9-3-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
As plainly as I can put it…
Are the Pirates as a franchise better off now than they were in 2019?
It’s ironic we’ll be hearing questions like that for the next two months about a subject unrelated, but sometimes it really is the core of what needs addressed.
It’s one thing to say they aren’t where you want them to be at this point, and another entirely to claim they’ve utterly failed.
The whole shebang too, not only are they better now than they were than, but are they in position to better what they could have built that 2019 team into.
To do that, I’m going to have to break this into categories so we can really break it down and make a fair evaluation possible. For some of you this is going to be hard, it’ll require accepting truths that aren’t comfortable and if you’re a person who doesn’t like to do so, critiquing harshly something you’ve preferred to see through rose colored glasses.
The Record
I wish it was this simple.
The record in 2019, the season that forced Bob Nutting to fire his friend and trusted liaison to MLB and Team President Frank Coonelly, Neil Huntington and of course his on field staff was 69-93.
A winning percentage of .426, and it happened in a year when the club felt they still had the components to win. This was the end of a 4 year playoff drought that started out being referred to as a Bridge Year in 2017.
This is the narrative that has fans rightly say “They’ve been rebuilding for 10 years”.
They have, the previous regime simply wouldn’t admit it or go as deep as they needed to, always feeling like they were a good performance or lucky acquisition away from getting back into the dance.
Since then, the team has truly been in a rebuild.
Winning percentages went from that .426, to .317 in 2020, .377 in 2021, .383 in 2022, .469 last year and this year as we speak they’re 65-73, a .471 winning percentage, a story we’re obviously still watching unfold.
A slow and steady increase in success, but not the complete metamorphosis fans wanted to see.
Even a little money could have made this incline steeper, but it’s headed in the right direction. This has all led to finishing one time out of the basement in 4th place in the NL Central.
The Starting Infield
In 2020: (Opening Day)
Catchers: Jacob Stallings, John Ryan Murphy
First Base: Josh Bell
Second Base: Adam Frazier
Short Stop: Kevin Newman
Third Base: Colin Moran
In 2024: (Currently)
Catchers: Joey Bart (IL), Henry Davis
First Base: Rowdy Tellez
Second Base: Nick Gonzales
Short Stop: Isiah Kiner-Falefa
Third Base: Ke’Bryan Hayes (IL)
I wish I could do a statistical comparison, but no matter how you try to slice it, a 60 game season with constant ins and outs spawned by COVID and the fear of it simply can’t be compared in a fair way.
I could extrapolate out how the numbers might have looked after another 102 games but honestly, it’s probably about as fair as taking the first 60 games of this season and doing the same, think about how that would effect Rowdy Tellez alone.
Obviously this doesn’t account for Ke’Bryan Hayes joining the team in 2020 or being injured and off the roster currently. Obviously it isn’t genuine to look at this infield and pretend Oneil Cruz wasn’t the biggest part of it for the vast majority of this season.
All that said, you adjust for time and how players look today, I have a hard time saying they aren’t better off.
The other thing to consider here is they now have 2 starters in this group that aren’t sure to be here into the future. So even if Rowdy Tellez and IKF are upgrades, they can’t be seen as having lasting power.
The Starting Outfield
In 2020: (Opening Day)
Bryan Reynolds, Jarrod Dyson, Gregory Polanco
In 2024: (Currently)
Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz, Bryan De La Cruz
There is little denying, it’s better today, but I’ll be really honest, it’s only been a couple weeks now that I could say that and Cruz hasn’t had time to show us defensively how we should feel quite yet. Overall though, very hard to say it’s not stronger.
We’ve watched 5 years of baseball and come out of it with 1 firm answer in the outfield. Potentially 2, but 1 that we can truly say is a for sure answer.
They’ve had some stutter starts. Jack Suwinski has done some great things, and he’s also looked like he doesn’t belong in the Bigs. They’ve had Ben Gamel look acceptable for a time, Connor Joe has at times looked good. Bryan De La Cruz has been an average MLB player, just not since being acquired by the Pirates.
