The Pittsburgh Pirates have a Major League development problem.
I haven’t spoken publicly about my interpretation of the issue, from my assessment of the MLB coaching staff, to my assessment of the farm system. Behind the scenes, I’ve essentially parked this Bentley of a media outlet that provides actual checks and balances on the Pirates, in an attempt to get a detailed understanding of the inner-workings of how a baseball scouting and development system should run.
The article below works from my extensive knowledge of the Pirates and their development processes over the last two decades. This is a team that can still win in the short-term, but they need to fix a glaring problem that is unable to be qualified. Here are my attempts to qualify the Pittsburgh Pirates’ development issues with prospects.
NOTE: This article was written on Tuesday, prior to the addition of Assistant General Manager Sarah Gelles. I have additional thoughts this weekend on how her hire and knowledge base can help the Pirates organization in the right ways.
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES AT THE TOP
Oscar Marin, the Pirates’ pitching coach, joined the Pirates after the 2019 season. Marin came on board with manager Derek Shelton, as part of the management changeover at the time. I wrote about Marin earlier this week, in relation to the development with Robert Stephenson and the Rays.
Stephenson was added by the Pirates in late 2022, and had short-term success. He returned in 2023, and struggled the first two months of the year. The Pirates traded him to the Rays, who turned his slider into a cutter after one conversation. That cutter was one of the best pitches in baseball, turning Stephenson into one of the best relievers in the game. Marin has yet to see a change so rapid. At best, there are cases like Ryan Borucki, where Marin gets a pitcher to an expected level of production, yet nothing out of the ordinary for the individual player.
This is not a problem with just Marin. The Pirates haven’t had great immediate results from their hitters. They hired Andy Haines after the 2021 season. The team ranked 28th in wOBA and 29th in wRC+ that year. After two years under Haines, they’ve improved to 23rd and 25th, respectively. They were 18th/19th from August until the end of the season, as the younger hitters arrived. I’m not sure how much I would credit Haines for that improvement. They were 21st/19th in 2019. They finished 2023 where they finished 2019 on offense.
The pitching staff hasn’t seen improvements in the last four years by that same standard. They ranked 19th with a 4.78 FIP in 2019, the final year under pitching coach Ray Searage. They dropped to 22nd in 2020, 25th in ’21, 23rd in ’22, and this past year they were the 21st ranked team in the majors. The Pirates ranked 19th from August until the end of the season, when they were using a more modern practice of bullpen games.
The Pirates took four years to get back to the same production level that resulted in a management change. The question is whether they’re able to trend up from here.
BELOW-AVERAGE PERFORMANCE FROM THE ROOKIES
The Pirates are faced with the same problem in 2024 that they’ve always been faced with: Extracting the most potential out of their young players, as quickly as possible.
The Pirates rely on younger players even more than most teams, due to their smaller budget and the cheaper cost of those young players. Younger players also come with less experience and a need to develop in the majors. The Pirates haven’t had great results in this area, from a traditional sense.
Endy Rodriguez, Henry Davis, Jared Triolo, Liover Peguero, Ji Hwan Bae, and Nick Gonzales all arrived in the majors last year. Only Triolo hit at an above-average pace for rookies. That offense from Triolo came with a .440 BABIP, so we have yet to really see where he will settle. Davis led the remaining group with a .302 on-base percentage.
Using the 20-80 scouting scale, let’s say that each of these players is objectively a present-day 45-grade option. That puts them as part-time starters, but guys who are not yet ready to be productive with daily playing time. None of them have yet to show that they are average starters in the majors yet, though Triolo’s performance came the closest. At this point, the Pirates have a below-average rookie class from their position players.
Things aren’t better on the pitching side. 2019 first rounder Quinn Priester was the top pitching prospect heading into the year, and he struggled in multiple appearances in the big leagues. The biggest success story was 2020 first rounder Carmen Mlodzinski, who had a 2.25 ERA in the bullpen, but a 4.03 FIP. Kyle Nicolas, acquired in the Jacob Stallings trade, has 5.1 innings of experience. Luis Ortiz struggled in his first extensive look in the majors.
At best, present-day, the Pirates have a reliable middle reliever in Mlodzinski, giving them about 40-45 grade present day value. The rest of the pitchers are present-day 35-40 grade value. That means if the season started today, they’d likely start as depth in Triple-A for a contending team, with a chance to be relief options. The Pirates are hoping for more from this group, and that might actually be unfair to the group of players who would be on a more relaxed timeline in an organization that had a stronger MLB group.
The hitting prospects mentioned above have more upside than 45-grade. There are future average daily starters (50), above-average performers (55), and star players (60+) among that group. There’s more potential from the pitching group than we’ve seen.
So, how do the Pirates get their players from Point A (potential) to Point B (upside) the fastest, to benefit from their young core the longest?
BRACHISTOCHRONE CURVES
Who else is ready for a light dive into the calculus of variations on Friday morning?
