There are a lot of reasons why the Pirates aren’t making the playoffs this year. Their off-season approach with pitching, poor performance from some of their best players, injuries, and the list goes on.
I think you could make an argument that the biggest thing that impacted the Pirates were the performance of the top players, along with the injury factors that led to poor performances. Looking at the pre-season ZiPS projections, and the actual results, we see some pretty big differences.
Andrew McCutchen: 5.6 WAR pre-season/1.1 WAR so far
Gerrit Cole: 4.3/2.5
Francisco Liriano: 3.2/-0.3
Francisco Cervelli: 2.5/1.3
Those are the biggest differences. Cole and Liriano alone were projected for 7.5 WAR, and combined for 2.2 WAR. That’s a five win difference right there. McCutchen and Cervelli were projected for an 8.1 WAR and have combined for 2.4, which is almost a six win difference. There’s nothing the Pirates could have done this off-season to make up for a loss of 11 expected wins. Think about that. This team has been around .500 for most of the last few months. If they finish at .500, that’s the difference between 81 wins and 92 wins. Or, it’s the difference between the season we’re seeing now, and probably hosting the Wild Card Game at PNC Park for the fourth year in a row.
The bad thing about the above struggles is that the Pirates haven’t seen anything to counter those performances. They’ve had guys who performed better than their projections, but no one on those levels. Gregory Polanco started off looking like this was a big breakout year, and while his season numbers are still strong, he’s slowed down and is currently at a 2.8 WAR (projected at 2.2). Starling Marte has been the best hitter on the team, with a 4.0 WAR, but he was also projected at 3.8. David Freese has been a good surprise at 1.9 WAR, but was projected for 1.3.
The biggest difference so far has been the combo of Sean Rodriguez, Adam Frazier, and Matt Joyce, who have combined for 4.5 WAR, despite a combined pre-season projection of 0.5 WAR. That helps to make up for the above struggles a bit, but then if we went through and found all of the players who fell short, these extra wins from the bench would be negated, and we’d still be left with a massive loss from the four players above.
When it comes to an evaluation like this, the players tend to get more of a pass than the front office. For one, it’s expected that you will have players who fall short of their projections, and while this year’s results have been excessive, some of the slumps would have been expected. And then there’s just the fact that players are more likely to get a pass from fans, media, and so on, compared to the front office or coaches.
That brings me to another factor that is leading to the Pirates losing: their off-season approach. This approach gets a lot more attention because it seemed like a mistake at the time, and in fact turned out to be a mistake. The Pirates went with Jeff Locke, Jon Niese, and Juan Nicasio for the back of their rotation, with Ryan Vogelsong in the bullpen. Originally, it was planned that Nicasio would be in the bullpen and Vogelsong would be in the rotation, and that might have been better, just because it would have put Nicasio in a role that seems to be better suited for him. But it’s hard to blame the Pirates for trying him out in the rotation, when he looked so good in Spring Training, and had the electric stuff that most of their previous reclamation projects had (minus a changeup).
Nicasio has pretty much lived up to his expectation during the pre-season. He was projected for an 0.8 WAR, and has a 1.1 WAR in 111.1 innings. Meanwhile, the trio of Locke/Niese/Vogelsong have combined for -0.2 WAR, which was short of their combined 3.6 WAR projection before the season.
Two things happened here. One is that the back of the rotation starters greatly under-performed, to the point where the Pirates got no value from the 3-5 spots. Add in the no value from Liriano’s spot, and Gerrit Cole’s injury filled season, and you can see why the rotation was a disaster. The other thing is that the Pirates weren’t really aiming high with these moves. Niese was projected for a 1.8 WAR. Locke was at 1.4, and that was based on the numbers from his old mechanics, with the new change making him decline. Vogelsong was projected for less than 1.0 WAR. The Pirates had a low upside with all three pitchers, and none of them came close to that low upside.
Earlier this week, Ben Lindbergh wrote about the impact of Ray Searage and the off-season moves this year. It was a good overall summary of the situation, although it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. A lot of the points in the article were made before the season — these weren’t the same types of high-upside reclamation projects Searage fixed in the past, the Pirates were relying on too many reclamation projects, and that it was never just Searage, but a combination of scouting, coaching, and the player’s ability to change and improve.
(Side note about the article: I don’t think Ben Lindbergh is a subscriber, which means when he linked to my article on Cory Luebke, he would have only seen the headline and the first few sentences. He used that to describe the article as a “bated-breath blog post about Searage’s likely influence” on Luebke. The article was actually just an interview with Luebke, where he talked about finally being healthy, and how a big reason he came to the Pirates was their track record with fixing injured pitchers. Outside of the title, there was only one mention of Searage, which was at the end, playing on Luebke’s comments, and saying that if Searage fixed him, he would make a good second lefty in the bullpen. There was no analysis from myself saying this would happen, or had a good chance of happening, thus the “bated-breath” part didn’t fit. I write all of this because I was somewhat annoyed to be separated into the blogger section — that happens and seems to be unavoidable, even though our stuff belongs grouped with other mainstream media that is doing actual reporting — but mostly annoyed that an article from a bigger outlet took the approach you’d see from a lazy message board poster, reading a title and assuming what the article says. That’s as bad as if I would read the title for the above article, along with the intro, and just assume that Lindbergh was saying the Pirates should abandon future reclamation projects and only sign established starters, which I know isn’t what he was saying, since I read the article. Anyway, rant over.)
