The Pirates dealt with a lot of injuries this year, seeing a record number of guys go on the disabled list. Most of those injuries were minor, and a lot came to players who weren’t going to impact the overall club. But there were also some major injuries to players who the Pirates were counting on before the season.
Neal Huntington has already cited the injuries as one of the reasons for the team’s record this year. Today, I want to take a look at the true impact of the injuries, following up on my ZiPS and WAR analysis from yesterday. Below I’ll focus on the biggest injury impacts from that analysis, and how things might have been different for the Pirates with a healthy roster.
Francisco Cervelli – Cervelli was just below replacement level when he was healthy. That’s actually an improvement on Elias Diaz, who was at -1.6 fWAR this season. However, Cervelli would likely be taking more time away from Jacob Stallings, who was productive with a 1.3 WAR. If we assume a full season from Cervelli means almost no playing time for Stallings, then Cervelli would need to improve his production by about a win to break even (assuming he’s also taking away playing time from Diaz, which helps just by keeping Diaz out of the game).
The best production at the catching position came from Stallings, which means Cervelli needs some really strong production in this hypothetical situation to improve the Pirates’ chances.
Erik Gonzalez – The Pirates entered the season with Gonzalez as their starter, and Kevin Newman on the bench. I think Newman would have taken the starting role regardless with the two performances, but it might have happened later in the season than it did if Gonzalez wasn’t injured. Newman posted a 2.4 WAR, while Gonzalez was replacement level. This is a case where an injury really helped the team, although I think the same result would have eventually happened without the injury.
Corey Dickerson – Dickerson was productive when he was healthy, putting up an 0.7 WAR in limited playing time. However, as I pointed out yesterday, his replacement did better than he was projected to do. Dickerson was projected for a 2.5 WAR, while Bryan Reynolds emerged with a 3.2 WAR. The Pirates probably don’t give Reynolds that opportunity without all of the injuries in the outfield.
There is an argument to be made that a healthy Dickerson allows them to put Reynolds in right field, where there were injuries and poor performance. However, it would have taken a long time to get to Reynolds in a healthy scenario, as Melky Cabrera was playing well up until the middle of the season. I think in this situation, the outfield injuries helped to lead to the emergence of Reynolds, and I don’t think you get him without the injuries — or at least not this production for the majority of the season.
Jameson Taillon – This is the injury that hurt the Pirates the most. Taillon was productive before he went down, with an 0.8 WAR in 37.1 innings. Let’s say he does pitch a full season, with about 180 innings. That pace would give him a 4.0 WAR. So the Pirates might have been robbed of about three wins here with Taillon being shut down early.
Chris Archer – Archer missed time a few times with injuries, but I’m not sure that’s a big loss to the Pirates considering his performance. He might have added another win at most, just due to the innings load. However, that might have taken away from Steven Brault, who had a 1.1 WAR in the rotation as the primary depth option. Although Brault is probably already reduced by Taillon pitching a full season in the scenario above. The key here is that Archer wasn’t performing well this year, so it’s hard to say the injuries hurt the Pirates in this case.
Keone Kela – He had an 0.4 WAR in 30 innings. Perhaps he could have doubled that by staying healthy, but we’re just talking about half a win here.
Injury Analysis
This was a team that only won 69 games. They had some major injuries, and a lot of minor injuries throughout the year. But some of their top performers were the depth options who emerged during the long-term injuries.
It would be really easy to see the impact of the injuries if the replacements were actually replacement level. The challenge here is that you have to take away value from the team in order to add the injured player’s value back to the win/loss totals.
The biggest impact came from the rotation. Jameson Taillon missing the whole season might have cost the team three extra wins. You could make a case that Chris Archer cost the team an extra win, but I think you’d have to detract the value from Steven Brault with the extra innings from Taillon and Archer, which offsets any value from Archer.
On the position player side, injuries led to two of the top performers in Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman. You could even add Jacob Stallings to this group. Those three combined for about 7 WAR, which is the value that Cervelli, Dickerson, and Gonzalez would have needed to combine to reach in order to just break even. It’s hard to argue that the Pirates could have had more wins on the offensive side with this level of production coming from their replacements.
But let’s use 20/20 hindsight. We know that having Taillon back gives an additional three wins. Archer probably takes away from Brault, so that’s a wash.
Let’s allow the Newman situation to play out as it did and keep his value.
Let’s also say that the Pirates somehow realize that Stallings is a better option than Diaz, and they have Cervelli around to reduce the negative value from Diaz. That might add an extra win or two.
And somehow the Pirates figured out that Bryan Reynolds was their best player, and their best outfield included Reynolds and a healthy Dickerson. That might add an extra two wins.
In this ultra favorable situation, using the benefit of hindsight, the Pirates get an additional 6-7 wins, which takes them up to a 75-76 win team.
I think it’s clear that injuries don’t take a playoff team and make them a bottom 10 team. That’s especially true when your replacements play as well as the Pirates’ replacements did. And you can’t reasonably keep their production while adding back the production of the injured players. The only way to do that is using hindsight and creating an unrealistic scenario like above, which still makes them a mid-70s win team.
Of course we’re discounting Lonnie Chisenhall here, who was sitting at home all season with 15 WAR production. But unfortunately, Chisenhall wasn’t healthy all year, and still would have taken value from Bryan Reynolds or Corey Dickerson.
Without the injuries, the Pirates might have been in the Cincinnati/San Francisco range in the standings. That still leaves them 12-14 games out of the Wild Card game. It’s clear that the injuries weren’t the reason the Pirates didn’t contend this year.
TODAY’S ARTICLES
John Dreker will have our Altoona recap today. We’ll also have AFL notes and any news that comes out.
SONG OF THE DAY
DAILY QUIZ
Name the career Pirates. This quiz probably will never need to be updated.
THIS DATE IN PIRATES HISTORY
By John Dreker
Four former Pittsburgh Pirates born on this date, plus a transaction of note.
Vance Law, infielder for the 1980-81 Pirates. He’s the son of all-time Pirates great Vern Law. The younger Law played parts of two seasons for the Pirates before they traded him to the Chicago White Sox prior to the 1982 season. He hit .184 in 55 games for the Pirates and batted .256 over his 11-year career.
Chuck Hiller, second baseman for the 1968 Pirates. His stay in Pittsburgh was brief, as he batted .385 in 11 games. That was his last stint in the majors, ending an eight-year career.
Jim Russell, outfielder for the Pirates from 1942 until 1947. He was a starter for his last five years with the team, hitting .277 with 40 homers, 288 RBIs and 414 runs scored in 723 games. Despite 59 stolen bases in his ten-year big league career, he led the NL in caught stealing three times with the Pirates. He received MVP votes in 1944 when he hit .312 and scored 109 runs.
Carmen Hill, pitcher for the Pirates for parts of eight years from 1915 until 1929. In his first five seasons with the Pirates, he pitched a total of 26 games, then broke out for 22 wins during the 1927 season, helping the Pirates to the World Series. That was followed up by a 16-win season in 1928. In his other eight seasons in the majors, he won a total of 11 games.
On this date in 1949, the Pirates released 42-year-old pitcher Rip Sewell, ending his big league career. In 12 seasons with the Pirates, he posted a 143-97 record. He is tied for seventh in team history in wins, ranks seventh in innings pitched, tenth in complete games and tenth in shutouts.
