10-1-24 – By Josh Poe – @DaRealHanYolo on X
With the 2024 Pirates season over, there is certainly a lot to be disappointed about with this club. Whether it was the bullpen imploding or the lineup having such a tiny clutch factor, quite a few of the failures this year were glaring.
Not all of the setbacks were so obvious, though. One of the disappointments I felt most profoundly was the absence of both Johan Oviedo and Endy Rodriguez. Johan is a topic for another day, but Endy’s strengths were missed and hopefully will make him a critical piece for the Pirates in 2025.
He is only 24 years old, and while his numbers weren’t eye-popping, it will be interesting to see him get a full year. He only played in 57 games and had 186 plate appearances. Add his performance from the small sample size of 10 rehab games, and Endy looked pretty solid at the plate, batting .256.
Aside from the hitting, though, I genuinely believe the most significant strength he brings to the Bucs is his defense. If you look at his Baseball Savant page, his pop time and caught stealing are above average.
If you had watched any Pirates ball this season, you would have seen teams stealing left and right on our beleaguered Buccos. But the most important thing about it is that having him on the club is one less additional player the front office has to spend money on, and they can direct that to someone else.
With that out of the way, the hard part now comes: this offseason will have many question marks for this team, more so than the last couple of offseasons, because fans are putting pressure on the owners to do something. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen (praying that it does), but significant questions remain: Where does Endy Rodriguez fit into this team? What is his position on opening day 2025? And how is he best utilized? I want to explore a few scenarios I can see for Endy next season.
The first scenario I want to discuss is Endy becoming the starter next year. How would it look if the catchers were a combination of either Endy/ Henry Davis or Endy/Jason Delay? Notice how I didn’t mention Joey Bart. In this scenario, you move Bart to first base permanently. This makes sense because Joey Bart had a great offensive year after being acquired from the Giants. But the issue with Bart is that he hasn’t been the best at fielding behind the dish. Bart’s bat was one of the better ones on the team this year, so giving Bart the reigns at first helps kill two birds with one stone by filling a position where the Pirates are hurting and upgrading the defense at catcher. The pairing I ideally would like to see is Endy and Henry, where Endy is the starter, and Henry can ease into playing. I also wouldn’t mind seeing Delay be the backup. He is a very serviceable backup, batting .251 in 2023.
In the following scenario, Bart stays as your starting catcher, and you move Endy to first base. The issue with this is that it wastes the good defensive catcher in the making by moving him to first. The other question this raises is whether his bat matters at first. By that, does his bat warrant him starting at first? It doesn’t, seeing as first base is a valuable bat-hitting position and one the Pirates seem to need help with, so Endy probably will need to split time there. This may open the door for the Pirates to bring in another first baseman to compliment Endy; a Josh Bell reunion? This scenario is the worst possible because, in my mind, it plays like this: The Pirates put Endy at first and keep Connor Joe to platoon there. Endy doesn’t hit well enough to justify the playing time, and then he is sent back down, and we have another Henry situation on our hands.
My favorite scenario for next year would be to keep Bart behind the plate, let Endy catch a bit, and move Bryan Reynolds to first base. We have all seen the tweets about him fielding ground balls at first. If he wants to do it, this would make a lot of sense and create an exciting roster construction. You move Reynolds to first, and you actually move some money to an outfielder, which allows Endy to get eased back into catching. He could get a run at other positions, maybe right field or even, and this is a little crazy, but second base if they need it. But, what they could do with Endy is create a Ryan Doumit 2.0. Not that I want another Doumit (I don’t mean to shade you, Ryan), but I mean a guy who can catch, play first, and some right field, or whatever other positions he can try his hand at.
Whatever the Pirates decide to do with Endy Rodriguez will impact how they build the rest of their roster. This is a big year/off-season for the Pirates. Even though this season may have been disappointing (it was), the issues within this team are fixable, and I genuinely do mean it. So, have some cautious hope about next season because I think we are getting a solid player back, and I can’t wait to see his big smile back on the field!
Steel City Pirates 