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Morning Report: The Pirates Need to Embrace Their Window

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Last week I posted an article looking at how long the Pirates have their roster under control, along with the prospects on the way. The article ended with this handy chart to illustrate it all.

I added another photo at the end of the article, adding a window over the 2019-2022 years. That’s because those years present a pretty obvious window when you consider how many players the Pirates have under team control until the 2022 season. The window is especially apparent when you look at the entire pitching staff and see that 80% of the rotation is up in the air in 2023.

There’s plenty of time to develop replacements for the guys that are currently here. You can see that in the current roster. Three years ago at this time, most of the guys on the roster were either in the minors, just arriving in the majors, or not even in the organization. The latter applies to some key guys this year, such as Felipe Vazquez and Bryan Reynolds.

But going back to the 2016 season also teaches us a lesson about trying to contend while trying to bring a lot of young players into the system. The young players don’t adjust immediately. Some prospects end up like Bryan Reynolds and set the world on fire in their debuts, but most are closer to Josh Bell, taking a few years before they hit their stride.

So while the Pirates have some potential replacements for their current roster, and could develop replacements for the other positions by the end of the 2022 season, I wouldn’t extend any window beyond that 2022 season.

A window should display the years where the team has their best chance of contending. The Pirates haven’t embraced the concept of windows, which kind of makes this look at the team pointless. We’re discussing windows to contend for a team that believes you can contend every single year for as long as you can possibly keep it up.

The problem is that the most successful teams today are the ones who fully tore everything down, only to build it all back up again and go all-in when they’re ready to contend. Look at the Brewers as a recent example of this. The Royals are an example of how this can work out in a big way for small market teams, and how there’s a steep drop off when the window closes.

Meanwhile, the Pirates are an example of what happens today when you don’t embrace windows. This is the fourth year in a row where we’ve reached the summer and they’re still trying to contend, despite not looking like contenders. They look less like contenders this year than the previous three summers, thanks in part to injuries. But they’ve never really been strong contenders during this 2016-19 stretch. At best, they were a team that could hope to sneak into the Wild Card game.

If the Pirates continue their current approach of not embracing windows, then the 2020-2022 seasons will be wasted, and that would be worse than the 2016-2018 seasons being wasted. You could argue that they were somewhat rebuilding during that time. There is no rebuild over the next three years. They’ve got a roster that can contend if they add the right pieces and embrace the window.

Of course, there can be two different areas for a window. The Pirates could decide that the current group isn’t enough, and that adding to this group would be too difficult. They could trade away some veteran players starting this year, and put their focus on young guys like Ke’Bryan Hayes, Mitch Keller, and the other young players who are under team control beyond 2022.

They could punt the 2020 season, and hope that the rebuild gets them back in the mix in 2021 with the right additions to the team. Under this strategy you would have a very young, and very cheap roster, making it much easier to add players from the outside if you are operating under a constrained budget. And that constrained budget shouldn’t be so constrained if you’re embracing windows, since you’ll make up for that with very cheap rosters during the rebuild periods.

The Pirates need to embrace this concept. They need to either focus on contending the next few years and ignore everything beyond the 2022 season, or they need to boot the next season or two and focus on a window that runs from around 2021-2022 through the 2025-26 seasons.

I’ve asked Bob Nutting in the past two years whether the team has seen the success around the league from embracing windows. Each year his response is the same, that the Pirates believe their strategy can work, too. I’d point to the 2016-19 seasons as evidence that the strategy isn’t working.

The most important thing for this team is for them to drop the old idea that you can realistically contend every single season, and to start embracing windows. Otherwise it won’t matter whether you’re going for it from 2020-2022 or 2022-2025. Those years will all be the same if you don’t embrace windows — an upside of a second Wild Card team, and more likely to end up a few games above or below .500.

TODAY’S SCHEDULE

Today’s Starter and Notes: The Pittsburgh Pirates won 5-4 over the Miami Marlins on Sunday afternoon.The Pirates are off today. They return home for a quick two-game series against the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday. Mitch Keller is scheduled to start Tuesday night’s game, making his first home start. He allowed six runs in each of his first two Major League starts, giving up 17 hits and four walks in seven innings. The Tigers will counter with 26-year-old left-hander Daniel Norris, who has a 4.52 ERA in 67.2 innings, with 54 strikeouts and a 1.46 WHIP. He gave up two runs over five innings against the Kansas City Royals in his last start. That followed three runs on 11 hits over 5.2 innings against the Tampa Bay Rays on June 6th.

The minor league schedule includes Bradenton returning from their All-Star break to start the second half of their season. Nicholas Economos should get the start. His last outing was cut short due to rain. He gave up one run in 2.2 innings, while walking four batters. After a rain out yesterday, Beau Sulser should get his first start of the season for Altoona, barring a change in the rotation. Despite pitching strictly in relief, he has thrown at least three innings in six of his last seven outings. Sulser gave up one run over five innings in his last appearance.

Morgantown has a doubleheader today due to a rain out yesterday. Michael Burrows (last year’s 11th round draft pick) was scheduled to start on Sunday, while Winston Nicacio, a minor league Rule 5 pick, was scheduled to pitch today. Sometimes teams won’t use two regular starters on the same day, so we shall see if they both go today. Indianapolis has off today. Greensboro is on their All-Star break until Thursday.

MLB: Pittsburgh (32-39) vs Tigers (25-43) 7:05 PM 6/18
Probable starter: Mitch Keller (15.43 ERA, 9:4 SO/BB, 7.0 IP)

AAA: Indianapolis (36-31) @ Buffalo (32-35) 7:05 PM 6/18 (season preview)
Probable starter: TBD

AA: Altoona (34-31) vs Harrisburg (41-27) 6:30 PM (season preview)
Probable starter: Beau Sulser (1.34 ERA 27:10 SO/BB, 40.1 IP)

High-A: Bradenton (36-30) vs Clearwater (36-30) 6:30 PM (season preview)
Probable starter: Nicholas Economos (2.63 ERA, 25:13 SO/BB, 27.1 IP)

Low-A: Greensboro (44-25) VS Delmarva (48-21) 7:00 PM 6/20 (season preview)
Probable starter: TBD

Short-Season A: Morgantown (1-1) @ Williamsport (1-1) 5:05 PM DH (season preview)
Probable starter: Michael Burrows (NR)

DSL: Pirates1 (5-8) vs Indians (6-7) 10:30 AM (season preview)

DSL: Pirates2 (11-2) vs Tigers2 (5-8) 10:30 AM (season preview)

HIGHLIGHTS

From Altoona, Bligh Madris and Hunter Owen each homered on Saturday night

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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