Entering this afternoon's series finale against the Padres, the 12-22 Pirates are one of just three teams in Major League Baseball with a current winning percentage under the .400 mark, joining the 6-27 Rockies (.182) and 9-24 White Sox (.273). 

The Pirates have a .353 win percentage, sit nine games behind the first-place Cubs in the National League Central standings and have lost six of their last eight games, including four of five during this current homestand. 

When it comes to the early hole the Pirates have dug themselves in this first month of the season, Ben Cherington said on his weekly radio show this afternoon that it's important to be "urgent every day and not in a rush." It's a line he's heard before and it's one he evidently embraces. 

"We should not be patient about getting better today. It certainly starts with me and it doesn't end with me. That's gotta extend to everybody on our team. We all have to be urgent, and not patient, about getting better. What are the things we can do to do our own jobs a little bit better today in a way that adds up to wins long term? Let's not be patient about it," Cherington said. "At the same time, you have to be disciplined enough and allow others to help you stay disciplined enough not to be rushed into something that would be a mistake and actually make things worse or harder long term. It's doing both all the time. But no, we shouldn't be patient. We've dug ourselves a hole and it's not where we wanted to be at this point. I also still really believe we've got good baseball ahead of us. We've got to do our jobs and make that happen." 

Cherington also acknowledged the importance of self-scouting and self-evaluation during a time where the Pirates have performed as one of the worst teams in baseball. They still remain near the bottom of the league's ranks in most offensive categories, including batting average (.222) and runs scored (114), and have also had issues on the mound with the eighth-most earned runs allowed (146 in 306 1/3 innings) in MLB. 

"I would say about 90% of that job is really about helping people. Occasionally, a smaller part of it can be about actually making a change to the roster, but most of that effort to self-scout is not to make a change to the roster, it's to identify, 'Hey, this part of your game is working, or this part of our game is working, and this part is not working as well as it could or well enough, what do we need to do about that?' We can think of different examples of that," Cherington said. "The importance of that feedback, of self-scouting and getting that information all the time, is to get better ourselves. It's not to remove people necessarily, it's to get better, it's to find a way to help all of us get a little better every day. That happens all the time. We've got people giving us that feedback and that clarity all the time, and the coaching staff works their tails' off and will continue to work their tails' off. ... That effort is going to stay there, we all just have to be a part of digging ourselves out of it."