Fangraphs wrapped up a series on Tuesday morning that looked at the team rankings for positions around baseball. All 30 teams were ranked based on their playing time estimate for each position. Here’s a look at how the Pittsburgh Pirates fared in these articles. They are posted in the same order as Fangraphs wrote them up. Click on the positions for the links to the articles.
Catcher
The Pirates rank 21st here, with Austin Hedges and Endy Rodriguez seeing most of the time. They had Kevin Plawecki third, but with minimal at-bats, so he can just be replaced by the combo of Tyler Heineman and Jason Delay for the purposes of this ranking.
First Base
Pirates rank 20th, with Carlos Santana and Ji-Man Choi playing a large majority of the time.
Second Base
Pirates rank 28th here with Rodolfo Castro and Ji-hwan Bae seeing a large majority of the time, while Mark Mathias, Chris Owings and Tucupita Marcano split the small remaining time.
Shortstop
Pirates rank 11th here with Oneil Cruz seeing about 80% of the time, followed by Bae getting around 100 plate appearances, and a group of three players splitting about 50 plate appearances.
Third Base
Pirates rank 13th here with Ke’Bryan Hayes getting about 85% of the time. Castro and Jared Triolo split a majority of the small remaining time.
Left Field
Bryan Reynolds sees about 60% of the time here, leading the Pirates to a 13th place ranking. Andrew McCutchen and Connor Joe see most of the rest of the playing time, with a few others playing sparingly.
Center Field
Jack Suwinski and Reynolds have a nice 40/40 split here for playing time. Travis Swaggerty gets a majority of the rest. Those estimates lead to the Pirates ranking 16th.
Right Field
McCutchen gets about 40% of the time here, followed by approximately 20/20 splits for Canaan Smith-Njigba and Cal Mitchell. That trio, plus a few other names filling in, led to a 28th place ranking.
Designated Hitter
Santana, McCutchen and Choi see most of the work here, but a bunch of other previously mentioned players take some DH turns. That equals up to a 21st place ranking.
Bullpen
I won’t go through all of the names here, but the top seven for mound time are David Bednar, Wil Crowe, Chase De Jong, Colin Holderman, Duane Underwood Jr, Robert Stephenson and Dauri Moreta. That group leads them to a 27th place ranking.
Starting Pitchers
The injury to JT Brubaker could change this once we see how much time he will miss, but for now the top five starters are Mitch Keller, Brubaker, Roansy Contreras, Rich Hill and Vince Velasquez, with Johan Oviedo and Luis Ortiz also seeing decent time. That setup ranks 24th according to Fangraphs.
The easier to read summary shows:
Catcher: 21st
1B: 20th
2B: 28th
SS: 11th
3B: 13th
RF: 28th
CF: 16th
LF: 13th
DH: 21st
RP: 27th
SP: 24th
With 11 positions averaged out here, that puts them at an average ranking of 20th place per position.
