6-9-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
The Pirates completed a series sweep against the Phillies at home and it puts the team 1 game under .500 at home on the season. With the Marlins coming to town, the Pirates have a good shot to get that figure into positive territory, as long as they don’t get ahead of themselves.
Lets Go!
1. The Ability to Practice Patience
Doing what I do, it should come as no surprise that by this point in a season I’m usually pretty damn tired of hearing questions about guys like Bubba Chandler and when he might debut.
Look, I don’t know a delicate way to get this point across so I’m just gonna say it as bluntly as I possibly can. I’d imagine it’ll happen when they need him.
Pitching is not this club’s issue, especially in the starting rotation. I struggle to have this discussion without it sounding like I have no faith in Bubba, or that I think he’ll fail up here, but that’s not how I feel at all, I simply think he has some work to do, and certainly hasn’t been so flawless that I’d want to move anyone from this rotation.
Not yet anyway.
I’m so conflicted on this whole thing. For one, Bubba is exciting and has insane stuff, there should be real excitement about seeing him up here. AND I have that in spades for the kid. I also don’t think he’ll be better THIS YEAR than anyone the Pirates have starting currently.
Truth be told, I’m not even sure I’d choose him over Hunter Barco when the opportunity arrives via injury, trade or underperformance.
This isn’t a situation where you have Jordan Lyles holding a spot in the rotation and posting a 5+ ERA, so you can just lament the cheap Pirates for not promoting a kid to save money down the road. It’s more a situation of having one of the best rotations in baseball, a ton of young pitching already in line in front of Bubba who have more than held their own in their opportunities and a top prospect who flatly has MLB stuff and an obvious need to button up some things with his command and control.
If there are injuries, yup, get his ass up here. If an early trade opportunity comes up for Andrew Heaney, ok, jump on it and get him up here, but man, I don’t understand the constant guessing and wishing and acting like he’s going to save something that frankly doesn’t need saved right now.
Sometimes it’s simply ok to be patient with a prospect. Nobody says a word when teams like the Dodgers have top prospects stuck in AAA, and if the Pirates had one who was already sitting on 15-20 homeruns in AAA I’d be hair on fire screaming for his call up, because they need offensive help, but this rotation isn’t even in conceptual trouble.
They have 4 guys rolling, and one spot clearly designated for youngsters and returning from injury players, a spot they wouldn’t have at all had Jared Jones stayed healthy. With this one spot they need to see Harrington, Ashcraft, Burrows, Mlodzinski, Bubba, and Oviedo likely get time.
Not a single player I mentioned in that group deserves a shot more or less than Bubba, but none of them should be afterthoughts either.
In short, let this play out, and stop pretending it has to happen quickly. It doesn’t, and it’s not hurting anyone, it’s simply being patient because for once they’ve built an area up to the level where being patient is possible, and prudent.
You know, the goal you shoot for in development.
2. The Trade Deadline Conundrum
I have talked about this eventuality for close to a month. Specifically, the scenario in which Don Kelly gets the ship turned around to a degree, but the Pirates still have a bunch of rental pieces available to trade, many of which helped Kelly turn it around.
It’s going to take a stomach of steel for fans if this continues.
See, trading guys when your team is actually playing well is rarely as easy to accept as when your team is struggling. And you’ll never be able to overcome the math. MLB players headed out for MiLB players in return.
Even as I started raising this issue long ago, starting to see improvement now and knowing it’s still coming is weighing on me, mainly because I know so so many of you are going to take it like an admission that they need to change things, and at least to a degree, you’ll be right.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa is hitting almost .300, and he’s hovered there all year. He’s played OK SS and the Pirates don’t have a completely logical plug in replacement groomed.
There is no chance fans will see this as anything short of “what they always do” or “trading good players for the damn future again”. Again, you’re right, and when I say they really have to do this, I’m right too.
IKF is going to be a free agent in 2026. If the Pirates want him back, they have a mechanism to make that happen, it’s called spending money. If they were truly in any conceivable playoff race, including within shouting distance of the final Wild Card spot, holding on to him to take your shot would make sense, but as we sit here, it doesn’t, and they won’t.
It’s also going to hurt the team. Not long term, in fact, it’s not entirely a sure thing it’ll hurt them significantly even this year. But they have to do it.
To not make a move like this, well, it would be like not making your car payment so you can afford gas for it.
Fans tend to believe there is an extra or better chance to sign a guy if they remain on your team, but realistically, it’s all about money. Spend it or don’t. If you want IKF in 2026 he’ll be available, he won’t be anyone’s first choice for anything and if the Pirates step up he could easily be theirs.
The point is, the Pirates have a ton of guys on expiring contracts, and as we approach that time of year, I’m saying, take your Pepto, cause Don Kelly’s job at least in some areas is going to get more challenging.
Andrew Heaney, Caleb Ferguson, IKF, Tommy Pham, Adam Frazier, Ryan Borucki, make up the primary list of guys who will walk one way or another and I expect them to move just about all of them. Of this list, Pham might be the only one whom you’d get just about nothing in return for, so I see all of them being offered, often and all the way until the clock strikes deadline over.
There are others they could move, but these are the musts. Regardless of who the GM is really.
The only way this would change is if Ben Cherington has some plausible opportunity to save his job and it’s based on the record this year. If he’s close to something like that, you could see him decide right now matters more than next year or the next few and he might decide he needs to just hold off and see how it plays out.
