Five Pirates Thoughts at Five

7-3-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

We’re halfway through the 2023 season, it’s the day before Independence Day and it also happens to be time for the weekly 5 Pirates Thoughts at 5 here on IT double B.

So as we sit down with friends and family tomorrow and watch dad burn the outer layer of everything in the hopes of not having anything that even resembles the memory of having been rare at one time, lets also remember when we stop trying to find issues with each other, we generally get along.

This country at any given point in history is not what every single citizen wants or needs it to be, current times included, but there is one thing we have always done, improved. Sometimes slowly, sometimes after steps backward, but if you really look at the broad strokes the arrow is generally always pointed up.

Let’s talk some ball.

1. All Star Mitch Keller

Before I write anything here, let’s start with the beginning, this means a ton to Mitch, and he has been through just about everything on the way there.

This is from DK Pittsburgh Sports…

And this is from the Buccos….

When all the hard work pays off 💛 pic.twitter.com/1AU4YlB6ZU

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) July 2, 2023

He represents the only All Star selected to represent the Pirates, but this isn’t Warren Morris, or Ed Sprague, this is Mitch Keller.

Highly drafted, highly touted, incredibly needed top of the rotation pitcher who has gone through just about every stage of will he or won’t he make it, let alone make an All Star Game.

This isn’t a pity selection, instead a testament to one man’s ability to keep working at his craft and an organization that had nobody else to turn to giving him time and space to do so.

This selection is an organizational win wrapped up in an overall disappointing showing from overall selections.

Many wanted to see David Bednar, but he didn’t really get the chance to pitch for almost a month because of poor team performance.

Andrew McCutchen probably deserved a look, he’s certainly been good, but he’s also done it largely in the highly competitive DH spot. Very hard to see him as even top 3 there if you’re honest with yourself.

I even saw some suggest Jack Suwinski who’s OPS is 16th in the league for qualified batters and has hit 17 homeruns, but honestly, it’s a bit early to think that’s warranted.

The Pirates are not where they need to be, but seeing what they’ve done with a lot of hard work and dedication with Mitch, it should give us all a bit of faith they can do it with other players.

2. The Pirates are 39-44

Not bad for the considerable long stretches of non existent offense or countless injuries.

They’ve just gotten Bryan Reynolds back, Ji-man Choi will be returning, Colin Holderman just returned, Ke’Bryan Hayes will hopefully rest up the back and come back. Oneil Cruz will return too.

But this season is really about a youth movement.

Henry Davis, Carmen Mlodzinski, Cody Bolton, Nick Gonzales, Ji Hwan Bae, Jared Triolo, Luis Ortiz, Johan Oviedo, well, you know, and you don’t have to think they’ll all make it, they surely won’t, but you do have to recognize this team won’t be made up of much of what’s made this team bad over the time Cherington has been here.

Think about what’s left from 2020. Mitch Keller, Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes and if you want to include him even though we can’t see him work this year, JT Brubaker. That’s it.

4 players remain from the once famously uttered sentence, “there are players here who we believe will be part of a winning club here”. Most of us didn’t believe it.

Most of us needed to see them sign someone, and even Hayes didn’t satisfy that need. Now that they’ve locked up Reynolds, and have engaged in talks with All Star starter Mitch Keller, it’s clear, they didn’t lie, they planned to mine what they could from the roster they inherited, and in 3 years, including one COVID shortened year, they have entirely remade this team.

We’re at stage one of onboarding kids in mass and it won’t be the last. Even as we speak, players like Bae, Castro, Contreras, and Marcano are all fighting through struggles, and unlike Keller, they have pressure from the minors to contend with.

This all comes down to how well this club works through this group. If they choose to move on from a guy like Bae, they better be right. Choose to stop trying to make Roansy a starter, well, you better be right.

Money will factor in of course, but the vast majority of what constitutes a winning club always needed to come from development.

This process has been painful to watch for many of you, I completely get it, but for a nerd like me, well, it’s been almost to the letter the process I thought we’d see play out.

Try to enjoy it, you’ll be one of the people who remembers when Henry Davis came up and started impacting the culture. You’ll remember when Mlodzinski was first used in the back of the pen to nail down that important win. Hell, you’ll remember the first time you actually felt a win was important again.

This process isn’t fun for everyone, but it is in fact a process that this team decided to take to get somewhere.

Arguments about other ways they could have gone are valid, but the fact is, they chose this one.

3. Next Up

I think we’ll see over the next few weeks, the PIrates call on even more youth. Liover Peguero has been on the 40-man for 2 seasons now, and it’s time to give him a crack. He’s hitting the cover off the ball and even while he possesses issues fielding he’s still a very talented and capable short stop.

