Pittsburgh Pirates: 2017 season review and offseason preview
What went right, what went wrong, and what are the top priorities for the Pittsburgh Pirates this offseason?
Coming into the 2017 season, Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco were supposed to be the dynamic outfield trio that would lead the Pirates to a playoff spot. Instead, they rarely played together. Marte was suspended for PED use and missed half the season. He came back in July only to see Polanco struggle to stay on the field because of injuries in late July and again in the second half of August.
In addition to Marte’s suspension, the Pirates didn’t get a single game from Jung Ho Kang, who missed the entire season with legal issues in South Korea stemming from a third drunk driving conviction. Kang was a bargain-basement signing prior to the 2015 season who gave the team two good seasons at a low cost. He’s signed through 2018 with a team option for 2019, so the Pirates are still hoping to get him back on the field after he plays this offseason in the Dominican Winter League.
Without Kang for the season and Marte for a half-season, plus the underperformance of other hitters, the Pirates finished the year 28th in wRC+, a Fangraphs metric that adjusts for league and ballpark effects. Collectively, Pirates hitters were 15 percent below average based on this metric. The pitching staff was around the middle-of-the-pack, so it was the offense that was the primary reason for the team’s worst win-loss record since 2011.
Even before the season started the outlook for the Pirates wasn’t great. They were picked to win between 79 and 83 games by Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus, and Sports Illustrated. Had they reached their most optimistic projection of 83 wins, they still would have been four games out of the second wild card spot.
A second-straight season below .500 made a difference in fan support. Four years ago, the Pirates had their first winning season and first playoff appearance in two decades. They followed that up with two more playoff appearances. This success led to a team record of nearly 2.5 million fans in 2015 (a 98-win season).
Last year’s 78-83 record chipped away at fan morale, as the team lost about 250,000 fans from the year before. This year they lost another 330,000 and had their lowest attendance since the very ugly 2010 season when they were 57-105. If ownership puts a winning product on the field, fans will flock to beautiful PNC Park.
Of course, any season has some bright spots, along with the negatives. Let’s look at what went right, what went wrong, and the top offseason needs for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
What Went Right
Andrew McCutchen didn’t quite get back to the guy who led the NL in Wins Above Replacement (Fangraphs WAR) over the first seven years of his career (2009 to 2015), but he did reestablish himself as an above-average, near All-Star caliber player. At his peak, Cutch was a .400 OBP/.550 SLG center fielder who won the NL MVP Award in 2013. He also finished in the top five in MVP voting four straight seasons. He wasn’t at that level this year, but he made himself more attractive to other teams should the Pirates decide to trade him as he enters the final year of his contract.
Josh Harrison is another guy who had a bounce-back year, although not to the level of his breakout 2014 season. Harrison struggle to hit for any sort of power in 2015 and 2016 (just four homers each year) but had a career-high 16 long balls in 2017. He was also versatile enough to play 83 games at second base and 49 at third base.
On the pitching side, the Pirates’ rotation stayed healthy enough to have five pitchers start at least 25 games. The only other team to match this was the Arizona Diamondbacks. Only one Pittsburgh starting pitcher had an ERA under 4.00, but at least they were generally healthy.
Gerrit Cole came back from an injury-shortened 2016 season to bump his strikeout rate back near where it was in 2014 and 2015. His ERA was over 4.00 thanks in large part to the 31 home runs he allowed. An optimist would point to his previous history of stifling home runs effectively and see good signs with Cole heading into next season.
Ivan Nova’s first half belongs in the “What Went Right” category. He had a 3.21 ERA in 120.7 innings. Unfortunately, his second half ERA of 5.83 belongs in the “What Went Wrong” category. Trevor Williams was the opposite. He had a 4.80 ERA in the first half and a 3.35 mark in the second half. He was the team’s most reliable starter down the stretch.
In the bullpen, Felipe Rivero emerged as a dominant shutdown reliever. He started the year as the setup guy for Tony Watson, but took over the closer’s role in June and ran with it. He finished the year with 21 saves and a 1.67 ERA in 75.3 innings, with 88 strikeouts.
Along with Rivero, Juan Nicasio had a good year in the pen, right up until the Pirates let him go on waivers at the end of August. It was a strange move. The Phillies claimed Nicasio, then traded him to the Cardinals for minor leaguer Eliezer Alvarez. Pirates GM Neal Huntington later said he didn’t want Nicasio to go to a division rival, but Nicasio ended up with the Cardinals anyway. Huntington also claimed George Kontos off waivers from the Giants. Kontos had a 1.84 ERA (2.61 FIP) in 14.7 innings with the Bucs, but he’s more likely to have an ERA around 4.00 than 3.00 going forward.
What Went Wrong
Not only did Starling Marte miss half the season because of his suspension, he didn’t play up to his previous standards when he got on the field. From 2013 to 2016, Marte hit .292/.349/.448. This year, he hit .275/.333/.379. It was the first time in his career he was a below-average hitter.
Gregory Polanco was also a big disappointment. Injuries played a big part in his down season. He went from a .258/.323/.463 season in which he hit 22 homers and drove in 86 runs to a .251/.303/.391 season. The Pirates need Marte and Polanco to bounce back in order to compete next year.
At first glance, it might seem like Josh Bell had a good year. He hit .255/.334/.466, with 26 home runs, tying Jason Bay for the most home runs by a Pirate player in his rookie season. The problem was his defense. He rated poorly on defense at first base, which cut into his value. Also, 26 home runs aren’t what they used to be. The bar for hitting at first base is high and Bell’s 108 wRC+ placed him 11th of the 13 first basemen in the NL with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Despite all the home runs, the 94 runs scored and 88 RBI, Bell was a below-average player.
