3-10-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
Spring Training takes a turn this week.
Just about every week of Spring Training represents a different level of competition. A different mindset for entering these games.
While most of the time leading up to now has been cloaked in the specter of “they’re working on something” or, “pitchers are way ahead of hitters” or, pick your cliche for the early Spring contests, now it shifts to playing closer to full games. Starters trying to reach the 5th or 6th inning. Hitters seeing said pitcher 2 or 3 times.
It also starts to at least create conversations when that NRI gets a start now. We’ve seen a ton of DJ Stewart this Spring, and if it continues from here on out, well, you won’t have to guess how seriously they’re considering him as a first base patch.
If a player is still in camp at this point, and they’re playing, solid chance they’re in the running. Cuts matter now, they’re no longer the easy let’s get this guy over to MiLB camp before he gets hurt and starts accruing MLB service time cuts.
Bottom line, it starts getting real now.
That’s not to say nothing was gained by anyone in the first few weeks, or that nothing you saw before this week mattered, it’s just to say as the Spring progresses you require less and less filtering to know what you’re seeing.
1. The Opening Day Roster isn’t Final
Whatever roster the Pirates land on after the last pitch of Spring Training is not the roster they’ll finish the season with.
Now, that is painfully obvious, but it needs said because so many people expend boatloads of energy actively fighting about the last few spots.
Often, the anger is a direct player comparison. Let’s say Adam Frazier makes the team, a very good bet since they went out and signed him. Now he’s going to be directly compared to a guy like Nick Yorke. Is Nick a better player right now? I mean, I personally think so. But it isn’t always about that. The team may see Frazier getting like 10 at bats a week as a fill in, and for Adam, that’s fine, for Nick, not so much. As the season plays out, decisions like this will almost entirely be forgotten. In fact, this is the single biggest misconception fans have.
Very rarely is your 26-man your best 26 players.
Early on, there could be decisions made in the bullpen spawned by options. When you start to amass the group that’s going to form the bulk of your bullpen innings, you very often make the assumption you’ll need innings from almost all of them, and you know some of them are disposable.
Meaning, you take a guy North because he has no options, you think he’ll provide you some valuable innings and if you choose to DFA him now, those valuable innings are going to come from someone else, but you’ve likely lost those 20, 30, 40 innings you hoped to get from that fella.
Do a ton of that, deal with injuries and poor performances and well, come July you’ll be scouring the waiver wire hoping to find a non-corpse to help you out for a series.
Reality dictates you’ll wind up doing some of that anyway, so you make a decision early on to take the lesser player North, hope he does better than you assumed but get that set of innings out of him before ultimately switching to one of those other options. Maybe you use them to eat junk innings in blowouts, maybe you use him early before hitters get their timing all the way back, maybe it explodes and you cut the guy in 2 weeks. All possible outcomes you know about going into it.
Now, does that mean say Joey Wentz “beat out” Kyle Nicolas? I mean, technically, but lets just say it’s not a side by side comparison of which one will do more in their remaining career, or even who likely contributes more this season. It just means they want to make sure they get the 25-30 innings for sure they wanted and needed to get out of Wentz. Well, try to.
This doesn’t mean you have to like every decision they make. Some players don’t deserve even that level of grace, and most of the time, the team will make that clear by who they do wind up cutting, see Yohan Ramirez…
Don’t get me wrong, some of these decisions blow up in a team’s face and sometimes teams hang on too long trying to be right, or valuing that 5-10 more innings they hoped they’d see before pulling the rip cord.
I’m just saying, it’s not always this guy is better than that guy, in fact depending on the position I’d almost say it rarely is.
2. Last Year’s Stats
The perception of a player is very often dictated by their stats the year before. When you’re talking about young players, man, that can really be deceiving.
Let’s say you have a guy like Nick Gonzales. Fairly solid rookie campaign by most accounts, but he only managed a mid .600’s OPS, which is a below average place to be. He handled second base well, dealt with an injury, fought for opportunity and ultimately put together something that he and the team felt pretty good about.
But those stats don’t account for pitchers not having a book on him early on, or his struggles once they did, or his pushback on the new form of attack or his ability to put his bat on the ball in a big situation for a productive out.
Sure, all that stuff contributes to his overall stats, but when you’re trying to predict what you’re going to get out of him in 2025, well, it’s insufficient.
He’ll enter this year with a “book”, but that book will already be outdated because pitchers don’t know what he worked on in the offseason. He’s got a baseline laid from 2024, a low water mark he now has to best, because what was good for a rookie, is likely not good enough for a 2nd year player. Interesting is no longer good enough.
If he’s made an adjustment to stop getting beat on a slider away, pitchers will adjust and bust him up and in, is he ready for it?
It’s nice to know his stats from last year, it gives you a look at what could be, but it also doesn’t start becoming predictive until he’s laid down 3-4, even 5 years of stats, like Bryan Reynolds where you now expect his performance.
The way baseball works, by the time you get there, people are already worried about you being traded, extended, or if it took you long enough to get there, you could be in danger of aging out before you even finish arbitration.
