aAs of Friday night, the Pittsburgh Pirates are at the season’s midpoint. Thus, it’s time for their midseason report card. It’s a time-honored sportswriter tradition whereby we who couldn’t hit a major league curveball to save our lives get to evaluate the top athletes in their profession for the sake of a few clicks until we think of something else.
Pirates Midseason Report Card: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Before the season began, owner Bob Nutting and general manager Ben Cherington stated that the goal was to play in the postseason. The Pirates’ record at the halfway point is disappointing. The fact that they remain in the National League wild card isn’t. Let’s see how they got to where they are and why they haven’t done better.
Starting Pitching
As the old saying goes, there’s good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good news. The Pirates’ top three starters – Mitch Keller, Paul Skenes, and Jared Jones – are the envy of every team in baseball. As soon as Skenes was drafted, his college coach proclaimed him ready to get major league hitters out right away. He was a sage. Since being called up, all Skenes has done is blow hitters away. The gutsy Jones was less hyped but has also dazzled as a rookie despite a couple of recent hiccups. Meanwhile, Keller, the Pirates’ $77 million man, might be on his way to a second consecutive All-Star Game despite toiling in the shadow of the two flashy rookies.
Bailey Falter, an unpopular choice to make the rotation as far as Pirates fans were concerned, has silenced the critics with his mostly stellar work. Martín Pérez pitched well in April but not so much in May before going on the injured list. Marco Gonzales was good in his three starts before going on the 60-day IL. Now, Luis Ortiz has emerged as a quality option for the rotation. Of course, the starters have had a rough patch here and there, as has every starting rotation in baseball. Even so: Grade: A.
Bullpen
The addition of Aroldis Chapman to a strong bullpen that already included All-Star closer David Bednar, Colin Holderman, Carmen Mlodzinski, and Ryan Borucki was supposed to be a strength, allowing the Pirates to shorten the game on a nightly basis. It hasn’t worked that way. Due to injuries, the five have yet to occupy the active roster together at the same time. Bednar was injured in spring training and perhaps needed to begin the season slowly. Even when earning a save, he hasn’t looked like his old self.
Chapman still throws as hard as anybody in baseball but has underperformed due to wildness. Holderman has been the brightest star in the bullpen so far. A cast of low-leverage relief pitchers has shuttled back and forth between the Pirates and triple-A or the waiver wire. Their performance has been about what one would expect. Overall, this bullpen has blown too many leads and wasted too many good starting pitching performances. Grade: C.
Catchers
What can one say about the Pirates’ catching situation that hasn’t already been said about the Antonine Plague? The two primary catchers, Henry Davis and Yasmani Grandal, have struggled to hit their weight. According to FanGraphs, neither ranks highly in Defensive Runs Saved or Framing Runs Saved. Teammates have given Grandal high marks for his game-planning skills and willingness to mentor the younger catchers. Davis is currently on a rehab assignment in triple-A and may be kept there when the time is up.
Joey Bart has been a pleasant surprise since his unexpected acquisition on April 2. He has the third-best batting average on the team. Once his rehab assignment is up, he should be the Pirates’ starting catcher if there is any justice in the world. Bart is the sole reason why the catchers aren’t getting an overall grade of F. When needed as a backup catcher, Jason Delay usually doesn’t hurt the team behind the dish. Grant Koch’s brief cameo made for a nice feel-good story. Grade: D.
Infielders
First baseman Rowdy Tellez struggled through May. Pirates fans wanted to run him out of town. The Pirates remained patient, and Tellez became one of baseball’s hottest hitters in June. He’s still not hitting home runs at the desired rate, but as things stand now, he’s toward the bottom of the Pirates’ list of worries. His right-handed platoon partner, Connor Joe, started hot but has cooled off lately. Since his May 9 recall, second baseman Nick Gonzales has been one of the better hitters on the club. He replaced the opening day second baseman, Jared Triolo, who’s been inconsistent with the bat while providing dazzling defense in the field. Triolo is proving to be a helpful piece as a utility infielder.
