10-24-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
The natives are restless, at least some of them.
The last time there was more focus on trying to convince the owner to sell the team, or fire every individual who works for him instead of the actual on field product was 2019 and that complaining and posturing ultimately led to a regime change.
It’s been 5 years, and here we are again.
Thing is, they’re in a different place than they were back in 2019.
Here was their top 10 prospect list way back when, and this is after trading Starling Marte who wanted to leave rather than face a rebuild he’d surely have been traded during anyway.
Mitch Keller, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz, Quinn Priester, Liover Peguero, Travis Swaggerty, Brennan Malone, Sammy Siani, Jared Oliva, and Cody Bolton.
These players were the backing for a team chalk full of players nearing the end of team control via Arbitration and a host of players who probably shouldn’t have been there to begin with.
They had some players, just not enough and aside from maybe Joe Musgrove and Bryan Reynolds, not many you’d really want to put all your eggs in with. After all, Musgrove was hardly established, and Bryan had just wrapped up a pretty damn good rookie season but he too was anything but a sure thing.
That’s not what this team is currently. They’ve extended a few players and everyone else has years of team control.
The Starting rotation is fleshed out, they’ve at least got some anchors in the position player crop and more kids close.
There’s work to do, and the owner will make it harder than it need be, but there’s a reason I don’t jump on board with all the current day complaining and attempting to get the owner to sell. First, I watched what happened last time, and at best, that’s what we’d get again, maybe that’s actually a good thing if it were to happen again. Second, I think despite popular belief, the team itself will make it at the very least, uncomfortable to carry this all that deep into the season.
It’s not that I actively want him to NOT sell. It’s not even that I believe he never will. It’s just in my eyes, something that will take significant time and attention to both create pressure, and keep the pressure even as most baseball fans in the city are long since on to the Steelers or Penguins, or even a Pitt Football team that could be 7-0 after tonight. OK, Penn State too, just so I don’t ignore how many of you come back home to Pittsburgh.
That natural lull will lead right into the season and man, when Paul Skenes is capping his 3rd shutout of the season in May, I just think the cries to sell will be slowly replaced by the audible sound of cringing when people who have heavily invested in this “movement” try to keep it alive even as you start to move on to rooting for the players on the field.
I don’t begrudge anyone trying. I don’t dislike them or think they’re doing wrong, I guess I just think the timing is funny, because if I’m honest, I think they will indeed get better next year.
Now, it’s only fair that I talk about why I feel they’ll improve and as is tradition here on SteelCityPirates.com, I’m going to talk about the reasons they might not improve too.
Top Reasons to Expect Improvement
The Pitching Staff is Real and Deep – I’m not going to do the whole list of guys and start telling you who goes to the pen or rotation, instead, I’m just going to leave it here, this club for the first time I can recall can enter a season with no additions to the rotation and it would be very hard to claim they were making a mistake. There’s room to grow and reason to expect them to do so too. That’s not to say I’m banking on every pitcher to take a step forward, if they only had 5 guys I thought could start, well, I’m simply not saying this. The backing of others gives me the faith they’ll find 5 who carry most of the weight.
Paul Skenes and Jared Jones Aren’t Just things to Hope For – Yeah, double dipping on the pitching, but for a different reason. Last offseason, the Pirates were excited to look toward these two last year, but it’s one thing to be excited about what could be, and another entirely to have already seen it. This year, when they look to add, it’s with the knowledge they have arguably the hardest part to acquire knocked out and it’s my belief that this, paired with an increased sense of urgency will cause more signings that fit, as opposed to shots at guys who might.
Oneil Cruz is Back to Square 2 – The Pirates must have a star, and I mean a game wrecker type, Oneil Cruz is their very best shot at one who’s already on the team. Most of 2024 was about finishing rehab, trusting the healing process and more than anything, working his way back to the player he was when 2023 ended for him. As the season rolled on, he got better holding off strike outs, hitting lefties and stealing bases. Center field is still a bit of an adventure and I think we can all agree we’d like to see a bit more power. He’s in great position to really show up in 2025.
Top Reasons to Expect More of the Same
Options Aren’t Sure Bets – The things that encourage, can just as easily discourage when it comes to baseball. As someone smart once told me, if you have 3 options, you probably don’t have a good choice in the first place. Well, if that’s the case, the Pirates have a whole lot of “not good choice” spots around the diamond. I can paint a positive picture of the catching situation with Endy, Henry and Joey Bart, or, I can remind you Joey has not done what he did last year before and defensively he’s not all that good, Endy just missed an entire season and well, you watched Henry hit right? The optimist in my likes to think that’s 3 cracks at production, but they could just as easily swing and miss on all 3. I could do this all around the infield or outfield, I could really do it with the bullpen.
Until I See a Multi-year Free Agent Signing…- If you’re going to “shop in a different aisle” as we’ve heard now for at least a year, there’s a solid chance you’re going to have to secure more than the current season to lure them. Yeah, you can give a reliever 10.5 million, you’ll probably get them for a season, but you open the door to a lot more players if you’re willing to offer 2 years at 7 million per.
Coaching – How else can I say it? It was my belief that if you’re going to return almost everyone who was rostered in 2024, but you expect different results, you have to change the coaching. Some guys will get better simply because they have talent and they grow into their bodies a bit, but on a team like this where you have questions all over the place, well, I haven’t seen the ability to identify and deploy the best performers regularly enough. Everyone can point at the bullpen choices, but every coach in the league sucks at this to their fans. To me, I look at Oneil Cruz, who hit lights out against left handed pitching post All Star Break and a coach who still took his clear and away best hitter and dropped him in the order every time they faced one. I’ve moved on from this subject, if only because the team has, but that doesn’t mean I accepted it happily. Let me put it this way, even if they manage to make the playoffs in 2025, I’m fairly certain I’ll wonder if it could have been better. If we were going to see a change in coaching style from the same coach, I think we’d have seen it in 2024, especially the second half.
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