other day, to suggest that his team won’t miss Bobby Bonilla, John Smiley and Bill Landrum, but just as foolish to give in to their absence.

The bucks the team has been willing to pay might have stopped for some, but the Bucs won’t stop because of it, he said. Leyland says his team--leading the National League East despite six losses in its last seven games--has enough talent and drive to three-peat as division champion.

Time will tell, just as time will determine if Pittsburgh’s nucleus will be further diminished by the possible departures of Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek as free agents when the 1992 season ends.

Drabek, the 1990 Cy Young Award winner, is weighing a four-year Pirate offer reported to be $19.5 million. Bonds, producing most-valuable-player credentials for a third consecutive year, has rejected a five-year, $25-million offer and said he will definitely test the market.

Both, Leyland said, continue to give 100%, but it is a drive of another sort that has brought Bonds to Dodger Stadium for a three-game series with the Dodgers.

He estimates the journey from his new home near Temecula to be 75 minutes and only 45 to either Anaheim Stadium or San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Bonds said he hopes to sign with one of the three Southern California teams next winter, to re-establish roots once planted in Riverside just as free agent Bonilla did in returning last winter to the New York of his youth.

“I like the Dodgers’ tradition and the way they treat players,” he said. “It’s my hometown team. I’ve been watching them ever since I was a kid.”

It is too soon to speculate, but the Dodgers would seem to have room for Bonds only if Eric Davis, who is also eligible for free agency, is not re-signed. Brett Butler will have two years left on his contract. Darryl Strawberry will have three.

“Someone would have to go because left field belongs to me,” Bonds said when asked if he would consider playing another outfield position. “Everyone knows if they sign me what they would get (in the way of production.)”

Bonds isn’t going to close any doors in May. He said he also would consider either of the New York or Chicago teams, and the Atlanta Braves.

It is an ongoing theme for Bonds and the Pirates, who produced baseball’s best start until being swept by the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants.

A return to reality and reflection of the roster losses? Leyland shook his head and called it only a temporary absence of focus and preparation, but he also blistered his team in a closed door meeting in San Francisco.

“We’re playing as if we’re in awe of the Giants, and it should be the other way around,” he said. “We’re the division champion. We’re the team that has won almost 200 games (193) the last two years.”

And the team that won 10 of its last 11 exhibition games and 19 of its first 25 regular-season games after shaking the distraction and displeasure that stemmed from the financially motivated March release of save leader Landrum and the trade of 20-game winner Smiley to the Minnesota Twins for left-hander Denny Neagle, now in the Pittsburgh bullpen, and outfield prospect Midre Cummings.

Both of those moves were hotly criticized by many Pirates, who were already operating on a short fuse after the earlier loss of the power-hitting Bonilla and the ongoing uncertainty regarding Bonds and Drabek.

New General Manager Ted Simmons was accused of a dishonest attempt to paint them as something other than the budget cuts they were.

Said Leyland: “It was as if a tornado blew through, but when we got everything standing again, I think we stood pretty tall. I mean, there was a week of pouting and grumbling. Then I had a meeting and said, ‘That’s enough, let’s get down to business.’ ”

The focus, Leyland told his team, has to be on what the Pirates have, not on what they don’t have or what they might lose at the end of the season.

“We’re going to miss those guys and it would be foolish for me to say we won’t, but it would be just as foolish to say we’re going to get our butt kicked just because they’re gone,” he said. “We still have a damn good team. I don’t know if we can win it again, but we have a chance.”

No one disputes that in the context of a 162-game season, with inevitable trouble spots, any team would miss the 20-victory potential of Smiley and the 100 runs batted in of Bonilla. There are no replacements per se, but the Pirates retain:

--A rotation that walks fewer than most and includes stoppers Drabek and Zane Smith.

--A defense that could boast five Gold Glove winners and catches almost everything the strike-oriented pitching staff gives up.

--A manager who has the respect of his team and the ongoing knack of operating a bullpen by committee. Even with Landrum gone, the Pirates are fourth in the National League in saves.

