Gary’s Five Pirates Thoughts – Great Scott

2-3-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

There is going to be actual Pirates baseball this month.

Man, that feels nice to say.

So let’s not waste time and jump right into it today…

1. The Case for Mike Burrows

There’s been a lot of supposing about the Pirates 5th starter. Mostly focused on the returning from injury Johan Oviedo or Rookie of the Year favorite Bubba Chandler. Those two certainly make sense, but the Pirates have other candidates such as Braxton Ashcraft and the one I’m going to talk about today, Mike Burrows.

Back in 2022, Burrows was the Pirates top starting pitching prospect, ranked even higher than Quinn Priester, but injury derailed him, twice. As a result, he’s never thrown more than 94.1 innings in a single season. But Mike isn’t a guy who should just get pushed to the bullpen without a second thought, what sets him apart is that Burrows is a pitcher as opposed to a thrower. He relies on command, rarely walks anyone, yet still gets his K’s.

There’s one reason above all that we (fans) aren’t buzzing about this kid and it’s the state of the rotation and the group of youngsters he’s swimming right next to.

Much like Ashcraft, he has an advantage in that he’s already on the 40-man roster, meaning the Pirates wouldn’t have to DFA someone else to give him a shot and the type of pitcher he is, he won’t require the warm up that many of the hard throwers will.

He’ll get a chance, and he might be a perfect slot filler should Johan Oviedo not be 100% by the time the team heads North. He could buy time for Johan and any of the other lesser polished options and potentially operate as a swing man to help them maintain the innings restrictions some of their starters will surely deal with. Oviedo will surely be held under 100-120 innings, and Ashcraft, or Bubba would likely be in the same zone. One way or another, Burrows could find his way into being the skeleton key that makes this staff work.

Following one of his very first healthy offseasons, I expect Mike to come out guns a blazin’ and I expect him to contribute meaningful innings for this club in 2025. Maybe even a the 5th starter.

2. Would the Pirates Allow Nick Yorke to Beat Out Nick Gonzales?

Let’s start here, neither of these players can just be sat on the bench in the Pirates Dugout, they both need to play. That leads me to believe one of these two will win second base, and the other will likely start in AAA.

Adam Fraizer wasn’t brought in here to start, or even play a lot, he was brought in here to be the guy on the bench instead of having a kid rot. I say that for those of you who will jump to thinking his signing is blocking one of these guys, he’s not. That doesn’t mean you have to like his signing, I sure don’t, but that’s the thinking, get a veteran to hit 200 times instead of asking a young player to sit there with a smile on their face while rust covers their bat.

Nick Gonzales had a fine year. Not so fine that he has an unrelenting grip on second base, but being a first round pick for this club, it should be enough that he’s a leader in the clubhouse for the gig. Especially as he enters his year 26 season, it’s imperative the Pirates and Nick see what he has.

After being dealt to the Pirates, Nick Yorke became one of the Pirates top offensive prospects close to MLB and he got a cup of coffee in 2024 to showcase himself a bit.

Yorke can play other positions, but he’s really best suited on the right side of the infield, at least based on what we’ve seen from him although the Pirates could elect to use him at one of the corner outfield spots as well.

Gonzales can play 3rd, SS and 2B, but he’s really best at 2B. Both have power, both changed their approach to make more contact and sacrificing some of that raw power. Neither walk enough, both have done good work to cut down on strikeouts.

It’s going to be hard to keep either of these players in AAA for long. Both have destroyed AAA while there, but playing every day may trump all that in the early going.

Just remember, it’s not “Oh my god you mean to tell me they think Adam Fraizer is better than….” it’s more like “We’re ok with Fraizer rotting on the bench, not one of these kids who need to be hitting and playing”

3. Rebounds

Pirates fans are rightly concerned that many of the same players who struggled in 2024 will now be asked to move this thing forward in 2025. This is something almost every team’s fans and I’m sure internal leadership deals with every season.

Certainly though, the Pirates have this almost everywhere you look in 2025, even with guys who performed well. You’ll have that with youth and on top of that, most free agents the Pirates sign bring the need for a rebound with them.

