I’m about to write what is essentially an essay, but after such a frustrating year, I need to let out some frustration.
I want to first rattle off my positive thoughts. The Pirates actually feel like they’ve figured something out with their pitching development. Paul Skenes is the obvious big success story, but Jared Jones, Bailey Falter, Kyle Nicolas, Dennis Santana, Luis Ortiz all took steps forward. Their minor league top prospects have looked fantastic too and also took steps forward. That’s something that hasn’t happened in years, both Major and Minor league pitchers in the organization making huge leaps forward.
Oneil Cruz had a very promising season. There were some bumps in the road, but after coming off a huge leg injury, to see him back at full strength was a fun sight. His move to center field was a lot better than I think anyone could have expected. He didn’t have any trouble running good routes or getting a good jump on the ball, two things many worried about because of how different the angle is, and he immediately became the hardest throwing position player in baseball. He worked really hard with Michael A. Taylor to make a good first impression.
I don’t think this team is as far out as some want to paint it out to be. I’ll admit, I’m biased and more optimistic than most, but there’s a solid foundation here. It’s now on the Pirates to build upon that foundation by adding players and improving the ones they currently have. There have been some other positives, other than pitching development. Oneil Cruz was good and took to center field much better than anyone could have expected. Nick Gonzales and Joey Bart were big positives. Billy Cook and Nick Yorke showed some promise in September. Hopefully they can continue to do that next year. As things stand right now, I think they’re a potential WC contender.
Now let me rattle off my negative opinions on the team. Well first of all, I think it’s easy to say they fell well short of expectations. Me personally, I had them winning 82-83 games, which is only a 6-7 game improvement from last year. You’d think that getting a healthy and solid season from Oneil Cruz, a mostly full season from Paul, and the other multiple positives I mentioned earlier would be enough to give them that boost. It wasn’t, because of many other things that went wrong.
The Pirates, the bare minimum this off-season (regarding the coaching staff), need to completely re-evaluate what they’re teaching their hitters at the Major League level. Jack Suwinski went into this year with the expectation he could be a potential run producing threat after swatting 26 home runs with a .793 OPS, and 112 wRC+. He couldn’t even crack a .600 OPS or a 70 wRC+. He had a huge change in approach, and it took until September this year at Triple-A for him to figure things out again. If it was one instance of a player struggling badly after a solid season prior, that’s one thing. Every team has had a player or two have a bad year.
But the Pirates had Michael A. Taylor, Edward Olivares, and Jared Triolo each have a drop in wRC+ of 20 points or greater from 2023 to 2024. Not to mention that the players they did acquire mid-season, like Bryan De La Cruz and IKF also taking huge steps back after getting traded to the Pirates. I’ll give BDLC and IKF a pass for now, but when you have multiple other players take huge steps back, having 3-4 of what was supposed to be key parts of your line-up decline during the same season is suspicious. Once or twice is normal, 3, 4, 5 times, that’s a huge problem. Not to mention many of the prospects who did well at Triple-A, like Henry Davis and Ji Hwan Bae, did not take a step forward.
Luckily, the Pirates at least know something different has to be done in the hitting department, as they’ve already moved on from Andy Haines, which is a good way to start the off-season. When you have that many players take a huge step back, and multiple others look for help outside the org, something needed to be done, and something was.
The real wild card for next season, as things stand right now, is Ke’Bryan Hayes. I hate to see what happened to him this season, but his struggles aren’t entirely his fault. He was playing through a herniated disc and it was clear something was off. Any raw power he showed last year was gone. He never had an exit velocity below 90 MPH since getting into MLB, and last year he had a career high 92.2 MPH exit velo. But this year it was just 88.9 MPH. That’s like the difference between Joc Pederson or Marcell Ozuna, to Ty France or Jon Singleton.
Not only could you tell by his huge dip in raw power numbers, but something was clearly bothering him based on his play style and body language. Hayes always puts 110% effort out there, especially on the defensive side of the ball, and we saw that last year. But he just physically couldn’t do that without pain this year. He was unhappy with himself, and you could tell. I can appreciate the admirable effort to play through it, but it led to some pretty bad results.
Unfortunately, the only thing the Pirates can do with Hayes is put him through good physical therapy and pray his back strengthens up enough where he can get some of that raw strength back and can make the plays at third he was making the last few years. There really isn’t a surgery that can fix every and all herniated discs, and based on what it sounded like, his case fell into that. It’s not a simple fix. Back issues are always scary because that’s where a lot of a hitter’s power is generated from.
Regarding Shelton, if they’re not going to move on from him right now, someone needs to have a serious sit-down with him and give him a lesson on managing a roster, because that’s where most of this team’s struggles were this year; not properly managing the bullpen when pitchers were struggling, calling up players a month later than they should have been, weird, inconsistent line-ups, etc.
My final thoughts are that this team can be good; there’s a good foundation here, and they need to build around this talented rotation. I remain optimistic right now, as I think this team is just a few good decisions away from truly being great, but it’s clearly been frustrating.