Now, too, there is cleanup by committee. The new Bonilla is named Lloyd McClendon, Cecil Espy, Gary Redus, Gary Varsho and Orlando Merced. The Pirates have so many outfielders that they are devoid of a utility middle infielder. Jeff King, who was expected to move from third base to first base when Merced moved to right field, has played every infield position and batted in every lineup spot except ninth.

Said Leyland, of that patchwork group: “You don’t lose the big switch-hitter from the middle of the lineup without it having an impact on your own offense and what the opposing team does in certain situations, but we have people capable of picking up slack if they stay with what they can do and not try to do too much.”

The Pirates, second in runs in the National League, also have proven punch with Bonds, Steve Buechele and Andy Van Slyke, all of whom have 25 RBIs or more, so the lineup is not strictly a haven for retreads.

Not yet, at least. Bonds is almost certain to leave, as was Bonilla. Drabek is less certain. The Pirates, either way, believed they had to make a financial choice between Drabek and Smiley, who is also eligible for free agency when the 1992 season ends.

They want an answer from Drabek so that they can budget multi-year offers to middle infielders Jay Bell and Jose Lind.

This is the way the Pirates say it has to be with their small-market operation. In the last two years they have signed Buechele, Van Slyke, Smith, Don Slaught, Mike LaValliere and Bob Walk to multiyear contracts and, under the threat of arbitration, agreed to a $4.7-million 1992 contract with Bonds and $4.5 million with Drabek, but as Van Slyke said:

“The Pirates play on a different financial field than Al Rosen (president of the Giants) or Fred Claire (executive vice president of the Dodgers).”

Is that frustrating? Do the players believe the front office wants to win as much as they do? Is that important?

“Whether the front office is honest or dishonest doesn’t help you hit a 3-and-2 curveball,” said LaValliere, one of the most outspoken critics of the March moves. “Where it comes into play is in the off-season when you have to look at what the front office is doing and saying and decide if you want to stay.”

LaValliere did, signing a three-year contract.

“I felt we could win again, whether I agree or disagree with the personnel moves,” he said. “If we’re out of it and dumping bodies in September, I may feel that I made the wrong decision.

“I can’t speak for management, but I’d like to think they’re behind us, although I believe that the success of the last few years came from within, from the manager, coaches and players, to the point we believe in ourselves no matter what management does.”

It is Leyland’s job to maintain his and his team’s concentration. He has the security of a five-year contract but has had his own communication breakdowns with management, his own uncertainties about the direction the club was taking, his own fear that what he has helped create in six years at the helm (“this team was in worse shape than Cleveland four or five years ago,” Van Slyke said) could be torn apart.

“It would be foolish for me to sit here and say we could sign everybody, because we can’t,” Leyland said. “I have to adjust to who we have and don’t have like everybody else.”

He also has to hope, he said, that trades and farm development can supplant what the Pirates lose through free agency and other payroll decisions.

The subject causes Simmons to bristle. He said the organization is not committed to trashing players and salaries, that a $32-million payroll does not denote austerity and that the Pirates have simply faced a series of complicated and far-reaching personnel dilemmas.

He also said there is a volatility in every major league clubhouse, and as a former player, he understood the reaction to the Landrum and Smiley moves.

“I think it’s essential that the players feel they have the support of the front office, but I also think that anything new causes uncertainty,” Simmons said.

He referred to the new management team of chief executive officer Mark Sauer and himself, both of whom received their training with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Simmons said he is confident the Pirates can remain competitive in a difficult economic environment, but some see 1992 as a last hurrah for a while. Leyland was asked if the failure in the last two playoffs provided additional motivation. He shook his head and said:

“We want to take the two more steps (to a pennant and World Series title), but we don’t have anything to prove to anyone. . . . People say that the middle of our lineup choked last year (against the Atlanta Braves), but the reason we lost was that (John) Smoltz pitched the game of his life and (Steve) Avery was throwing 96 (m.p.h.) with a hook that dropped off the table.

“We want to win again, and I still think we can, but I’m also proud of what we’ve done even if we don’t.”

Times staff writer Bob Nightengale contributed to this story.