North Shore Nine

If you attended Piratesfest this year, you could feel there was a different energy around the place compared to most years. The Front Office hammered home the 14 win improvement from 2022 to 2023, sang the praises of the current squad, and said that this was the year the Pirates could compete for the NL Central Division Title. The Pirates are fully selling the idea that this is the chance for the organization to win their first ever divisional crown and make the playoffs for the first time since 2015.

Talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. Which is why those words from Ben Cherington and Travis Williams ring so hallow, because the way the Pirates have approached this offseason has not been in any way substantially different than how the previous Ben Cherington era teams have approached it. We are now at the time where pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training, and the games are starting very soon. Rosters are becoming more or less finalized, so what have the Pirates done this off-season to move the needle with the players they’ve brought in? Judging on the amount of certified known talent they’ve brought in, not enough to push them over the top.

The Free Agent Signings

The 2022-23 offseason was a big deal for many in terms of how much money the Pirates dished out. They spent close to 30+ million dollars in free agency to advertise the bridge year, capping everything off with a surprise Bryan Reynolds extension coming in April of the 2023 season. This off-season has been a step backward. Sure, Andrew McCutchen is back on the same deal he had last year at 5 million, but there hasn’t been the next progression in spending. Pirates fans had real hopes for free agency after Jason Mackey said that the Pirates were going to be “shopping in a different part of the store” and Ben Cherington said at Piratesfest that they had engaged numerous players about multi-year deals.

Instead of these multi-year deals, we got the Rich Hill signing with Martin Perez as an 8 million dollar rental who will probably be offloaded at the trade deadline. We went from giving Carlos Santana 6.25 million to giving Rowdy Tellez less than 3 million. We went from giving Austin Hedges 5 million to finding an even worse catcher in Yasmani Grandal and giving him 2.5 million plus incentives. You can argue that Chapman at 10.5 million is the big change in spending but ultimately paying that much for a rental reliever also doesn’t move the needle too much in terms of competing for the central. The 2022 Pirates also would’ve gone out and signed someone like Rowdy Tellez, 2023 Yasmani Grandal would not have looked out of place batting next to Hoy Park in 2021. There has been a distinct lack of improvement in terms of quality free agent signings which the Pirates desperately need to supplement the core.

The Trades

The Pirates have made a few trades that mostly have been focusing on targeting unseen upside in the forms of Edward Olivares and Marco Gonzales. In a vacuum, these are good moves that any competing team makes (look at the Braves making moves for guys like Jarred Kelenic). I actually really like the Olivares trade even if we now have a glut of DH’s on the current roster. There is reasonable upside in trading for Marco Gonzales at 2.75 million even if I am dubious of the number of innings he can reasonably pitch this year.

The trades made have been significantly more interesting talent wise than any of the free agent signings we’ve made, but they also are not the impact moves the Pirates truly needed to be competitive. Marco Gonzales recovering his best form is still a backend starter who lives in the low 4 ERA range, and Olivares is a platoon bat for lefties who can hit for major power but is almost useless out in the field. These do not push the Pirates past teams like the Reds or Cubs who finished ahead of them last season.

The Lack of Impact Talent

The Pirates have brought in 9 guys with MLB playing time in 2023. Presumably these are guys they expect to be able to compete to make the 26-man opening day roster: Andrew McCutchen, Marco Gonzales, Martin Perez, Rowdy Tellez, Edward Olivares, Yasmani Grandal, Aroldis Chapman, Billy McKinney, and Ali Sanchez. The combined bWAR of these players is 2.4, or about as valuable as Jack Suwisnki was in 2023. Carlos Santana, who was deemed too expensive, was worth 2.7 bWAR on his own last season. In order for this offseason to work out, you need to get productive seasons from most of these players. Especially on the pitching front where Gonzales and Perez are looking to be your number 2 and 3 starters heading into the season.

Bounceback seasons happen all the time, it’s partially what made the Pirates runs in 2013-2015 so special. However, with the teams around the Pirates being so vunerable, (Fangraphs and PECOTA don’t project any Central team to win more than 85 games) this was the time to strike and take action instead of depending on 6 guys to rediscover their careers here. The Cardinals went and got a Sonny Gray, the Cubs signed Shota Imanaga and even the Brewers went and got Rhys Hoskins after dealing Corbin Burnes. The Orioles got Burnes from the Brewers with their notoriously low payroll. The teams around the Pirates have put more of an effort to bring impact talent than the Pirates have and it’s going to cost them in the regular season.

There’s too Much Talent to be Doing This

The frustrating thing about this offseason is that the Pirates have a solid core that you can build a contender around. Keller, Oviedo, Hayes, Cruz, Reynolds, Suwinski, Davis, Skenes etc. is a talented group of players that deserve to be making the playoffs. However, alone they aren’t enough. There’s a need for the Jung Ho Kang‘s and J.A. Happ type acquisitions to supplement the core. Yasmani Grandal and Rowdy Tellez aren’t the type of guys the Pirates need to be targetting. The time to win is now, the Pirates faithful has been suffering through terrible baseball for 4 years at this point. The treatment of this off-season with a lack of urgency and as if we’re coming off another 100 loss season is agonizing. Not wanting to panic buy and make bad trades are reasonable, but at the same time sitting around and waiting for the perfect deal to fall into our laps has not been productive. As the roster stands going into Spring Training, it simply is not good enough considering the tanking we’ve had to endure over the past 4 years.