Pittsburgh Pirates: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

Pittsburgh Pirates: 2020 Preview, Prediction

As for position players, it’s hard not to recognize Josh Bell as one of the premier talents in the game right now. Bell drove in about 16% of the Bucs’ runs last year and smashed 37 homers with a .936 OPS. And for a pure power hitter, as he is, Bell doesn’t strike out a ton with only 118 punch-outs in 613 plate appearances in 2019. Bell is playing on a bad team right now, but make no mistake about it, he is very much in the MVP conversation as a legitimate dark horse to pull it out.

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I also like Kevin Newman and Bryan Reynolds as far as the Pirates offense is concerned. Reynolds was very impressive last year hitting .314 and Newman wasn’t too far behind hitting .308. This team doesn’t have a lot of power outside of Bell, but with this trio of Bell, Newman, and Reynolds moving forward, the Bucs have a solid foundation of players to build off of.

What’s going to be interesting is seeing who else comes up and establishes themselves as another piece of the core. I happen to believe Ke’Byan Hayes will come up at some point in 2020 and solidify his place at third base with only Colin Moran (who has really struggled since joining the Bucs) blocking his path.

Will Craig is another guy to watch as Craig hit 23 home runs last year at Triple-A Indianapolis. The problem with him is that first base is blocked right now by Josh Bell, so something would have to give and somebody would have to move to the outfield.

Regarding how exactly the Bucs will do in 2020, other than the few guys I’ve talked about, this group seems to be a little undermanned compared to the rest of the division. The Pirates have a knack for hanging tough with teams better than them and stringing together wins, but at the same time, I think this is the least-talented team they’ve had in quite a while.

They have a handful of nice players, but they don’t hit very much for power outside of Josh Bell and their pitching staff isn’t quite equipped to contend in 2020. I think this team needs at least this year to get more acclimated to their new system and more talent needs to find its way to the show before they start getting back to winning. I’d like to see an infield of Cole Tucker, Kevin Newman, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Josh Bell settle in; and if Gregory Polanco can reinvigorate his career, that would be great too.

The Pirates have done well by resetting the clock on their franchise, but at least for the time being, they lack the players to keep up with some of the bigger dogs in the National League. For that reason, I have them finishing in last place in the NL Central (62-100 if they had played 162 games).