Shortstop Oneil Cruz, a budding superstar, continues to be a work in progress. He lights up StatCast with exit velocities off his bat and the speed of his throws. However, he also strikes out at an alarming rate, needs more consistency at the plate, and must improve his fielding. Ke’Bryan Hayes provides elite defense at third base. Now in his fifth year, he’s seldom hit well enough to justify his placement in the batting order. Nevertheless, he’s a rare corner infielder who should be kept in the lineup strictly for his glove. He’s that good. Grade: C+.
Outfielders
Bryan Reynolds quietly has accumulated the NL’s third-best OPS of all outfielders. A durable, reliable player, Reynolds has appeared in every game so far this season. Unfortunately, the good news about the outfield stops with Reynolds. Jack Suwinski and Michael A. Taylor haven’t provided much power and are hitting under .200. On the bright side, they’re the two best defensive outfielders on the roster. Suwinski was sent to triple-A in May and is back only because of an injury to Ji Hwan Bae. However, Bae didn’t produce much either and may not have been long for the major league roster before his trip to the IL. Edward Olivares and Joe have provided offense at times, but not consistently enough. Grade: D.
Designated Hitter
When Andrew McCutchen returned to the Pirates last year, it was seen as a warm and fuzzy story about a former franchise icon returning to his baseball home to play out his last days and be a mere figurehead. Somebody forgot to tell McCutchen. The 37-year-old has the fourth-best OPS among designated hitters in the NL. Since being inserted into the leadoff spot, he’s formed a deadly one-two combination with Reynolds. The center field camera often reveals that McCutchen’s knowledge of the strike zone is better than the umpire’s. Grade: A.
Manager and Coaches
Manager Derek Shelton often gets a bad rap. A manager is only as good as his players. If his moves too often don’t work out, at least one can usually see why he made them. Besides, like all modern managers, his function is to execute the front office’s plan. The days of the autonomous manager like Leo Durocher have gone the way of the poodle skirt.
Pitching coach Oscar Marin deserves credit for how the pitchers, especially the starters, have performed so far. On the other hand, much maligned hitting coach Andy Haines, who is, by all accounts, a hard worker, just isn’t getting the results. Bench coach Don Kelly, a local product who happens to be Neil Walker’s brother-in-law, is beloved in Pittsburgh and said to be future managerial material.
The Pirates don’t run the bases aggressively, but that appears to be an organizational philosophy rather than something for which the base coaches should be blamed. We won’t get into every coach on the team. Coaches can be about as interesting as actuaries; besides, there are 13 in all. Who knows what some of them do? The Pirates even have an Integrated Baseball Coach. Every baseball this writer sees is white, so it appears he’s doing a poor job. Grade: C.
General Manager
Cherington put this team together. We previously gave him a C+ for his offseason work back in February. He had extra room in the payroll budget this year, but not all of it was spent wisely and he made multiyear offers to starting pitchers that were rejected. He operates with limited resources, and that must factor into the equation.
We’ll give him a pass for overpaying Chapman at $10.5 million for one year. Good relief pitchers were in high demand and the market was set once Josh Hader signed his astronomical (no pun intended) deal with the Houston Astros. The black marks on his record are the offense in general and Grandal and Taylor in specific. Somehow, it seems Cherington believes that he can consider the catcher and center fielder as defense-first positions, and the runs saved will more than compensate for the lack of offense. That hasn’t happened and with other players struggling with the bats as well, the offense he’s assembled hasn’t cut it.
Critics felt that Cherington kept Skenes in the minors too long. However, Cherington claimed to have a carefully considered plan for the star rookie. Nobody’s complaining about that plan now. Always with his eye on the waiver wire, Cherington did well to get Bart in exchange for a minor leaguer. He may come to regret discarding young pitchers Roansy Contreras and Jose Hernandez. Baseball is a tough, results-oriented business. The bottom line is that without some impactful trades at the deadline, the Pirates will be hard-pressed to exceed last year’s 76 wins, let alone meet the mid-80s win total that many experts predicted. Grade: D.
