Projecting the Pirates is as Hard as Being a Fan

2-5-2025 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

It’s hard to project this team, just like being a Pirates fan is not for the faint of heart.

I heard this for the first time back in the 1980’s. I was playing Transformers at my friends house and his old man was watching the Pirates and… Boom Von Hayes hit a walk off homerun for the Phillies to beat the Bucs 8-7 securing the victory for Phil’s closer Kent Tekulve. Yeah that Kent Tekulve.

My buddy’s dad, an old Italian man who’d worked hard as a metal caster his entire life put his Stroh’s down on the side table and said “Boys, Being a Pirates fan ain’t for the faint of heart”.

I’m sure he didn’t invent the phrase, but to me, he might as well have, every time I hear it or think it I flash back to that much simpler time when all I knew was this was my baseball team, they wore black and gold, and not too long ago they were the best team in the world.

It’s been a long time since those simple times, and I’ve seen a lot change with the game, this franchise and fandom in general.

So have many of you. Maybe you stepped away for awhile after Bonds left for San Francisco. Maybe you hung on thinking maybe, just maybe Jeff King could fill his shoes. Some left and jumped back in when the Pirates young core augmented by a few key vets shot up the standings and into the Wild Card in 2013. I’m sure you stayed for a minute after that.

Maybe some of you are just here because Paul Skenes, or Oneil Cruz, or Bryan Reynolds came along and piqued your interest again. Even just for a couple summer nights out.

Hell, some are here just because Cutch is back. Period.

We aren’t all the same. That’s the point. But one thing is very true, if you’re under the age of 45, you’ve never seen your baseball team advance to the World Series, and far too few opportunities to dream it was a bounce or two away.

All of that withstanding, what happens on social media, it’s really more like me giving you a passionate review for Wicked. Based on a review I read from someone else mind you, as I’ve never seen the film and have no desire to do so. But, I now have a vehicle to complain about the movie existing, and if I so choose, to mercilessly make fun of anyone who disagrees.

I have no doubt there are passionately angry fans out there who gnash their teeth through 9 innings every night and then expel rage on the internet to vent in that mix too, but at this point, they’ve sent most of the people who just want to watch Cutch and pull for kids and ignore all the stuff they know is wrong in the back of their heads scurrying for the shadows.

This has turned the online fights from bad to worse. See now it’s disgruntled people, arguing with each other about either being mad at the right entity, or simply mad that someone isn’t mad enough.

It’s exhausting. Truly.

My problem is, as much as I hate the way MLB is administered, as much as I despise that my owner won’t risk a nickel to make a dollar, as frustrated as I am that our GM is almost just as risk adverse, I still love baseball, and I still love the Pirates.

I’m going to get mad at them.

I’m going to get too high on a player, and I’ll completely discount another player’s ability.

I’m going to stay up insanely late on a West Coast trip, 5 straight nights and drag my ass to work in the morning with a 48oz cup of coffee and a eye crusted over.

I’m going to write about them good or bad. I’m going to write about kids who are years away and guys who should be or could be traded.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not the faint of heart type. I’m betting if you’re still with me, neither are you.

So here’s the thing.

This is a very, very unfriendly team to projection

And I mean the professional projections like Fan Graphs or Steamer types. But I also mean you and me, or the guy grumbling on social media too.

And in many ways, they’re stuck with a lot of it for a minute. Some of it you can’t spend your way out of, like Cruz is a projection nightmare, but you aren’t going to spend him out of your plans, feel me?

Projections are based on past performance. When there is no past performance, say for a rookie, the best these systems can do is apply minor league stats to a formula. This formula accounts for harder competition, all sorts of factors.

We fans are doing this too. In our heads. We’re hoping for so and so to do such and such. You know, projecting what they’ll do.

All of these projection models also have a critical decision to make for hitters or pitchers. They have to decide how many at bats or innings a guy is going to go or get.

They do a pretty good job by in large, but if they grade you anywhere from 75-85 if they’re kind enough to even attempt predicting a win total, and your roster is largely young, or untested at the MLB level, solid chance they don’t really know what you are or where you’ll wind up. Essentially, they know you aren’t the best or the worst.

If you walk through this team’s roster, and the options they have who will ultimately start in AAA, you have very few projectable players there that you can expect any accuracy. Bryan Reynolds, David Bednar, Andrew McCutchen, Mitch Keller and even though it’s unfair to do so, Paul Skenes. Even Bednar tossed a major monkey wrench in the system with his disaster season and every year of Cutch could be the year he hits the wall.

Everyone else has something that makes it insanely hard.

Think about Jared Jones. Great number 2 right? I mean that’s what the fan in you says anyway. Now projection models see a player who had a great start, and meh finish. Steamer for instance projects Jared to go 10-10 (which makes me wonder if they choose W/L vs their team’s overall projection) with a 3.90 ERA. Hey, that’s fair, again, they’re basing that largely off what he did last year, padding in extra innings this time with 167. These numbers would actually be an improvement on what he did in his rookie season, 6-8, 4.16 ERA in 121 innings.

Again, a really solid rookie year. Probably not the numbers you had in your head though right? I mean your impression of him is from the first half, then he got injured and you excused everything else right?

Steamer can’t predict if Jared adds a pitch (psst… he is), they can’t predict how his body will adapt to continuing to stretch out, or how much more efficient he could be if he manages to fully implement said pitch.

Last season he surrendered 18 homeruns in 121.2 innings, this year Baseball Reference has him keeping all but 16 in the yard but somehow still only pitching 121 innings.

Explain that?

I could do this all day. How do you project Oneil Cruz? Was last year about recovery and rust? Will the position change help at the plate? Will he stick?

Name a player I’ve likely got a conversation just like this for you.

It’s why fans wanted them to go out and buy or trade for more projectable help.

Projections, much like the betting odds are right more than they’re wrong, especially when there’s a lot of data. When there isn’t, like I’ve just described for the Pirates, or the Reds for that matter, projecting outcomes is very challenging and more importantly, not gospel.

You’d obviously prefer to be projected to win 114 games, but that costs a lot more than anyone owning this team ever would spend, regardless of their last name.

And I didn’t even touch how you project a AAA player not on the 40-man with like 14 innings under his belt. Starting with when does he start?

They’ve got more than a few of those too.

They won’t all trend positive, but if enough of them do, well, you never know.

The projections are rightly middling. As should your expectations be.

Just remember, the very best thing that could happen for this club is for Ben Cherington to be right a lot more than he’s wrong.

We’ll See.