Pittsburgh Pirates 2018 season review
2018 Pirates: What went right
One year removed from an 80-game PED suspension, outfielder Starling Marte was back being the player he was before. He had a career-high 20 homers. He stole 33 bases. He was good in the field. He had 3.7 WAR, which is close to what he did in 2016 (3.8 WAR). He’ll make $10.3 million in 2019 and the Pirates have team options for $11.5 million and $12.5 million in 2020 and 2021. If the Pirates continue the pattern they’ve established recently, this time next year Marte will likely be the prominent Pirates player with trade rumors swirling around him.
Despite being hampered by concussions, catcher Francisco Cervelli had one of his best seasons. He’s always been good at getting on base, but added some home run pop to his game this year, as he launched a career-high 12 dingers. He was also good behind the dish and finished with 3.3 WAR.
Corey Dickerson, the pre-season trade acquisition mentioned earlier, had a solid but inconsistent season. The metric wRC+ measures a player’s contributions on offense after league and ballpark effects are accounted for. A 100 wRC+ is league average. For the season, Dickerson had a 115 wRC+, meaning he was 15 percent better than league average.
The inconsistency shows up in his wRC+ each month:
March/April—128 wRC+
May—116 wRC+
June—67 wRC+
July—234 wRC+
August—24 wRC+
September/October—145 wRC+
That amounts to four good months and two dreadful months. Dickerson is arbitration eligible and should be cheap enough to be with the Pirates until he hits free agency in 2020.
A couple other position players who had above-average seasons were outfielder Gregory Polanco and catcher Elias Diaz. Polanco led the team in home runs and RBI and was worth 2.5 WAR. Diaz was worth 2.0 WAR in just 82 games. According to Fangraphs, the Pirates’ combination of Cervelli and Diaz led all of baseball in WAR by catchers. Another bright spot was Adam Frazier, who hit .277/.342/.456 in 113 games (1.9 WAR).
The top dog on the mound was Jameson Taillon. With a 3.20 ERA in 191 innings (3.7 WAR), he took over the role of staff ace from Gerrit Cole. He wasn’t as good as Cole was this year, but his season was better than four of the five seasons Cole pitched with the Pirates. Taillon should lead the rotation for the next few years.
While Taillon had the best season of any Pirates pitcher, the most surprisingly good season was produced by Trevor Williams. He finished with a 3.11 ERA in 170.7 innings. He was particularly good in the second half. In 13 starts from July 11 to the end of the season, Williams had a 1.29 ERA in 76.7 innings. Not to put a big damper on his season, but it should be noted that Williams had a FIP of 3.86. That’s still good, just not 3.11 good.
Joe Musgrove only started 19 games, but was still right around league average (2.1 WAR). He was particularly adept at throwing strikes. Among the 128 starting pitchers with at least 110 innings pitched, Musgrove had the 12th-lowest walk rate (4.7 percent).
In the bullpen, Felipe Vazquez had another good season, with 37 saves and a 2.70 ERA in 70 innings (2.1 WAR). It wouldn’t be surprising if many Pittsburgh fans thought Vazquez had a bad year because of the brutal run of games he had in May. In six appearances from May 20 to the end of the month, Vazquez had four of the five blown saves he would have all year. He righted the ship after that and posted a 1.70 ERA over his last 46 games.
Another reliever who had a good season was Richard Rodriguez. R-Squared finished with a 2.47 ERA and 2.60 FIP in 69.3 innings. He was one of three Pirates relievers to strike out at least 30 percent of the batters they faced. The others were Vazquez and Keone Kela.
The above was some of the good that happened with the Pirates in 2018. Before we get to the bad, let’s consider the two deadline deals the team made, including the surprising move to add Chris Archer.