I wish being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan became more palatable as the years went by, but that unfortunately hasn’t been the case. It’s become exhausting trying to find any underlying metric that might offer a glimpse of hope, but the reality continues to be that the Pirates and Ben Cherington are playing the long game. The very long game.
On the surface, trading for Ji-man Choi and then signing Carlos Santana piqued interest that the tides were changing. Then the Winter Meetings came and went with the Pirates snuggling right back into business as usual.
In a couple weeks, the calendar will flip to 2023, and then we’ll be counting down the days in anticipation of pitchers and catchers reporting on February 15th. I, for one, will be ecstatic for camp to open, regardless on the state of the roster. I love baseball, and for that reason I’d highly recommend subscribing to MiLB.tv to free you of the major league trials and tribulations.
Seeing prospects succeed, and furthermore, begin building the foundation of a winning culture, is what primarily drives my interest. I don’t like seeing prospects thrusted into a situation of needing to immediately contribute due to the club’s persistent negligence of the MLB club.
I imagine that is also why this has been such a long drawn out painful process.
Endy Rodriguez looks special, but he still has room to grow and develop. The Pirates aren’t a catcher away from battling for the division, let alone being a contender. Quinn Priester and Mike Burrows likely aren’t refined to the point of stepping into an everyday starting role while shouldering a season long workload. Nick Gonzales and Henry Davis need to find a way to get through an entire season without injuries.
The obvious argument is with regards to service time manipulation and future control, but what is there to gain by opening 2023 with the Pirates high profiled prospects on the roster? The Pirates are set to burn through another prime year of Bryan Reynolds, and prospects wouldn’t likely change that. Why also burn a full year of their prospects who can still mold their craft in a less demanding environment?
It’s fun to envision Endy having an immediate impact such as Julio Rodriguez, but Julio was also stepping into a stable situation. The Atlanta Braves had a reigning World Series team that their trio of Spencer Strider, Michael Harris II, and Vaughn Grissom could arrive at their own pace and supplement the roster. They weren’t leaned on with the expectations of having to immediately contribute.
Bryson Stott opened the year on a loaded Philadelphia Phillies roster and struggled. Spencer Torkelson was a consensus top five prospect who was an advanced college hitter and struggled throughout the year. Another Detroit Tigers consensus top five prospect Riley Greene arrived mid-year after an injury, and while he had an overall positive contribution, he also saw his own struggles. Advanced college hitter Andrew Vaughn has been worth -0.8 fWAR over his first 1024 PA’s in two years.
A better comparison might be in-division rival Cincinnati Reds. They had two consensus top 100 prospects spend majority of the season in their rotation with Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo. They didn’t receive a Prospect Promotion Incentive pick and now have to rely on either finishing top-three in MVP or Cy Young voting in order to receive a pick.
The Reds dismantled their roster and were terrible. They didn’t draw more fans due to enthusiasm surrounding young high-profiled arms. Even if both Lodolo and Greene look like front-end starters during 2023, would it be contributed to the fact the Reds took the opportunity to roster them early on? Are we really going to say the extra three months in the majors catapulted their careers THAT much?
If the Pirates would decide to fill their current hole at catcher with Endy, the best the Pirates could probably hope for is maybe a couple of sold-out homestands by intrigued fans who will then quickly lose interest again because the team still isn’t winning.
The bigger issue isn’t that the Pirates aren’t promoting their prospects soon enough, the issue is the roster they’d be promoting those prospects into. It’s a rostered littered with question marks. It’s the equivalent of arguing who the closer is going to be when we know damn well there will few and far in-between games that we even need a closer.
By all means I would LOVE to see a handful of promising young players begin in Pittsburgh, but I want them to be stepping into an environment that will provide the best possible chance of success.
At this point, I’m not even convinced the major league coaches offer a better chance at success, rather than continued development under minor league coaches.
