Pirates 2027 Roster Outlook: Is The Outfield Already Good Enough?

At PNC Park, the Pirates front office is already in the process of trying to find ways to get better in twenty twenty seven.

It's going to be a very important year and it warrants a deep look at all parts of this ballclub and seeing how they can get better.

Over the next week, maybe into the next week a little bit, we're going to be looking at the Pirates roster.

position by position and try to identify how does this club get better?

Is it an area that they need to address?

And today we're going to start with what I think the catalyst will have to be if they are competitive in twenty twenty seven, the outfield.

Good morning and welcome to Offbeat here on North Shore Nine presented by FanDuel.

My name is Alex Stumpf, and this is a daily look at your Pittsburgh Pirates.

Whenever the Pirates have been competitive, In my lifetime and your lifetime and pretty much anybody's lifetime of anyone who is currently walking the earth.

They have had a great outfield.

And it has been the outfield that has driven this club.

Apologies to the nineteen oh nine club, but if anyone remembers those days.

Congrats, I guess.

It has always been the outfield.

In twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen, it was Andrew McCutchen.

It was Starling Marte.

And yeah, they had pieces elsewhere.

They had pieces in the bullpen, pieces in the rotation, pieces in the infield.

But who was leading that club?

It was Andrew McCutchen and it was Starling Marte setting the stage for him.

In the nineties, it was Bonds and Van Slyke.

In the late seventies, you had Dave Parker and Omar Moreno.

In the early seventies, you had Clemente and Stargell.

You had Clemente in the sixties.

You've got your Paul Waners.

You've got your Max Careys in like, it is a long list, a long history that if this team is going to be great,

it is going to be because the outfield is great.

And while I look at position for this club, with the exception of probably their starting rotation, which we'll get to eventually, the outfield is the part of this club where I feel the most optimistic.

And for good reason, I think.

Bryan Reynolds had a really good year.

played all one, sixty-two, was an impact player, three-point-eight war, seven-eighty-nine OPS, scored over a hundred runs, the power was down to seventeen homers, but, if you watched him,

he probably should have had his twenty-something like he always does.

I would suspect he hits twenty something again next year.

I there is a threat.

I will admit I am not.

Privy to the science they use, but they claim that no hitter was impacted more by the weather home run wise than Bryan Reynolds and that he should have hit like twenty five or so, like he normally does.

So, yeah, like that's one thing.

He's an impact player.

He is probably of all the hitters on this team.

The one that gives me the least amount of pause.

Because we know who Bryan Reynolds is at this point in his career.

He is going to post a remarkably similar OPS year after year.

He is going to have an above-average war, above-average OPS.

He is going to really heat up in June.

The concern, if anything, here is how he finished the second half of this season.

Because in the first half, he had an eight seventy eight OPS and then he had a six fifty nine OPS on the road.

Or I'm sorry, in the second half.

That's a pretty steep drop.

Now, is that him getting tired from the one sixty two?

Is that him for a large portion of the second half of the season, not having Oneil Cruz, not having Ryan O'Hearn protecting him because they were on the injured list?

Who knows for sure?

But I'm not worried about Bryan Reynolds.

He's going to play one of these corner outfield positions.

I'm also not too worried about Oneil Cruz.

I will admit, I couldn't have said that last year.

Last year was a rough year, but the way he attacked last offseason, the way he got better against left-handed pitching...

Even with the injury, which required a lengthy stay, he missed over two months.

He still was a twenty twenty player.

Had he stayed healthy, he would have been thirty forty, maybe thirty fifty.

With the only pirates, to my knowledge, who have hit twenty twenty.

This is off the dome.

I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure it's Bryan Reynolds and Andy Van Slyke.

Or the only other two who had back-to-back twenty home or twenty steal seasons.

There is a lot about Oneil Cruz's game that got better last year.

That he took a definitive step forward.

And maybe he's still not this absolute game-changing force that should be competing for an MVP or be an All-Star every year that we all thought he could potentially be whenever he got called up

because he has these ridiculous tools.

And yeah, there are still some times whenever he will infuriate some people, but he is...

A really good ball player and someone who can impact the game can make a difference.

I can't help but wonder how this season would have gone had he not landed on the sixty day I.L.

That might have been enough to get him into October.

And then you have Esmerlyn Valdez.

Who I really liked him last year, I like I think this guy's going to be a big leaguer, but I did not expect him to have the year that he had.

Seventeen homers, five-tenths slugging percentage.

He had that really long stretch where he wasn't getting on base, or getting hits, but he was still finding ways to draw walks, get on base.

I do have some pause.

And a lot of it is the thirty-seven percent strikeout rate.

He whiffs a lot.

There are a lot of times where you just see him try to throw the barrel at the ball, and he will make contact sometimes, and it will go very far.

At the end of the day, I still see someone who had a two hundred expected batting average, someone whose wOBA was three sixty eight while his xwOBA was three thirty two.

I don't want to get misconstrued.

Three thirty two is still a good OPS and it's a really good OPS for a rookie who was in A-ball, like fourteen months before he got called up to the majors.

There is a lot that I liked.

I see a good work ethic.

I see someone who is going to continue to get better, but I, if there is anyone here that I am concerned about, it would be him just because he, his back of the baseball card is not nearly as long.

He wasn't universally regarded as, Oh, he's a top one hundred prospect or anything like that.