Point is, it’s better, but marginally and with quite a bit of wait and see still baked in up to and including Bryan Reynolds potentially not being a starting level defender on top.
The Oneil Cruz move to CF has possibly in an artificial way created an overall trend up in the outfield, but more accurately, it’s potentially masked an extremely disappointing trajectory of this position group and created a weaker infield setup.
The Starting Rotation
In 2020: (Opening Day)
Joe Musgrove, Trevor Williams, Mitch Keller, Derek Holland, Steven Brault, Chad Kuhl
In 2024: (Currently)
Mitch Keller, Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, Bailey Falter, Luis Ortiz, Domingo German
I went 6 deep because, well, largely that’s what the Pirates have done this year, a trend I don’t expect to continue into 2025.
It’s clearly in a much better place. 4 guys from the 2020 rotation aren’t even pitching anymore in MLB.
So far in 2024 the Pirates starters have an ERA of 3.82, and that includes everyone who’s started, even Josh Fleming and Jake Woodford. In 2020 the Bucs put up a 4.74 ERA, again in 60 games and 283 innings pitched, that’s barely a full season for 1 starter 35-40 years ago.
Better, yes, but also young with lots of room for progression or of course, regression. Still, arrow up.
The Bullpen
In 2020: (Opening Day)
Kyle Crick, Richard Rodriguez, Michael Feliz, Nick Burdi, Chris Stratton, Clay Holmes, Dovydas Neverauskas, Robbie Erlin, Nik Turley, JT Brubaker
Keep in mind, this was a perpetually expanded roster due to COVID.
In 2024: (Currently)
Aroldis Chapman, David Bednar, Kyle Nicolas, Dennis Santana, Carmen Mlodzinski, Jalen Beeks, Colin Holderman, Ryan Borucki, and if you want, Domingo German could probably fit here too.
In 2020 the bullpen put up an ERA of 4.62, a historically bad bullpen that gratefully only had to handle 59 games.
This year so far, 4.57. Awful.
I look at the names and how much control the Pirates have of some of these guys, and the big arms and I want to feel good about where it’s headed, but the numbers don’t lie. If 2020 was historically bad, and it was, you’d have to agree 2024 has been worse.
So, Are the Pirates Better Off Now than in 2020?
I mean, yeah.
Truthfully, I think they’re just about back to where they were roster wise in 2017 or 2018, with more young players that should stick and more prospects coming than they had back then.
The hope heading into 2025 has to be that the starting rotation matures and flourishes with fewer restrictions to their innings availability. The bullpen has to rebound and the track record and pedigree of many of those members makes me feel it’s at least plausible plus they should have some overflow form the rotation.
The offense has not performed, and even as they have players all over the diamond locked in, they’ll need more from a whole lot of them.
It’s improved, but it could be better if they spent more on the way here if only because they’d have hopefully had more to trade along the way. Improving those returns could have put them in a better spot than they currently are, not that today is a nightmare, but had they done so, solid chance 2024 was more than wishful thinking.
There are 2 players who remain from the 2020 opening day roster and almost an entire coaching staff.
Overall, the progress they’ve made in this time is bare minimum. I think they should be farther along by now, but that doesn’t rule out getting the job done for me moving into the next few seasons.
I’d also remind that back in 2020 the club had one big contracted player named Gregory Polanco, today they have Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Mitch Keller, backed by a host of youngsters who have 3 or 5 years of team control remaining and more coming.
Feels like they’re going to need a really solid move or two in order to kick this thing over the edge a bit, but they’re very much so in a better place than they were.
I remain positive, you certainly don’t have to. I just still think I still see the momentum heading in the right direction and I really trust the talent that is emerging even if there isn’t enough of it to believe it could ever come entirely from within.
Steel City Pirates 