In fact, many of the Pirates’ position players were between replacement-level (0 WAR) and league average (2 WAR). This included Marte and Polanco, mentioned above, along with catcher Francisco Cervelli (0.9 WAR), shortstop Jordy Mercer (1.4 WAR), and third baseman David Freese (1.6 WAR). The Pirates had 10 players with 300 or more plate appearances and only two had more than 2 WAR. The Cubs and Brewers each had four such players. The Cardinals had seven. Even the last-place Reds had five.
The Pirates had solid production from young pitchers Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams, and Chad Kuhl, but highly-regarded prospect Tyler Glasnow did not pitch well at all. Glasnow has been a top-50 prospect on the Baseball America Top 100 in each of the last four years, including a top-25 ranking in the last three. He had a fine debut in a small sample size of 23.3 innings in 2016.
This year was a disaster at the big league level. Glasnow started 13 of his 15 games, going 2-7 with a 7.69 ERA (6.30 FIP). He walked more than six batters per nine innings and allowed nearly two home runs per nine. It was ugly. The good news is that Glasnow was very good in Triple-A (140 strikeouts and 32 walks in 93.3 innings), so the talent is still there.
In the bullpen, Daniel Hudson had an unusual season. Hudson signed with the Pirates as a free agent last December for two years and $11 million. He finished the season with a 4.38 ERA (4.34 FIP) in 61.7 innings. A closer look at Hudson’s season is revealing. He had four ugly outings in which he allowed a combined 12 earned runs in 1.7 innings (64.80 ERA). In the other 67 games in which he appeared, he had a 2.70 ERA. Looking at it another way, Hudson was terrible in April and August, but quite good in the other four months.
Top Offseason Needs
According to CBS Sports, the Pirates had the 23rd-highest payroll in baseball on Opening Day, at just over $100 million. They don’t have any real big contracts. Andrew McCutchen is their highest-salaried player and he’s still a bargain at $14.5 million per season.
This is how the lineup and rotation look for 2018 based on their current roster, with salaries from Cot’s Baseball Contracts at Baseball Prospectus:
C Francisco Cervelli, $10.5 million
1B Josh Bell, pre-arbitration
2B Josh Harrison, $10 million
SS Jordy Mercer, arbitration-eligible ($4.3 million last year)
3B Jung-Ho Kang, $3 million
LF Starling Marte, $7.8 million
CF Andrew McCutchen, $14.5 million
RF Gregory Polanco, $3.5 million
UT Sean Rodriguez, $5 million
INF David Freese, $4.25 million
SP Gerrit Cole, arbitration-eligible ($3.75 million last year)
SP Ivan Nova, $8.5million
SP Jameson Taillion, pre-arbitration
SP Trevor Williams, pre-arbitration
SP Chad Kuhl, pre-arbitration
SP Tyler Glasnow, pre-arbitration
RP Felipe Rivero, arbitration
RP Daniel Hudson, $5.5 million
Free agents: RP Joaquin Benoit, C John Jaso
McCutchen is in the final year of his contract and has been rumored to be a possible trade candidate for a while now. Deciding what to do with McCutchen should be the number one priority for the Pittsburgh front office. They need to decide whether to keep Cutch and go for it one more time with this group of players or trade him (and others) and build a team to compete down the road.
If the team believes they can compete with their current lineup, they don’t necessarily need to go out and get any position players. The problem is, they have adequate players at each spot in the lineup, but not enough above-average players. They also don’t know what they’ll get from Jung-Ho Kang because of his legal issues.
Their starting rotation also has plenty of adequate arms, but only a few pitchers with high ceilings, like Gerrit Cole, Jameson Taillon, and Tyler Glasnow (if his Triple-A numbers translate to the big leagues better than they did last year). The rest of the rotation candidates can be solid starters at the back end of a rotation, but don’t have the number one or number two potential as Cole, Taillon, and Glasnow.
The team should be able to put together a bullpen that can get the ball to Rivero. They have plenty of options to look at when spring training rolls around, including Daniel Hudson, George Kontos, Dovydas Neverauskus, A.J. Schugal, and others.
So much depends on McCutchen, though. If they keep him in anticipation of competing for a playoff spot in 2018, then they should upgrade the offense elsewhere (third base, perhaps?) to give the team a fighting chance. Unfortunately, Pittsburgh fans know they team won’t be in on the bidding for any of the highest-priced free agents. It might be nice to think about free agent Mike Moustakas playing third base in the black and gold, but he’ll likely be out of the Pirates’ price range.
On the other hand, if they trade McCutchen, then perhaps Cole should go also. They could get back some prospects to add to their farm system. The team’s number one position player prospect, Austin Meadows, struggled last season, but isn’t that far from the major leagues.
Other minor league players are a bit further off. The possible third baseman of the future, Ke’Bryan Hayes, played at the High-A level last year and likely won’t be ready for prime time until 2019 or 2020. Shortstop prospects Cole Tucker and Kevin Newman are closer to the big leagues but may have to wait until Mercer is eligible for free agency after the upcoming season. First baseman Will Craig is another hitting prospect who is a couple years away.
Next: Mets season review, offseason preview
The players are the future, along with young pitchers Mitch Keller and Nick Kingham, Adding good prospects to that group by trading McCutchen and/or Cole seems like a likely path for the Pirates, considering the team’s history.