Like he is still a bit of a question mark.

And that raises the question, how much should the Pirates focus on the outfield this winter, given the other areas that do need addressed?

Before we get into that, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Larine Co.

We all know nicotine pouches are popular, and part of it isn't so much the nicotine as it is the routine.

Larine just launched a pouch that keeps the routine but leaves the nicotine out.

Larine Co

pouches swap out the nicotine and give you clean focus and support your enamel the whole time they're in.

Just tuck one in and go about your day.

Each pouch has a half cup of coffee's worth of caffeine, plus L-theanine and alpha GPC for a smooth, steady focus with no energy crash, and it gives your teeth daily enamel support in between brushings.

It comes in mint, cinnamon, and mango, and it's nicotine-free always.

It's doing something good for your teeth.

It gives you smooth energy and focus without those jitters, and it's the only pouch out there that doesn't make you pick between something that's good for your focus and something that's actually good for your teeth.

This is the only one designed to do both, and it comes from a brand that's leading the way at supporting your oral health.

Give Larine a try right now Larine Co is often offering our listeners up to fifty percent off at buylarine.com slash North Shore that's buylarine, L-A-R-I-N-E dot com slash North Shore for up to fifty

percent off.

Internally I don't know who outside of these three is going to make any impact in.

Jhostynxon Garcia was heralded as a potential impact player whenever he was acquired.

And while I don't regret the Yohan Oviedo trade, and I don't think the Pirates do, because it was something that had been discussed.

They had talked to the Red Sox a long time about outfielder for pitcher, that type of trade.

And that was eventually what they settled on after literally a year of talking and throwing names around.

But I was not impressed with what I saw this year.

And AAA results wise, it's like, man, I don't know if I can go into twenty twenty seven.

Thinking, yeah, he's the next guy off the bench for me.

I guess just to walk back a little bit, obviously, Jake Mangum is the next guy off the bench here.

He showed a lot as a rookie, but I think he firmly established that he is a big league player.

I don't know if you can count on him on being a starter.

As your fourth?

Yeah, he is a perfect fourth outfielder.

Someone who can play all three positions, can provide value in other ways, running, making contact.

I think he's a perfectly fine fourth outfielder.

But whenever you look at other guys on the forty-man roster, whether it's Garcia, whether it's Billy Cook, I don't know who here can help.

And then I look at AAA, and Mitch Jebb is someone they really like.

I wouldn't be shocked if we see Mitch Jebb in twenty twenty seven.

And I don't know what happened between Altoona and Indianapolis for Mitch Jebb.

But like I saw him on Altoona and I'm like, this guy isn't a major league baseball player.

And then he had a really good run at Indy.

To the point where it's like, maybe.

Maybe he could be an up-and-down guy.

Maybe he could be a bench player.

But I want to set expectations at that point.

No, I don't see this guy as a starter.

Robert Hassell III is in the organization.

He is a dollar scratcher with a million dollar top prize, in my opinion.

Yeah, I absolutely spend the dollar to potentially win that million, but I know those odds are probably not very good.

No fault in throwing a buck there, though.

Outside of that, internally, I don't see a lot.

And there's this underlying, overarching question of how does this team get better against left-handed pitching?

This is an area where you would think, traditionally, it's like, okay, let's go get a right-handed bat, a right-handed outfielder.

Like, I think a Taylor Ward would fit really nicely into this team.

And between, like...

Ward and Valdez and Spencer Horwitz.

You'd be like, you know what?

Those are three guys who I feel good about in twenty twenty seven, but maybe not the best.

And I have two spots for them.

If all three of them work out, that's great.

That's a champagne problem.

That's just a good ball club.

If two of them work out, that's what I need.

So I don't hate that mindset if they want to go that approach, but how much can you invest in the outfield whenever you have to replace Brandon Lowe's production in the infield?

Whenever you have to address the bullpen to get, be able to bridge that gap to Montgomery and Weaver in the back end.

I don't know if the outfield is something that you can invest significant dollars in this winter.

If you do, you might be taking it from somewhere else.

At the same time, I know it's not a set in stone rule, but whenever this ball club has been good the last one hundred plus years, it has been the outfield leading the way.

And I look at this club and I see an outfield that could be the strength of the twenty twenty seventeen.

Or at the very least, the twenty twenty seven offense.

Do you want to try to make that strength even greater?

Or do you want to try to take a position where maybe there's no certainty and try to shore that up?

Yeah, I think it's going to be a very interesting question.

I think you have to explore the outfield free agent and trade markets.

But if I only have X amount of dollars to spend on, I have higher priorities than the outfield.

Thank you so much for listening to Offbeat here on North Shore Nine presented by FanDuel.

If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe wherever you find podcasts.

Or check us out on YouTube if you want to see my smiling face.

Thank you so much for listening.

We'll talk again tomorrow.

All right, that wraps up this episode of North Shore Nine.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

Whether you're listening on the podcast or catching us on YouTube, if you enjoyed the show, please give this video a thumbs up.

And don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already.

It really helps us grow.

And if you're listening on the podcast, a quick review goes a long way in helping others find the show.

Plus, be sure to tell a friend about us.

There's always room for more here in the NS nine community.

And for those looking to support us a little more, consider joining our Patreon, become an MVP member and get exclusive perks while helping us continue to bring you more of the pirates content you love.

Thanks again for all your support and let's go bucks.