Similarly, reading off the cumulative stats of minor league players is silly on it’s face. To just call it misleading is selling it far short. Take a guy like Billy Cook, he’s 26 years old and he’s spent 4 years in the minors. Struggling at times, having some results in others and finally looking a lot more like a player in 2024 especially at the AAA level both for Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
His cumulative stats are rather uninspiring, his 2024 numbers are exciting.
Neither on their own are close to the whole story, but when a guy takes a step like Cook did, you almost have to find out where that heel turn happened, and really examine the player he became, rather than accounting for the entire journey. Like, you take a trip in your car to the beach and you wash your car when you get there to get all the bugs and tar chips off your vehicle. You’re looking for a fresh start, you aren’t looking to relive every cicada you smashed on I-95 or every Racoon you accidentally re-killed on the berm of the highway. Some of those bugs for minor leaguers live in High A or Double A.
This works the other way too. Just because a guy had great numbers in AA somewhere doesn’t mean he gets 3 more to replicate them at a higher level.
3. Should We Worry About Heaney?
I mean, no, not yet.
He has an extremely translatable record of providing innings, limiting walks, eating innings and, well, being average. This isn’t the type of guy who is going to hold off a charging kid, but he’s a guy with a skill set this team lacks, starting pitchers who have thrown 160+ innings in MLB while keeping his stats in the average to slightly above area.
That’s why he’s here. Not because they think he’s better than Bubba. Not because they can now trade someone else. He’s here because aside from Mitch Keller, they simply don’t have guys who have thrown a ton of innings. Doesn’t mean Paul Skenes won’t take a huge jump this year or Jared Jones will give you more than he did, just means those are maybes and hopes, this guy has and if given the ball enough, will again.
I wouldn’t worry about him at all, especially as he continually tells you he’s just getting it dialed in after a late start to Spring.
This is a guy who is going to go out there and sometimes give you 4 innings and leave with a 6 run deficit, other times he’ll give you 6 and have only given up 2 runs. He’ll give up hits, he’ll rarely walk you, and more than anything, he’ll leave you in a position to compete for the outcome of the game.
Truthfully, he’s a guy with so much history, it’s very hard to assume he’ll be much more or less than he’s ever been. That’s going to be a guy who competes, and gets you results more often than he doesn’t.
A very nice to have low water mark for a stable of youngsters itching to get their career started.
Hear Andrew tell you himself about how Spring goes for him….
4. Tsung-Che Cheng Makes His Mark
Cheng was added to the 40-man in December of 2023 following a successful burst through Greensboro and finishing in Altoona. As with many international signings, the clock for protection from the Rule 5 expired before his journey to MLB was realized.
Signed in 2019, the Taiwanese youngster is now 23 years old, coming off a season that saw him struggle in Altoona and thrive in his end of the season promotion to AAA Indianapolis.
He has tools as evidenced by his scouting grades, Hit: 50 | Power: 45 | Run: 60 | Field: 55 | Arm: 55 and he’s coming into his own at the right time for a team that simply doesn’t have a lot of potentials to fill the SS position on this club, especially close to making it.
Of course he has competition, Liover Peguero is still around, but he’s struggled to make the jump himself and his time on the 40-man has to start providing something for the big club or passing him by won’t be much more than a blink.
Cheng is exciting. He’s fast, he has a really good contact skill and his swing is simplified almost to the point of looking casual. He can field the position, improving one of his more glaring issues toward the end of last year which was moving to his right with range. Aside from hitting the baseball I’m not sure you could ask for a more positive aspect of his game to improve.
I’m encouraged by the Spring he’s had so far, and he’s absolutely going to get more time in AAA to keep making his case, but Tsung-Che Cheng could be a missing piece most fans have long since stopped paying attention to.
5. Jack and Bae
Unless the Pirates go out and get another outfielder, it’s really starting to feel like Jack Suwinski or Ji-hwan Bae are going to make this club. Is this the 4th OF spot, or the starter with Pham moving to the bench? Who knows.
Both of these players have had more than a shot to win a spot or keep one more accurately, but they both have skills that this team is really short on.
Jack obviously is power. Bae, speed.
Jack’s power is sapped by lack of contact. Bae’s speed is sapped by his poor jumps and not being on base enough to begin with.
That said, both of these guys have really shown up this Spring. All the grain of salt stuff I talked about earlier applies, but you can only perform in the situations you’re put in and both of these guys have looked different.
Each is sporting a swing change, each has altered their approach at the dish, both can play all 3 outfield spots. Bae can play a little 2B, Jack is working on adding 1B to his bag of tricks.
I’m confident we’ll see both of them in Pittsburgh as we play this season out.
Regardless of your feelings before the season, it’s hard to deny how different each of them look.
Recently it was reported that the Pirates offered Alex Verdugo 8 million to play in Pittsburgh this year. He didn’t take it and kept flirting so the Pirates pulled the trigger on Tommy Pham and this has left the door cracked for a lefty to make the club.
One of these guys should probably make the club out of camp. The power need to me is bigger than the speed, so if all things are equal, I’d lean Jack, but these are two guys many fans have pronounced dead, so either resurrecting their career in 2025 would be a huge bonus.
All we can hope is that final cuts are very hard for this franchise.
Steel City Pirates 