Think about it, it’s not a rebound we’re looking for from Paul Skenes, but we certainly need him to find ways to get outs with fewer pitches per batter. He must find ways to get a little deeper into contests as he himself has referenced utilizing the need to attack more to seek that early, weak contact.

And he was AWESOME in 2024. So of course there are questions everywhere else that you don’t have to strain your eyes to see.

Ke’Bryan Hayes needs to stay healthy, but he also needs to be more than a good defender if he is. Isiah Kiner-Falefa needs to handle the lion’s share of reps at SS, even as he’s been moved off the position just about everywhere else he’s been.

Nick Gonzales needs to own the position so many people have handed him and find a way to hold off the 30 options the Pirates have to take it from him. (I’m kidding, a little).

David Bednar needs to erase last year and be what he’s been.

The Pirates have an absolute ton of these types of candidates and it’s just as insane to assume none of them will achieve it as it is to assume all of them will. This is going to be a hard team to predict for this very reason. They might have 5 players I don’t believe have a wide range of things they could do, good or bad.

4. Middle of the Field

When you build a team with a definitive strength on the mound, it stands to reason you need a very strong defensive unit up the middle. These positions, short stop, second base and center field, are imperative parts of a pitching first operation.

So the Pirates have countered with Oneil Cruz in center, who I honestly think will do well out there, but he’s got all of a month of experience to prove it. Had they not moved him there, he’d be at short stop, where he was very much so part of the problem defensively.

Short stop is Isiah Kiner-Falefa, a sure gloved veteran who’s glove probably works better just about anywhere else. Backed by the glove only Alika Williams, Liover Peguero who has had issues defensively on the way here and isn’t a sure thing to make the club and your guess is as good as mine beyond that, maybe Nick Gonzales or Jared Triolo?

Second Base is everyone else. Gonzales, Valdez, Triolo, Bae (yeah he’s still here), Frazier, Yorke, Cook, honestly, I could keep going…

This all could add up to a strong defensive unit, but it’s anything but tightened up.

The Pirates have a lot more strikeout pitchers than they have ground ball pitchers, if they were built with 3-4 Charlie Morton’s entering a season with these questions up the middle, it would be even more hair on fire important.

That doesn’t make it irrelevant however, and IKF is a one year at best solution anyway. Answers need to start getting locked in here and unfortunately being sure isn’t going to be in the cards.

5. Great Scott

This is the first time I’ve written this weekly piece knowing it wouldn’t soon be met by a post on social media that started out “Gary Day!!!”. My friend Scott Nelson passed last week unexpectedly, leaving behind a loving family, a host of kids he coached into better players or bowlers and an avalanche of people he’d interacted with on social media not just expressing condolences to his family, but telling stories about something silly and nice he’d done for them.

Sometimes it was just sharing a picture from his high in the sky perch at work of his beloved PNC Park. Some of them were his admittedly insane “season of Cole Tucker” campaign where he tirelessly pushed for the young man to get a chance.

Social media is a lot of bad things. And Scott was none of them.

If you jumped online to bitch about your back hurting, there he was to sympathize and tell a joke. Frustrated by a move the Pirates made, yup, there was Scott with a joke, an example of something they’ve done that was even dumber but most of all, you left the conversation smiling.

He endlessly supported people he befriended online. Yeah, I had my Gary Day!!!, but Pirate Queen Banshee had his near constant petitioning for her to be named number one fan along with her husband. Saxboy Billy was new on the scene a year ago and while some of us were still standing back wondering what this was all about, Scott just walked up virtually and said, hey, that’s funny.

I was lucky enough to meet him at more than a few games over the years, and he spoke in person much the same as he did online. Something more of us should be able to say, but can’t.

When I say, I’ve never written without a Gary Day proclamation, I mean it. Because before I submitted my first test article, for my very first writing gig, I sent it to three people for their advice. Dejan Kovacevic, Mike DeCourcy and Scott Nelson. I thought sure the first two were going to rip it apart, and I knew Scott would be honest but not crush my ambition.

I know there are bots out there and what not, but there are real people behind those words on the screen. We’ve just lost one of the very best examples of how you can do nothing but be honest, kind and faithful and still be very well liked.

I’ll miss you Scott, you were one of the good ones.