North Shore Nine

There have been few that have been as critical of Ben Cherington as I have during his time as Pirates GM. However, it makes me very happy as a fan that he has a very good eye for identifying pitching talent, and he has implemented a very nice pitching development system in the minors. He has made bargain deals out of poorly performed journeymen since 2021, reviving the careers of Tyler Anderson, Jose Quintana, and Martin Perez. The farm system is full of interesting arms, even after graduating Jared Jones in 2024. Paul Skenes, Bubba Chandler, Anthony Solometo, Hunter Barco, Thomas Harrington, Braxton Ashcraft, Zander Mueth, Jun-Seok Shim, and Carlson Reed is easily the deepest pitching prospect pool in the majors. This is great for a cheap team like the Pirates, nothing is more expensive in the modern MLB than young controllable arms. Despite this great success, the Pirates are on the verge of squandering this gold mine because they cannot find any success on the other end of development.

The Major League Offense Now:

There has been a lot of attention brought to the Major League offense led by unpopular hitting coach Andy Haines, and for good reason. The Pirates offense has been anemic outside of the first week of the season. They are 21st in runs scored and 23rd in OPS+ despite being next to the juggernaut dodgers in terms of pitches seen, base runners, and at bats with runners in scoring position. The Pirates are also dead last in baseball in average exit velocity, and are near the top if not first in watched strike 3 calls. This is the 2nd year in a row where the Pirates have been in last place in baseball in terms of average exit velocity. This seems to be a feature of the Pirates hitting identity, not a bug. This is where the Pirates separate from their competitive offensive neighbors.

Many would assume that if the Pirates were taking an approach similar to the Dodgers, we would at least see better results and not want to tear our hair out when we watch the Pirates play. However, it is clear that even though we want to be the Dodgers our coaching staff cannot implement a plan like them. It reminds me of a famous quote by Robert Ebert reviewing Battlefield Earth: “The director, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.” We seem to know the proper way to approach hitting but we really don’t know why we do these things. Haines teaches his hitters to wear down pitchers at all cost, but with no flexibility or ability to change the approach on a pitcher to pitcher basis. We give pitchers no reason to do anything but pepper the zone early with strikes knowing we won’t swing. League wide OPS with 0-2 counts is dismal, but it seems like it is our ideal count according to our coaches. Andy Haines is not a good hitting coach, and deserves to be let go; but we delude ourselves if we think he is the main issue with the Pirates’ offensive woes. Haines is a symptom of a much larger and looming issue with this baseball club, and that is the overall approach and development of hitting.

The Minor League Development System

The entire hitting development system has not shown any ability to get players to transition from hitting AAA pitching to hitting MLB pitching. Since Ben Cherington has taken over the reigns as Pirates GM, his 2 best hitting success stories are Jack Suwinski (career 103 OPS+) and Ke’Bryan Hayes (101 OPS+). Both are useful hitters, but considering ownership will never let the Pirates land big hitting free agents, these guys being the best bats will sink the rebuild. We get even worse results from top rookies who have debuted over the past few seasons, where they aren’t hitting at a level that can allow them to stay in the major leagues. Henry Davis (71 OPS+), Endy Rodriguez (67 OPS+), Liover Peguero (78 OPS+), Nick Gonzales (67 OPS+), Ji Hwan Bae (73 OPS+) Canaan Smith-Njigba (37 OPS+), Tucupita Marcano (63 OPS+), Rodolfo Castro (85 OPS+), are all guys who entered the big leagues under Cherington development and have failed to stick in any meaningful way.

What’s even more concerning to me is the lack of impact bats that have graduated since 2019 and how few impact bats are currently in the system. You could argue that most of those guys were never going to be good and very few were top 100 prospects. However, this only proves the point further that we have not had any success in developing our top prospects or creating top prospects by making our prospects better. Matt Gorski struggles to maintain a wRC+ around 100. Hudson Head has done absolutely nothing of note since being acquired from the Padres. Matt Frazier has fallen off a cliff in terms of production. Our recent draft picks have also been suffering. Mitch Jebb ran a 90% contact rate in college, and is now sporting a strikeout rate over 35%. Lonnie White Jr. has a much better swing now to display his power, but that’s still coming with strikeout rates in the mid 30% range as well. Garrett Forrester was a power bat in college and now can’t run an OPS over .700 in A ball. A healthy hitting system does not have Mitch Jebb, Tsung-Che Chang, and Jack Brannigan as the best the system has to offer. Which leads to the biggest offense of this team, which is the treatment of Termarr Johnson.

I have already written way too many words about my feelings towards Terrmarr, but the same issues that plague him continue to do so after 3 years of being a professional ball player. He still struggles greatly against breaking pitches, he doesn’t make good contact consistently, he pops up 25% of the time for his career, etc. It’s possible that his hit tool was overstated in the draft process, I think it’s almost a certainty. But what have the Pirates done to fix his issues and make him better? As far as I can tell they’ve been content with him taking the same approach every single year and I don’t know how any of this results in a successful major league career. Which is disastrous for a team who has very little hitting help on the way to aid the major league roster.

Conclusion:

I am not present when the Pirates are working with their hitters, so I won’t pretend to know what exactly they are doing with their hitters. There’s no point in speculating what the exact development process is because there’s no good way to know unless you’re in the building everyday. All we can do is look at results and the results are not there. If the Pirates want to be the next Orioles or Astros, there has to be some star power developed by this system. The Pirates will not spend the necessary money in order to bring in the star hitters, they think Rhys Hoskins is too rich for their blood. The Astros do not become a dynasty without developing Springer, Tucker, Altuve, Bregman, and Alvarez. The Orioles are running out lineups featuring all home grown players and are one of the league’s best offenses. If things are not changed and changed quickly this inability to develop pitching will cost Ben Cherington his job. The Pirates cannot be a competitive team with the offense holding the team back like this.