Every once in a while, a J1Q entry comes along so good.

You can't wait until the second segment to get to it.

Good morning to you.

Monday morning.

I'm Dale McAvachachiev of D.K.

Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates. Comes your way right in early every weekday.

If you're into football and or hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this.

Nelson Walters was going to be my just one question contributor for the day.

This is just too good. And it was way better than whatever it was that I was going to talk about.

Here it comes from Nelson. Full credit. D.K., have you ever heard the people running the pirates say that making the playoffs is their goal?

Playing 500 ball while keeping payroll low seems to be their goal,

and no matter what they say, their actions betray them.

So I read through your question, like I said, I had selected it for the show,

and it occurred to me I don't really have that answer, at least not definitively.

I don't remember anyone, Ben Charington, Derek Shelton, even down at field level,

saying, hey, the goal is to make the playoffs.

This team should be in the playoffs.

But since I was out of town covering hockey while Pirates Fest was going on, I asked both of our reporters who were covering that event for D.K. Pittsburgh Sports, Greg McAfee and Jose Negron, if they had heard any such thing. The answer was a definitive no, with one of them equipping, believe me, if they'd mentioned

playoffs, my ears would have perked up. And I got to tell you, I think you might be on to something

here. Because if you go back, and I did over all of the transcripts from everything that was

spoken at Pirates Fest, and this on top of everything that was spoken at the winter meetings,

and of course the first five years they've been here, the MO is to set the bar not as low as possible, but as vague as possible.

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