The Pirates Can’t Waste the Opportunity they Have

4-26-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

All through this process, meaning back in 2019 when the Ben Cherington era began it was always going to come down to how much would be needed to fill out the holes, and how much Bob Nutting would be willing to provide.

At it’s core, those things have taken this entire time to start to matter.

For Ben Cherington’s plan to work, he had to build pitching and pitching depth to the point the team would have a base to win with. Pitching is risky, expensive and for a notoriously cheap team, it’s not something you can have on your shopping list a whole lot.

They locked up Mitch Keller, promoted Jared Jones, and are soon to move on Paul Skenes.

People, I’m here to tell you, this team should be a contending team every single year those three are healthy together. Big if on the health scene to be sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that whatever this team is going to consider “trying” to be is going to happen now.

They’ll have others come in and up and they’ll sign pitchers here and there, but those three are a really strong core of starters to build off of, and the Pirates owe themselves to not miss the chance to win every single time they can with them.

I can’t imagine they believed Jared Jones would be here doing what he’s doing. For perspective, it would have been like saying last week that Bubba Chandler will make the opening day roster in 2025. Hey, maybe he will and then we’re talking about 4 guys like this, or maybe he just makes the argument even stronger that you have to push in whatever chips you have because he mitigates the injury fear to a degree.

Either way, the shocking arrival of Jones and Skenes being as advertised, man, for me it’s a brick on the accelerator. How could it not be?

You can be excited about any number of guys still coming, but at some point you have to look at what is actually here or very close and say, now.

This isn’t a right this second conversation. Most teams aren’t going to want to talk about trades this early, at least not involving MLB players. Any free agents still not signed are not worth pretending are upgrades.

It’s a deadline conversation, because if this team manages to somehow be near .500 they’ll owe it to themselves to augment it. I don’t even think it’ll be a frightening investment this year, but they need to seriously consider being a player on something they don’t have, and it’d be nice if it addressed a position for a couple years.

This offseason they shouldn’t have to feel the need to sign 3-5 starting pitchers, so the investment is clearly needed in a hitter or two. A real answer at 1B, or CF. Real decisions on projects like Jack in CF, Cruz at SS.

This year could have them reach higher than they thought but what it needs to do more is shove right in their faces exactly why they can’t waste what they’ve put together.

The last time we had a right to feel even close to this with our Starting Rotation was maybe when Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon were in the system together, and injury ensured we only saw them together for rare cameos.

There is no guarantee Skenes and Jones will pitch one month together, those are just the breaks, but as you watch them together as an executive, if you don’t feel a mandate to do everything in your power to capitalize on it, I’m not sure what the goal ever was.

There can be no better outcome as a rebuilding team than to start crawling onto the beach from the primordial ooze of prospects and development with two fully formed ace level pitchers and a steady, signed middle of the rotation arm. You can’t win without that, and you won’t buy it.

Don’t fumble on trying to create a first baseman. Don’t get lockjaw thinking you have enough pitching to overcome not hitting. Don’t stop pushing youngsters to perform by providing professional hurdles for them to jump.

All those questions we had way back in 2019 are about to be answered. I’ve never been convinced Bob Nutting would do more than he ever has. I’ve also never seen an internally developed pipeline of arms like this. Seems to me that might be the only way to do this without a big change of willingness to spend.

In other words, well, remember Ocean’s Eleven where Brad Pitt’s character says to George Clooney’s character they needed 2 miracles then called them out as they came up in their plan?

What I’m saying is the pitching drafting and development has delivered miracle number 1, miracle number 2 is to fill this thing out and win before miracle 1 can’t stay together.

Miracle number 3 is having a few more come along as you go so the fall off is never near as bad again. That is a dream I won’t dare to even discuss until I’ve seen 2 at once for the first time in my life.

Don’t waste it Pirates. Look at other teams who thought they’d have their dominant rotations for years. You can’t waste one opportunity.