It’s easy to come up with the biggest story in the first half for the Pittsburgh Pirates. It’s pitching. Starting pitching. Relief pitching. Pitching depth. Pitching prospects. Every topic related to pitching was the biggest thing of the first half, and all of it was a disaster.
The Pirates went into the season with a plan to go with Jon Niese, Jeff Locke, and Ryan Vogelsong as three of their starters. They believed they could make a few mechanical adjustments with Niese, getting him back to his success before the 2015 season, when he fell out of the very talented Mets rotation. They worked on simplifying Locke’s delivery, taking him back to mechanics that he used in the minors, in an attempt to improve his control. That was a questionable call, since he moved from those mechanics to fix his control. They felt that Vogelsong would do much better on a five-day rotation, rather than shuffling back and forth between the bullpen and the rotation, like he did last year.
The approach wasn’t too out of the ordinary for the Pirates. They’ve been adding reclamation projects for the last few years, and for the most part, they’ve been successful. The big stories are the guys who emerge as top of the rotation arms, like A.J. Burnett, Francisco Liriano, or Edinson Volquez. But there have been others who have put up decent numbers along the way, like Vance Worley. The big difference here is that Niese/Locke/Vogelsong all had the upside closer to Worley, with none of them looking like top of the rotation guys. And the Pirates had never really gone with this many projects in a season while they were contenders.
It all looked bad coming into Spring Training. They needed at least one high upside arm to give them a shot at adding to Gerrit Cole and Francisco Liriano. Their off-season plan was largely in place to wait for the prospects to arrive mid-season, as Clint Hurdle said flat-out during Spring Training. That wasn’t a good plan, for reasons we’ll get to in a bit.
They did make one change during the spring, switching to Juan Nicasio and putting Vogelsong in the bullpen. This was in response to a huge camp from Nicasio, and the belief that he could take his approach from his bullpen success last year, using his plus fastball and plus slider to have success in the rotation. But this created two problems.
For one, it made the Vogelsong signing pointless. All throughout Spring Training, they said that Vogelsong would benefit from a normal schedule in the rotation, rather than the chaotic schedule of the bullpen, or moving back and forth. Then, they moved him to the bullpen, where he wouldn’t have a set schedule to benefit from.
Meanwhile, Nicasio was part of a plan to strengthen the bullpen. He was one of several relievers who could pitch multiple innings, helping to make up for the lack of upside in the rotation. By moving him out of the bullpen, the rotation had a chance to be strengthened, but the bullpen was weakened. He’s now back in the bullpen, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’ve turned things around since his switch, as his inclusion in the bullpen changes how the rest of the relievers have been used.
So the Pirates entered the season with Gerrit Cole and Francisco Liriano anchoring the rotation, plus Jon Niese, Jeff Locke, and Juan Nicasio in the final three spots. It wasn’t inevitable that all three of those guys would struggle, as there was a chance at least one of them would have success. But it was always a possibility that they would struggle, and that’s what happened. What made things worse was that Francisco Liriano struggled, and Gerrit Cole eventually got hurt.
The prospects that they were waiting on also weren’t ready when they needed them. Jameson Taillon was the only guy who looked ready, but the Pirates held him back until just after the Super Two time frame, while also using that time to save his innings and pitches in his first full year back from Tommy John surgery (they’re still taking opportunities to rest him). Tyler Glasnow had some serious control problems. Steven Brault and Trevor Williams had early season injuries. Chad Kuhl looked good, but struggled in June, and eventually came up out of necessity, carrying over the struggles he was having in his recent starts.
Remember when I said we’d discuss the off-season plan of waiting for prospects? This is exactly why that was a bad plan. That plan is for the best case scenario. It assumes the pitching in the majors will be fine and could bridge the gap until the prospects were ready — and that the prospects would be ready by mid-season. What actually happened was that the back-end starters didn’t work out, the prospects weren’t ready, Liriano had a horrible first half, and Cole got hurt. Granted, this is the worst case scenario. But this is a team that adds a ton of catchers every year and maintains depth, all because they saw the worst case scenario at that position play out in 2011 (and pretty much repeat this year). You’d think they would have taken the same cautious approach with the rotation, where injuries and poor performances are even more likely to happen.
It’s also strange that the Pirates would build an off-season plan around the prospects being ready. Neal Huntington has said many times that in a perfect world, guys would have a full season at Triple-A. He talks about bringing guys up when they’re well into their readiness curve, rather than at the very start of the curve. And that’s not something I disagree with. But the off-season plan they had set up a situation where you were waiting on the prospects, and hoping for them to come up sooner, rather than later, with only half a season in Triple-A. That totally conflicts with Huntington’s ideas on the best time to bring up prospects.
I said throughout the off-season that they should have brought in at least one starting upgrade to improve on Vogelsong’s rotation spot. That pitcher wouldn’t have been blocking any prospects, unless the best case scenario played out with the rotation. If that happened, and there were no holes to fill, I don’t think many people would have been upset. But I don’t think it’s possible to block pitchers, since someone will unexpectedly struggle, someone will get injured, and some of the reclamation guys will just not work out.
