Allow me to take you back to the dark days of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball.

Wait I’m sorry, I have to be way more specific, there’s been too many.

The year is 2022. After playing the Covid-shortened 2020 season at a 100-loss pace (going 19-41) and losing 101 games in 2021, the 2022 season wasn’t shaping up to be a whole lot better.

Though the Pirates were starting to round the corner of a painful and dragged out rebuilding process, the roster still contained far too many journeymen, AAAA, and flat out non-major league talents to be taken seriously in 2022.

Among one of those players who could fall into any or all of those descriptions was Josh VanMeter. The then-27 year old VanMeter had come off a career high 112 games for the somehow worse Arizona Diamondbacks, who lost 110 games in 2021.

VanMeter had batted .212 with Arizona over that season and had a .651 OPS before the Pirates traded right-handed reliever Listher Sosa to the Diamondbacks in exchange for him.

On a team that employed far too many underwhelming and underperforming players, VanMeter stuck out from the rest.

The 2022 Pittsburgh Pirates had 12 players who appeared at any point for them finish the year with a batting average under .200, but none of them had played as many games as VanMeter, who finished the season batting .187 with an OPS of .558.

Make no mistake, he was far from the only player to qualify as a “bad” major leaguer that season. Yu Chang, Diego Castillo, Greg Allen, Yoshi Tsutsugo, Bligh Madris, I could go on for a depressing amount of time.

But out of all those names I just listed, most of them were either in and out of the minor leagues, DFA’d, waived, traded, or somehow released from the team during the year, and usually in the summer time.

Josh VanMeter, however, continued to stick around. He became bemoaned by a Pirates fanbase who was tired of their baseball team torturing them over and over again. They were tired of lineups that were completely devoid of skill and talent. They were tired of players like VanMeter.

His regular appearance in the Pirates’ lineup continued to frustrate fans, and it felt like he played even more than he did (I was shocked to find out he only suited up for 67 games in Pittsburgh).

Now I know you’re probably wondering why I have gone on this whole tangent about Josh VanMeter. I remember the agony and pain that he exemplified for this Pirates fanbase.

It was nothing personal, but he was a player who routinely showed he could not get it done at the plate and offered average at best defensive play. Yet, manager Derek Shelton continued to trot him out there on a regular basis despite an increasing amount of evidence against him.

Sound familiar?

Rowdy Tellez, who is in the midst of an awful early going in Pittsburgh, is reminding me more and more of a Josh VanMeter type player for the Pirates. Tellez has not shown anything to keep him playing or even at the major league level if we’re being honest, yet he is still receiving regular time on the field, ranking in the team’s top five in games played.

Tellez gets a lot of comparison to Austin Hedges from last year, and I see the validity in that comparison. Both were players that were given too much money by a notoriously stingy organization who could have better spent that money on other needs/players.

They both also grossly underperformed with the bat, and even though the season is still relatively young (but aging fast), it’s looking increasingly unlikely that it turns around for him.

However, Hedges was actually good at something. He was advertised as an elite pitch framer, and to his credit he was phenomenal at that. It was a legitimate skill that put a bit of a division between fans. The amount of stock to put into that skill was a highly debated topic for some time in this town.

In the end, was his ability to pitch frame it enough to excuse how bad of a batter he was for the Pirates? No.

Hedges hit .180 with a .467 OPS, he was atrocious.

But Tellez, meanwhile, does not being those some intangibles. At first base, there are obviously a little less to be had anyways, but a gifted defensive first baseman could do a team wonders.

He started the year off better than anyone expected on the defensive side, but in the end that might have just been a mirage. Tellez hasn’t done anything to deserve still playing as often as he does, and in home games he has started to get the Hedges boo treatment, only far more loud.

I get that Hedges was not popular here, and I was also a big time critic of his batting ability, but in terms of comparisons, Tellez is looking much more like a VanMeter type player for the Pirates.

But even VanMeter was a more playable fielder than he was. VanMeter was versatile enough to play all around the diamond (plus be forced to play catcher and pitcher in pinches. They really tried to ruin this man).

Tellez brings with him no non-batting talent that should warrant keeping him in the lineup. He doesn’t excel at defense, he can’t play different positions, he’s not a rangy guy.

In fact, he was brought here to do exclusively that: hit the ball. The Pirates were banking on him returning to that 35 home run form from a few years ago, but they have received anything but from him.

Tellez has become the face of questionable at best and horrid at worst lineup decisions by the man who was the manager when VanMeter was around, Derek Shelton.

VanMeter gave Shelton no reason to keep playing him, but VanMeter continued to play and had he not suffered a fractured finger in early June, he would have played a lot more. VanMeter was the epitome of the “why?” screams from Pirates fans.

Their stat lines are also eerily similar. Tellez currently is slashing .178/.252/.486 with an OPS of .486. He has 1 home run and 8 RBI. He also has struck out in 24.4% of his at bats in 40 games.

VanMeter slashed .187/.266/.292 with a .558 OPS. He had 3 home runs and 14 RBI and a 23.4% strikeout rate in 67 games.

I understand that VanMeter played in a good chunk of more games but, Josh might actually have been a better Pirate. The fact that can even be an argument is gravely concerning.

It just feels so eerily similar with what they’re doing with Tellez right now like what they did with VanMeter two years ago, just continuing to play them for no apparent reason.

And that part isn’t the players’ fault. No player has it in their nature to turn down playing time. But management is trying to galaxy brain something that just isn’t there at all, and it’s hurting the team.

The worst part about the Tellez version is that Pittsburgh does have options. I wrote a few days ago (before he hit home runs in back to back home games) that Connor Joe needed to be in the lineup as often as possible and become the everyday first baseman.

I stand by that argument and after his big weekend, I’m very proud to gloat and say that I’m right.

They also have Jake Lamb, who albeit has not been a successful big league batter since 2017 but is riding a crazy hot streak for the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians.

Maybe the argument for 2022 was that the Pirates had no other options. Go back and look at that roster, it was god awful.

But that is no longer an excuse in 2024. If you don’t trust Lamb because of his lack of recent MLB success, fine, but Connor Joe is your leading batter right now. There is no way he should still be platooning a position with Tellez.

If my feelings on this are correct, and the situations are rather similar, Pirates fans who want Tellez have a long while to wait before that happens.

Like so many before him, Josh VanMeter did not make it the full 2022 year with the Pirates. But he got pretty damn close. VanMeter was designated for assignment by the Pirates on September 7th, 2022, with just less than a month remaining in the season.

He has not made it back to the major leagues since.

I don’t think that it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility that the Pirates DFA Tellez, but if you’re asking me if that happens any time soon, I just can’t see it.

(Featured photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)