Quinn Priester will likely get a chance soon, either due to injury or the League pushing back on Osvaldo Bido, which if you’ll recall, I told you as a starter would be 4-5 turns through the rotation to start happening. I still think Bido is a great bullpen option, but he won’t stop a prospect like Priester from making it.

I expect Endy Rodriguez literally any time now. He’s turned his season around offensively, and defensively he’s ahead of Henry Davis. This should afford the team opportunity to move on from Hedges or Delay.

I say this even as some youngsters are working right now on their own opportunity.

Once you start a youth movement, stopping it is nearly impossible and even with all these vets, you still find yourself wondering if you took the “right” young players. Half a season in 2023 for players like Delay, Oviedo, Contreras, Bae, Marcano, Castro, hell even Palacios who isn’t really a young prospect, is plenty to start making adjustments and swaps.

If that kid you’ve believed in is one of those cuts, don’t despair, they might well be back after some fine tuning.

Making picks is one thing. Identifying trade acquisitions is another. This though, the part where they become Major League baseball players, is the hardest thing to navigate in the game. For just about everyone involved.

4. Social Woes

Social media has allowed fans to connect in a way they never were capable before. Now on a pitch by pitch basis we can react with each other, live and die together with every outcome.

It’s also allowed for the easy foot in the door for bloggers and podcasters. Free promotion of content to a waiting an hungry audience. You don’t need backing, you don’t need anything more than a website and a following.

We’ve also seen this week that social media is unstable. Twitter showed us they can change the rules and render the entire system unusable. Facebook limits users to 5000 “friends”.

Listen, we aren’t close to the end of Social Media, I’m not that dense, but many like me are at least feeling it’s more important than it’s been to make sure we at least tell you, relying on Social media to tell you when we post a new piece is shaky.

At the bottom of the homepage on our site, you’ll see a button to subscribe. This will send you an email when something is posted, and that’s it. Won’t cost a thing, won’t bother you with promos. Nothing but a nudge that something new is up.

Even when social is working well, it’s not consistent. Facebook for instance will throttle the number of people who can read things we’ve posted without spending money on campaigns. Twitter is actively limiting the number of impressions you can make for a post.

This is a bit “inside baseball” I get it, but we do this for free, entirely. If you like it and don’t want to miss content, hey, that’s the best we got. If we let you down you won’t be out a penny and we have a free commenting system far away from the trolls you get tired of dealing with too!

OK, Shameless plug over.

5. Will the Pirates be Buyers or Sellers?

Maybe both?

No, I really mean it, I promise it’s not a cop out.

Let’s think of 2023 in an ideal world scenario. They bring in these vets, Garcia, Choi, Santana, Hedges, Cutch, Hill, Velasquez and sure, they hope they help the team, but more than anything, they hope as the year progresses, some of their prospects come up, get a chance and prove they deserve a shot to render some of them moveable.

That’s the dream, you hope it happens so much you aren’t begrudgingly moving veterans on for prospects, but instead you’re moving them to make room, moving them for help in other areas that aren’t producing.

This year, you could see some movement.

Andrew McCutchen won’t move for really much of any reason. There won’t be a prospect hot enough to pull the trigger, and they have a side deal so vocalized by both sides this isn’t’ just going to crop up.

Rich Hill was signed for 8 million dollars, and almost assuredly the team planned to move him at the deadline. After all, Rich has been moved multiple times just like this. I’m sure Vince was the same, but he’s gone for good at this point.

So is JT Brubaker, and Rich is the one player who more than any other needs this team to perform to stay. If they’re out of it, you could see them make a move just like they did with Quintana. Before you say same old Pirates, it did net us Johan Oviedo who’s had a pretty good rookie campaign.

He’s going to be a tough call. Arguably the hardest.

Santana and Choi, well, they don’t have much pushing them aside. Pay attention to Jared Triolo and Connor Joe, those two can play the position but the bats need to at least keep pace with Santana and Choi if they’re in this race. If they aren’t the question becomes how much time has Choi had to showcase himself, and how much gas to people think Santana has.

It’s tough, they brought in Choi and Santana to play 1B but someone was supposed to step up and push them for playing time, that could partially be Endy, but they won’t know by the deadline.

I think we’ll see one go and the other finish the season out here. I’ll say this, Carlos isn’t playing like he wants to leave anything in the tank and he too has been very vocal he wants to stay.

The bullpen is mostly young, can’t see that.

For those of you thinking Bednar is in trouble, absolutely not. He isn’t getting moved, even if you come up with a great offer, or think it’s smart. He’s closer to extending than being moved, same with Keller.

You could see prospects moved. Maybe even a Bae, Marcano, Castro type.

Truth is, there could very much so be movement, but how much and what type, we’ll have to see. We’ll discuss it more as we get closer, but there aren’t any locks to go or whatever as we sit here.