What Earns a Call Up Changes as the Pirates Top Level Improves

4-10-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Liover Peguero has simply been playing out of his mind in AAA since the Indianapolis Indians got their season underway for 2024. In 42 PA he’s hitting .425 with a .550 SLG and an OPS at .979. Surprisingly, no homeruns, I mean you see a stat line like that and you almost just assume. Entering this season, Liover only had 30 PA at the AAA level, so he’s very early days here for his Indianapolis days anyhow.

I could and will talk about other prospects, but talking about Peguero will cover so many of the topics I want to touch on it just makes no sense to introduce all that without first laying a base here.

See, in 2022 a guy doing something like this in the minors unquestionably has a chorus line of fans screaming from the rooftops about manipulation or even the team wanting to lose, but as we sit here in 2024, it’s really hard to get there without ignoring some other realities.

Liover can play SS, and 2B right this second. That’s not to say he couldn’t learn another position, it’s just to say right now, that’s what he plays.

The Pirates currently have Alika Williams, Jared Triolo and Oneil Cruz on the 26-man Roster as middle infielders.

Oneil Cruz for at least this season is either a short stop or a DH, that’s it, that’s the list. You can pine for him elsewhere all you like. You can dream of his arm throwing from right field to home on the fly with all the accuracy he hasn’t shown throwing from second to first, but the Pirates simply aren’t going to move him to a new position this year, he’s just too important to mess with like that and best case for someone looking to supplant him short of an injury is to see him become a near full time DH.

Jared Triolo has had a rather pedestrian start to 2024 as the starting second baseman. If you’re looking for a crack for Liover or anyone I talk about who could start here to break through, this is it. Still, he hasn’t been bad, especially for a rookie. 49 PA, .250 AVG, .667 OPS. Again, not bad, not great, probably a bit above average for a rookie if we’re really honest. Certainly not numbers that will hold off Peguero long should both trends continue. 12 games in baseball does not often a trend make.

Alika is a backup. He’s here for two main reasons, first, he probably has the best middle infield glove in the system, and second, and this one is going to sound cruel, they aren’t concerned with him sitting for stretches of time. That part is key, and it’s why Triolo is the main crack if you’re looking for a performance based swap of players here. I mean we’re 12 games in and Alika has 14 PA, and he’s done ok with those very limited opportunities hitting .286 with a .714 OPS. Thing is though, if he lines out in his next at bat both those numbers fall off the table, that’s what happens when you barely play.

Is Peguero a better player than Jared Triolo, well, maybe but Triolo is the backup 3B too, so moving him out and or making him the part time player probably stunts the development they’re trying to do with him. Is he a better player than Alika? Offensively, I can’t imagine he isn’t, but defensively, he’s not there.

That’s 3 spots, 4 players and an awful lot of we need to see more.

Again, this isn’t the same as Josh VanMeter has been manning second base. He has no future here and he’s not doing anything productive, boom you make the call.

The MLB club isn’t dying for prospects to come up and save the day, not right now. You can think there’s a path to getting a nice amount of at bats for a kid, but at least early on, that’s not how they’ve used that extra spot, I mean, I just wrote how much Alika has actually played.

That time will come. It could be performance based, injury based or, Peguero could just have put numbers like that together for a month and the brass simply can’t sit by waiting for someone in the Bigs to step up more. Maybe they just can’t deal with Cruz throwing rockets at Rowdy Tellez’ feet anymore after a month and 8 errors so they bump him to DH and bring up Peggy. There are paths, there always are, but they certainly aren’t the same as they were 2 years ago.

To make this club now you have to do some outlandish stuff in the minors, and you probably need a little help from some guys on the Big club too. You don’t have to just do something outlandish, you probably at this point have to show you can sustain it for a while on top of it.

Some prospects like Jared Jones or Paul Skenes can rise above all this. Jared showed up to Spring Training a non-roster invitee. A player not on the 40-man, simply put, to make the team he had to prove someone else should lose theirs or at least that giving him a shot would have more value than keeping another player in the system. He did. Paul has that same kind of pedigree, and when he’s ready, the team is going to have to make a choice.

He will get the call this year, but let’s not lie to ourselves, if the starting pitching looks like they’re ok as a five man unit and it’s May 3rd, I doubt they’ll jump the gun here on Skenes. If that last start was the last good one we see from Bailey Falter, well, I think anytime is fair game.

When your team fills out their roster and things are going well, it’s not as simple as calling up everyone who looks good for a week, and that’s where we are.

I mean, jumping back to the middle infielder discussion, I didn’t even mention Nick Gonzales who has started out like a ball of fire, in 46 PA he has hit .390, a .457 OBP, 1.042 OPS and he’s even cleaned up his biggest issue with 4 walks and 7 strike outs.

I can’t even say Peguero has soundly beaten Nick out, let alone someone on the MLB roster.

If you want to dumb this down to Peggy is better than Alika, ok, that’s your bag, I’ll just keep my eyes peeled on the entire picture and rest easy knowing that was never and isn’t now the actual competition playing out.

There will come a time when the Pirates have to decide some of these guys are bench players, but man, that doesn’t have to be right now.

The moral of the story is, health permitting, we should start to expect much more ready for primetime looking rookies when they get the call, because most of them are going to play in the minors a hell of a lot longer than the several who debuted prior to 2024.

It’s a different world, and you can fight it or learn to live in it. Whichever you decide won’t change the outcome, it’ll just change how much you understand and accept what happens from here on out.

It’s not like it gets easier next year. Tsung-Che Cheng and Termarr Johnson will very likely be kicking at the door. Trades could happen to clear up room, or they could be in the exact same frustrating position these prospects we discussed find themselves now.

One thing I know for sure, every time I’ve thought my team had way too much of something, I’ve found out rather quickly half of them weren’t actually MLB good and a few got hurt, and a few just weren’t grasping it.

My advice, prospects are great, keep watching, keep waiting, keep hoping, but realize that for the first time since 2015, we shouldn’t be looking to AAA and AA like their timeline is solely tied to their performance, that stopped being true as soon as this team was filled with capable players and it’ll stay that way very likely through the end of the decade.

It’s very possible some of these guys are nothing more than currency to get a piece they need at the deadline or in the offseason. Their performance matters for that reason in addition to trying to get the call, but embrace now that you may very well not see guys who are every bit ready for a shot until a need crops up.

We in Pittsburgh have not had a system with this many talented players on the cusp of being “ready” in my memory. Not in the big run last decade, not in the early 90’s, again, not in my memory did I feel the MLB club was good and there was almost a complete team of prospects under a season and a half from being universally considered MLB ready.

The last point I’ll make is this, fans assume that some of this “overflow” talent will be traded for help, and it could, but don’t rule out some of the MLB talent with far less team control being moved instead to both make room for some of these guys and because in some cases those players could return more.

Great problems to have, in fact, probably the goal of this GM, now we get to see what he does with it and how he handles it.