I guess another way is if say the Pirates suffer some injury issues and find themselves completely bereft of someone to back fill a position, or they’re short on innings, or something baseball related like that, you could see them change this, but in all likelihood, its a great bet everyone I named here is gone come August.
Buck up, you’ve been warned, long before they had the nuts to make you care again.
3. Two Promoted from Bradenton
Konnor Griffin and Will Taylor are both promoted from Low A Bradenton to High A Greensboro yesterday afternoon.
The 19 year old Konnor has been ridiculous honestly, in a little over 200 at bats he’s hit .338, with a .396 OBP and an OPS of .932 with 26 stolen bases and 9 homeruns.
He’s hitting just about everything, with a bit of a deficiency in breaking stuff the team would like to see improve. Don’t expect his numbers to nosedive in Greensboro, it’s notoriously a hitters part and Konnor should do very well there.
Will Taylor was a 5th round pick last year, is 22 and he too has been insanely good. in just over 100 at bats he’s hit 4 homers, stolen 8 bases, hit .333, On base .424 and OPS of .993.
These won’t be the last from this Bradenton team and the moves will continue up through the system. Axiel Plaz has a shot to move fairly soon, and while he just got there, I can’t imagine Wyatt Sanford the Pirates 2nd rounder in 2024 lasting too long at the Low A level either, he too is 19.
The effort to get interesting bats closer to MLB is underway, and the charge is going to be led by Altoona on down.
Bradenton will also need to get prepped to accept DSL players before too long, some big prospects down there too.
In part, some of this stuff is why it’s imperative the Pirates move off the guys on walk years I talked about in point 2, and force guys like Nick Yorke, Billy Cook, whoever you think needs mentioned to MLB, if only to allow the rest of the system to adjust up.
Systems are never stagnant, but when they’re healthy, they force quicker decisions and urgency from the bottom up. They create the stress that leads to opportunity.
4. Spencer Horwitz
The Pirates traded quite a bit to get Spencer Horwitz, and he’s coming off a fairly major injury and preparing to play in his 20th game as a Bucco.
His .212 average and .581 OPS are not what we envisioned as helpful, but again, it’s too early to pretend we have him all figured out.
That’s going to play out as the year rolls on, but safe to say, there’s room for a lot better and there should be an expectation too.
He’s had Matt Hague as his coach for years and has had success with him before getting to Pittsburgh, it feels like what we’ve watched so far has flown under the radar as the team itself around him played better and his bat has almost been forgotten about.
Defense is going great over at 1st, but they simply have to start seeing what he is. If he’s not good enough, 1B is still a hole they’ll have to deal with again. If he is, they have the position answered for quite some time.
Now, I’ve heard that part of the “chronic” nature of Spencer’s wrist injury had to do with a part of his swing that was putting a lot of stress on his wrist, and the team has worked with him before rehab even started to change a few things in an effort to prevent this from cropping up again.
In the past 5 days he’s put in extra work every day with Hague and there is some excitement about what he’s gotten done.
It’s important to remember, Spencer is exactly the type of return we should hope for in trades to bolster this MLB roster. Meaning, he’s got some MLB resume to read, he’s got a ton of team control, he plays a position of need and well, and he has room to get better.
It may not work. But these are the swings this team needs to take. The guy I always hear they should have gotten instead, Josh Naylor, will be a free agent in 2026, and while yes, he’d have absolutely provided more than Spencer likely will in 2025, he’s also be traded at the deadline, and send them right back to the board looking for help at 1B in 2026.
Getting better or better players isn’t always a linear upward trend. In fact, most of the time it’s more of a gamble. The more sure you are, the more it costs.
Give this one time, I think it’ll look like a much better deal as the season plays out.
5. Don’t Forget, the Pirates Just Made BIG Changes to the Development System in 2024
I say this because people scream for change, and rarely think beyond the GM. This GM could be relieved of his duties regardless, but changes like this won’t fully show their merit in full for years.
Performance Department: John Baker, who previously served as the director of coaching and player development, was moved to a newly created position, the The Vice President of Performance.
Performance Science: Instead of having separate buckets for player development, this focus will bring all the elements like Nutrition, strength training, performance and mental strength under the same umbrella so they work together. What was happening is on an island, each department asked a bit too much to not overwhelm kids with more than they could handle. This gets all this important stuff in there but ensures baseball remains number 1.
Baseball Operations: New leadership and staff in areas like international scouting and research and development were brought in to try to get more out of these crucial areas where a small market team simply can’t afford to miss.
I’m not telling you they have nailed all these hires, or every aspect will now experience nothing but success, but a lot of the changes you ask for, a lot of the things “the Pirates can’t do” or “aren’t good at”, well, they agreed, and they made changes.
Maybe too late for Ben, but many of these changes will outlast him, just like many of Huntington’s were just shuffled or replaced in this one.
There’s a reason bats are moving faster this year, and no, it’s not just one draft class, it’s a change in focus on what they need to see from prospects, and it’s never been more focused on the field than now.
The structure they’re using now is a lot more similar to what other teams do, and while John Baker is a great guy, he was a mental strength coach hired to oversee an entire system. Probably the biggest failure of Ben’s list of failures. Of all the things you could experiment with, the development system for an effort like what Ben was trying to do when he came on board seems like a bad idea, and it’s since been proven it certainly was.
Changes might have come too late, but please stop telling me they need to change this system, they just did. It doesn’t work or change as fast as you want, just like government.
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