One additional starter wasn’t saving this rotation though. That starter wouldn’t have prevented Liriano from struggling. He wouldn’t have helped Cole avoid a trip to the DL. He wouldn’t have made Niese and Locke better pitchers, or fixed Glasnow’s control, or made it so Taillon could pitch without breaks, or prevented injuries to Brault and Williams, or helped keep Kuhl on track, rather than having his fastball up in the zone the last month.
What the starter might have done is keep Nicasio in the bullpen, and maybe we would have seen a much better outcome there. Sure, Jared Hughes is probably still going to struggle in that scenario. The same goes for Arquimedes Caminero before his recent turnaround. The same goes with Tony Watson, who is having his worst season since 2011. But Nicasio definitely would have boosted the group, possibly making it so that they didn’t have to rely as much on the struggling Hughes or Caminero.
Despite all of this, the Pirates entered the All-Star break at 46-43. They won five of seven games against the Cardinals and Cubs in the final week. They sit 1.5 games back from the second Wild Card.
A big reason for the success is due to the offense. While Huntington didn’t have a good off-season on the pitching side, he had an outstanding off-season on the offensive side. At first base, he replaced Pedro Alvarez with John Jaso, who has handled the position well, and looked good offensively until struggling in June. He brought back Sean Rodriguez and added David Freese and Matt Joyce to the bench. And if you want to know how good those additions were, just look at the following question. (Spoiler alert: The answer is Rodriguez/Freese/Joyce combined off the bench).
See if you can guess who put up these numbers (trick question):
.283/.376/.509 OPS .885, 28 HRs, 96 RBI, 632 PAs.
— David Todd (@DTonPirates) July 12, 2016
The offense has been fantastic this year. They rank top five in the NL in wOBA, wRC+, and WAR. This is despite the fact that Andrew McCutchen has slumped all season, and despite a horrible month of June for pretty much everyone. Basically, the offense has been the opposite of the pitching. Everyone involved struggled at some point, but overall, the group has been strong, even with the best player disappointing.
In a move that doesn’t really impact the 2016 performance, Huntington extended Gregory Polanco at the right time, literally at the start of his breakout season. This was huge, because already that contract is looking like a potential steal. You might even be able to make the argument that the contract helped Polanco, since he has said that relieved some stress. Francisco Cervelli also got an extension, and while he hasn’t performed offensively like Polanco since the extension, I think his absence has shown his big value to the team, even without the offense.
Overall, the Pirates made a mistake with their off-season approach to pitching, although with all of the problems they had, they’d still be in trouble even by signing a better guy than Vogelsong. Their success adding on the offensive side helped make up for this. That’s funny, because they never had a problem finding value in pitching, but had issues finding value on the position player side in the past, especially off the bench.
They now enter the second half with a bullpen that is looking much better, Gerrit Cole coming off the DL, Jameson Taillon completing his recent break, and several pitching prospects starting to show that they’re ready. I’ll get into the details of the second half tomorrow, but it looks like the worst case scenario is now ending, and the Pirates might be entering a situation where they actually start getting good results from their pitching staff.
**Pirates Draft Pick Braeden Ogle’s New Slider Was Inspired By Noah Syndergaard. I’m not knocking the national rankings at all, and don’t take this next message as a shameless promotion. But my talks with the 2016 prep pitchers so far shows why you can’t just base your opinion on the pre-draft reports and where these guys were ranked. I’ve found out a lot of interesting information on Travis MacGregor and Braeden Ogle in my talks with them, which weren’t even mentioned in the pre-draft scouting reports. A lot of opinions about these players are made immediately, based on those pre-draft reports. I’m not saying the opinions should be saved until my reports on the players come out, but my reports so far have shown the flaw in relying only on those initial rankings and reports. Check out today’s article on Ogle, and check out the one I did on MacGregor two weeks ago. I’ll have one more on Max Kranick tomorrow morning.
**Prospect Watch: Gage Hinsz Looks Strong in Seven Shutout Inning Performance. Abigail Miskowiec has a live report on Gage Hinsz, who is really showing a lot of improvements with his control this year.
**Rob Scahill Claimed Off Waivers by Brewers. Not a huge loss for the Pirates, especially with their bullpen looking much better lately. But it does impact their depth a bit, as Scahill was one of the better guys rotating back and forth from Indianapolis.
**Pirates Competitive Balance Pick Nick Lodolo Announces He Will Go to TCU. The Pirates will only have three of their four prep pitchers taken in the early rounds of the 2016 draft, although they’ll get a compensation pick for Lodolo. Full details in the article.
**Morning Report: Could Taillon Be the Only Pirate Who Loses His Prospect Status This Year? John Dreker looks at how much playing time you can expect from each prospect the rest of the year.
