9-25-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
The Pirates will finish the season with a losing record, just clinched that yesterday with their loss to the Reds. That said, the Pirates have done some excellent work in the second half of the season, much of it by guys who matter too.
1. Welcome Back Nick Gonzales
Since being sent to AAA Indianapolis, Nick has simply destroyed the baseball. In 181 at bats he’s hit 8 homeruns, driven in 22 runs, hit .314 and slugged .585, and even that troublesome strikeout rate, down to 23.8%.
Point is, he earned this, and I hope they give him a chance to stay hot. I can’t begin to guess as to whom they’ll move out. could be Williams, could be some reliever or starter even that they are done pumping out there.
It’s not going to be easy to use all these guys, I really do hope you know that and are ready for some tough moves in the coming years.
I love this stuff! All this following prospects through the system, and now my goodness you get to start seeing them actually make it and fight each other for opportunity. It’s really what it’s all about.
2. Players Want to Win, and Here
Early on this season, Mitch Keller talked about how important it was to him to get to 200 innings, 200 strikeouts and 30 starts, and here at the end of the season, he’s right on the verge of hitting the innings mark.
This stuff if you look on the surface it could be seen as selfish, or with an eye toward his contract or arbitration negotiations, but in this case, Mitch’s reason kinda blew me away. Mitch wanted to hit those marks, because he knows when the Pirates get to the playoffs, he will need to be stretched out like this and strong too.
These things don’t always matter, I mean Quinn Priester set his goal at being the NL Rookie of the Year, but Mitch, his goal had a chance of happening.
We all get tired of thinking about the future, or wishing next year would be the year. Well, these players, they’re all thinking like that, and they’re all planning on it starting next year.
They don’t feel abandoned, they feel empowered, hell they feel responsible for making it happen.
I don’t know that this is different than previous teams, I’m sure most players believe they can get better and ultimately get great. For some reason though, it strikes me that these players are nowhere near as terrified they won’t get where they’re going as most of us are.
This hasn’t always been the case in Pittsburgh, but right now, it feels like we have a bunch of players who want to be really good, think they can be, and more than that, believe they can do that right here.
These aren’t dumb kids. They all have representation, smart representation. But right now, they at least have most of them believing the story. This group, young and old-er, see winning, here, both possible, and likely enough that they need to prepare themselves for that eventuality.
3. Demotion or IL Right Now can be Deceiving
Most of you probably already realize this, but I figured this is as good a place as any to make sure. When guys get sent down or to the IL right now, chances are most of the time the team is just ok with them getting no more at bats, or throwing another inning in 2023.
All I’m saying is maybe don’t judge every roster move at this point the way you normally would during the bulk of the season. Some of this is just paper at this point, trying like hell to get the innings they need covered from someone.
Some of it will be early 40-man housecleaning too, but I don’t think we’ll see much more of that than we’ve already seen.
4. Oneil Cruz Will Play SS Again
At least this will be the plan. They won’t go into this blind, he’ll either wind up playing Winter Ball, or at the very least, the club will closely monitor his continued rehab.
In other words, the concern about his ability to bounce back from this injury is well founded but two things happened during his recovery. 1, nobody stepped up and took short stop while he was gone, and 2, moving him around would be no more pleasant than what we’re trying to solve.
Alika Williams can certainly field the position, best they’ve got honestly, but the bat isn’t going to push anyone, not yet anyway. Peguero has hit some, nice power, contact leaves some desire, and he’s pretty much what we’ve seen, capable of the spectacular, predictable with the everyday play escaping him from time to time.
Cruz is that way too, but he’s already proven his bat must be in this lineup. I just don’t think anyone has given a real reason aside from believing he’s an answer at another position, but even then, I’m right back to there’s no sure fire superstar waiting to take over SS.
5. Dragging Less Anchors
Most of the players we watch next season should come from a mix of talents the Pirates truly expect to help. Not guys they “want to get eyes on”, not guys “we need to see more from” but guys who are supposed to be capable right now of doing positive things for the club.
Regardless of the quality of the free agents they sign next year, this will be the bare minimum. All 26 members of the opening day roster, you should believe are at the very least MLB players.
If not, they are not taking their goal of the Playoffs seriously.
If you don’t feel that 8-10 players on their 40-man could come up and actually contribute as the year plays out, they probably didn’t bring in enough and didn’t take this effort seriously.
We can bounce around names, and hope this guy or that guy turn out, but bottom line, if you want to aim at the playoffs, you need 10 games better minimum, and that takes higher quality depth.
Don’t settle for less. They set the target now, hold them to it.
Steel City Pirates 