Five Pirates Thoughts at Five

6-19-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

He did it.

You hear prospects every year talk about making the show this season. Every year guys talk about what they need to work on, and how much they can’t wait to get here and help. Almost every time when the kid isn’t in AAA or just got drafted a couple years ago, most of us just shrug. “Glad he feels that way, but we all know it’s too early” many of us say.

Clearly, Henry Davis is different. He wanted it now, and he with his bat and maturity forced it into existence.

It’s Henry Davis Day Pittsburgh, lets go.

1. Henry to the Rescue?

That’s what many will expect anyway. I’ll settle for looking like he belongs in the league for now. The beauty of Davis’ approach at the plate is in the simplicity. His swing is simple, it’s quick to the ball, it’s not handsy but he’s capable of using his hands to adjust to velocity.

The power is so real, he doesn’t have to hit the ball square to do damage. It’s a welcome addition to this team.

Can he help this team offensively? I sure hope so, but bluntly, I’ve never seen Davis hit like a current Pirates MLB player. I say this, knowing full well the hitting plan this organization deploys from MLB on down comes from their current hitting coach.

Here’s what I mean. My hope is that Davis is given the room to just come up here and do what he does, but we’ve seen rookie after rookie come up here and look like world beaters only to get Haines in their ear and turn into Daniel Vogelbach with a better body.

Defensively, well, I’m not sure what to expect. My guess is we see him catch a bit, play RF a bit and DH some too. The team is keeping 3 catchers for now and many of you will recall, this is what I said would happen, albeit I made the supposition with Endy in mind. I expect this will look something like this. Davis catches 2 or 3 games a week to start, he plays RF a game or two, he DH’s a game or two. 5-6 games a week, and if his AAA fire still looks to be burning, he’ll take more and more catching time away. I expect Jason Delay to barely play, effectively acting as a true backup catcher while Davis and Hedges are both in the lineup when Davis plays elsewhere.

I was wrong on this one big time. I 100% thought Endy would get the call regardless of what Henry was doing, I simply didn’t believe they’d make the call with the number of at bats Henry has in MiLB. No 1:1 draft pick since Bob Horner in 1978 has had fewer MiLB at bats before reaching MLB.

That’s 45 years of evidence that this simply doesn’t happen often. That said, he was clearly the most ready looking minor league player in the system offensively speaking, so I’m very happy to see the team make what I’m sure wasn’t an easy decision.

A bit of inside conversational stuff, I don’t base my opinions entirely on my own observations, I develop them from conversations too, and I can honestly say in April and May when I had some of these talks, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he was going to reach MLB before September. This very much so wasn’t the plan.

Happy to see them adapt, happy to see this young man achieve one of his goals.

Wanna know what his next one is? That’s right, win a World Series with the Pittsburgh Pirates. They all say that, I know, but he’s already done something nobody saw as realistic in 2023, why not trust he’ll achieve the next before he’s done here? For those of you who only skim read, ***Not predicting 2023 as a World Series victory***

2. Keeping 3 Catchers….WHY?

I said they’d do this when I thought the call up would be Endy, and the reasoning stands firm today with this call.

The Pirates don’t plan on Henry or Endy carrying a heavy load behind the dish from the jump. They plan on having them float around and as it comes to bench construction, having your backup catcher playing elsewhere in the field is risky, you may very well need to call on one for an injury or even just a pinch hit. It’s not that they can’t have a guy bounce from RF to catcher, it’s more that if they do, they’d still like to have a safety net in place.

This won’t survive both Endy and Davis. 3 is a luxury, 4 is stupid.

Take Endy out of the equation, Davis would have to show not only is he serviceable back there, he’d need to show he definitively has more Catching value than either Hedges or Delay. And listen, don’t let the catching interference or lack of offense confuse you, have an open mind when you watch Henry catch, if you do, I promise you’ll see what has been handled excellently that was taken for granted.

No, I don’t think it’s so drastic that Henry shouldn’t catch, but there is value in making sure guys like Keller know they can bury that curveball and bounce it off the plate with a runner at 3rd. Give him time and he’ll wrestle away the position but in the meantime, Jason Delay is holding a spot for the eventual call up of Endy.

I see this as more about not using that 13th position player much and prioritizing insurance at an important position than wanting to keep stinky players.

3. What Do You Do with the Lineup Now?

Henry adds something and I’m not blind, Derek Shelton will probably initially bat him 6th spot on (smart or not, although I’d go with not).

Here’s what I’d do right now.

First, vs left handed pitching.

1. Cutch DH
2. Reynolds LF
3. Davis C
4. Castro SS
5. Jack CF
6. Santana 1B
7. Hayes 3B
8. Joe RF
9. Bae 2B

Now, vs Right handed pitching

1. Bae CF
2. Reynolds LF
3. Henry C
4. Jack RF
5. Santana 1B
6. Hayes 3B
7. Cutch DH
8. Castro 2B
9. Marcano SS

Obviously they’ll have rest days, obviously Davis won’t always start at catcher, I actually think they need another lefty stick (Endy?), but for right now, this is what I’d do.

4. Are We Accelerating Prospects Now?

Boy, sure feels that way. Davis, Solometo, Jones, Mlodzinski, it just feels like the Pirates finally realized in order to ever really get somewhere, they need to start moving some of these prospects.

Some have felt a bit quick, some have felt like they were a long time coming, but all of them are not characteristic of what we, as Pirates fans, are accustomed to.

Henry forced the issue, and with the pitching, well, injury forced that. The Pirates top end of the system has been absolutely decimated by attrition and it’s forced some quick promotions throughout the system.

I do think something tangible we can take from this is that when the team sees a guy as outplaying his level, it won’t be long before they get the bump.

Being on the 40 man doesn’t seem to play in to the decision all that much. What level the player started at doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is the performance, and no I don’t mean stats, I mean execution of things that will be required at the next level, whatever that may be.

This is a good thing, and as of tonight we’ll have seen two of Ben Cherington’s draft picks reach the league, a 2020 pick and a 2021 pick. Nobody from those two years is crazy to see making a jump.

The foundation is set, time to raise the walls.

5. Being Swept Twice is Horrible, but There Might be a Bright Side

The Pirates are now 2 games under .500 and down in the division. They earned that by not being a competent baseball team on their entire road trip.

But honestly, I think this team needed punched in the mouth. They barely paid a price for sucking the entire month of May away. They keep losing one and wining one and losing two and winning one, and staying in it while the inept division floundered around them.

Yup, a good smack in the mouth, one that draws a little blood, is good for a team like this.

I’m not saying guys are sitting around the locker room comforting themselves with “Hey, we’re still in first place”, or “Nobody thought we’d be where we are” not even “trust the process”.

I am saying though, a team like this needs to see consequences for dropping that winnable game, not rewarded by looking at the standings and seeing the Brewers stink too.

If they turn it around starting tonight, Henry Davis will get a boatload of credit for it from fans, even if he’s 1 for 4 with an infield knock, but internally, they’ll know it’s really about 9 guys and a pitcher doing what is required to win a ball game.

I never trust a player to thrive in MLB until I’ve seen them get kicked in the teeth and come back from it, because that will absolutely happen to almost everyone and coming back from it is more important than worrying if it might happen at all. Well, same applies for a team. Get beat up, show me how you get off the mat.

Time for every decision to start being about winning the game at hand, not the game next year at the same time.

I’ll ad in here, veterans starting to see the cavalry called up can sometimes wake them up a bit too.

Bottom line, the season isn’t over, use the adversity as a learning moment instead of an obituary.