When it comes to a scapegoat for the 2016 season, this is where most of the focus lies. Again, the players tend to get more slack than the front office. So it will be mostly ignored that McCutchen/Cole/Liriano/Cervelli fell 11 wins shy of projections due to injuries and/or poor performance, while the poor off-season approach will be viewed as the problem. Or, at the least, it will be viewed as if the two were even, and a better off-season would have allowed the Pirates to contend even with the injuries. I don’t agree with this, as the Pirates would have needed to add two 5 WAR pitchers this off-season to make up for the value lost from their top performers. Not to mention that it seems a little wrong to place so much blame on a poor off-season approach on the pitching side, while completely ignoring the great results that brought in Sean Rodriguez, David Freese, and Matt Joyce, and acting like there was no help acquired at all this off-season.
There’s plenty of blame to go around here. I think the bigger blame goes to the struggling players, but it’s impossible to not blame the Pirates’ approach, especially when it was obvious prior to the season. But the blame game is pretty useless. The more important thing is looking at what lessons we can take away from the 2016 struggles. That’s where the biggest difference lies between the players struggling and the front office approach.
You don’t really learn much from pointing out players struggling. It’s pretty easy to see what the solution is there. Andrew McCutchen needs to play better. Gerrit Cole needs to not have an injury plagued season. These solve the problems, but there’s very little that can actively be done here. Unless it’s a situation where you don’t trust the player to bounce back and you move on from him, you essentially just hope for better results next year.
On the flip side, you can learn things from the front office approach. The Pirates have gone with lower upside starters in the past, and they’ve mostly worked, reaching their lower ceilings. Vance Worley was a lower upside guy who didn’t have top of the rotation stuff. Kevin Correia was a back of the rotation starter at best, and put up decent back of the rotation numbers. But Worley was a depth option, and Correia was added during a time when the Pirates weren’t contenders yet. They’ve largely had success going for high risk/high reward guys, and the only thing that changed about that this year is that they lowered the potential reward. The higher upside guys can still fail to work out, but if they fall short, you usually get some sort of value out of them that comes close to the best-case upside for the lower upside guys.
They also had too many reclamation projects in the rotation from day one, which was an approach they took due to a reliance on their top prospects. Jameson Taillon worked out, and Chad Kuhl has made a good jump to the majors as a back of the rotation starter. But part of this plan was also waiting on Tyler Glasnow, Steven Brault, and Trevor Williams. Glasnow wasn’t ready this year when they needed him, and Brault/Williams both had injuries which delayed their progress early in the season.
As I’ve written a lot, the Pirates are entering a situation again this year where they’ve got a lot of question marks in the rotation. That only increases with the question of Gerrit Cole’s health. But if Cole is healthy, he leads a rotation that also includes Jameson Taillon, and will likely include Drew Hutchison and Chad Kuhl, with Tyler Glasnow, Trevor Williams, and Steven Brault currently competing for Opening Day spots. That’s a lot of question marks, and the Pirates could use an additional starter or two in their rotation who either come with a more established track record, or who fit the more classic bill of a high upside Pirates’ reclamation project.
The Pirates need to learn from their mistakes in 2016. They can still go with reclamation projects, but need to go with higher upside guys. And they shouldn’t go with too many question marks, instead filling at least one spot with a guy with a track record of success, even if it’s a J.A. Happ or an Ivan Nova type of pitcher who looks like he’s just starting to turn things around. Combine that approach with the hope that McCutchen, Cole, and Cervelli bounce back and stay mostly injury free in 2017, and we should see much better results next year.
**This week we will be announcing our Player, Pitcher, and Breakout Prospect of the year in the Pirates’ minor league system. We will release on per day, starting tomorrow.
**Instructs Notes: First Look at a Hard Throwing Pirates 2016 Draft Pick. My instructs report from Friday, posted a bit late because I had the flu over the weekend. Tomorrow is a camp day, giving me an extra day to recover. After that, I’ll be back out there on Tuesday, with games every afternoon this week.
**Jordan George: The On-Base Machine. Abigail Miskowiec looks at Jordan George, who has been outstanding at getting on base in his first two professional seasons.
**Pirates Name Three Arizona Fall League Replacements. Not a high upside group going to the AFL this year, but still a lot of interesting prospects.
**Yeudy Garcia to Get His Shoulder Examined in Pittsburgh. There were some warning signs during the year, and now Garcia is getting his shoulder checked on.
**Pirates Release Infielder Dan Gamache. Not a big surprise here, as Gamache fell behind a lot of other Indianapolis infielders in playing time, and will have a better opportunity to make the majors elsewhere.