I, Johann Bernoulli, address the most brilliant mathematicians in the world. Nothing is more attractive to intelligent people than an honest, challenging problem, whose possible solution will bestow fame and remain as a lasting monument. Following the example set by Pascal, Fermat, etc., I hope to gain the gratitude of the whole scientific community by placing before the finest mathematicians of our time a problem which will test their methods and the strength of their intellect. If someone communicates to me the solution of the proposed problem, I shall publicly declare him worthy of praise
-Johann Bernoulli, June 1696
In the summer of 1696, Johann Bernoulli and his brother, Jakob, were trying to solve the problem of the Brachistochrone curve. Given two points on a vertical plane, they were seeking to find a point acted upon only by gravity, which starts at A and reaches B in the shortest amount of time. Mythbusters did an episode about the brachistochrone curve, and the visual representation of what I just explained can be seen below.
First, I’ll note that the above curve set is inverted for the purposes of baseball player development. The brachistochrone curve deals with gravity, and player development deals more in terms of helium. You want to see a player ascending as he goes from Point A to Point B. The underlying concept is the same. You want that ascent to be as frictionless as possible, within a uniform gravitational field.
The Pittsburgh Pirates provide a uniform gravitational field with their coaching staff. Andy Haines provides the gravity for the hitters. All throughout the system, the hitting process echos the plan from Haines in the majors. Oscar Marin controls the gravity for the pitchers in the same way.
The task of Haines and Marin is to guide the young players in the system from their Current Value to their Future Value with as little friction as possible.
What is friction in baseball development? Let’s look at Nick Gonzales for clarification.
THE DELAYED DEVELOPMENT OF NICK GONZALES
The Pirates drafted Gonzales in the first round of 2020. Here was the scouting report from Baseball America, heading into 2021:
“Scouts view Gonzales as a future all-star second baseman capable of competing for batting titles. He is advanced enough to jump on the fast track to the majors and arrive in Pittsburgh at some point in 2022.”
That’s a 55-60 Future Value, and at best, Gonzales is a 35-40 Current Value.
Gonzales spent all of 2021 in High-A Greensboro. He dealt with injuries in Altoona in 2022, which is a different type of friction that a coach or development system can’t prevent. When healthy, his bat was showing some early swing and miss issues in both years that ran counter to the draft scouting reports. Gonzales arrived in the majors in 2023, and those swing and miss issues became prohibitive to him remaining in the majors. Called up on June 23rd, Gonzales hit for a .216/.268/.353 line in 112 plate appearances, with a 27.7% strikeout rate, before going to Indianapolis for the remainder of the Triple-A season.
In his time with Indianapolis at the end of 2023, Gonzales hit for a .314/.392/.585 line with a 23.8% strikeout rate. I was told from within the Pirates organization that he was getting more extension with his swings at the end of the year. His numbers in the final two months were improved from his early-season success, where he had a 28.6% strikeout rate, and a .257/.370/.450 line. Despite the improvements, he returned to the majors at the end of the year and struck out 31.3% of the time in 16 plate appearances.
Friction for player development isn’t necessarily represented by struggles in the majors. The Pirates gave Gonzales a good sample size in the majors in his first run through. That sample size was enough to establish his decision-making tendencies at the plate. During that time, Gonzales had a 16.6% swinging strike rate, which is well above the 11.2% league average. He swung at a below-average rate outside of the zone, which is good, but his contact outside of the zone was 41.4%, which is well below the league average of 62.3%. His swing and miss was largely concentrated on chase swings.
Gonzales went to Triple-A and worked for two months on getting better extension. That’s one thing he needed to improve to get to those outside pitches. When he returned to the majors, he had overall strikeout issues, but his contact on chase pitches was 66.7%, which is above-average. He also was just swinging at everything, with a near 50% chase rate, but was making good contact.
Gonzales was only in the majors for a total of four games at the end of the year, and his overall numbers struggled. If you ignore the small sample disclaimer about his swing rate stats (he faced nine pitches across four days), you can see his path to improvement. If Gonzales showed anything at the end of the year, it’s that he is that guy who can put the bat on anything he wants, but needs to be more selective with his swing decisions.
The brachistochrone curve of development for Gonzales is the quickest path to that 55+ Future Value. The path is constantly shifting, but always with the idea that he can hit his way to average or above-average production in the future. Right now, he’s a 35-grade present value player. He hasn’t shown that he can hit in the majors, and is more Quad-A status. He could be in the 40-45 grade territory right now, and the stats don’t reflect the actual changes he made in Indianapolis. Regardless, he’s not currently that 55+ Future Value upside. Andy Haines is now tasked with getting Gonzales from ~35 CV to 55 FV in as quick of time as possible. While also plotting the brachistochrone cycloid curves for every other prospect cast upon him in the last year.
I think the Pirates went wrong with Gonzales in 2021, and we’re just now seeing the implications.
The Pirates used the 7th overall pick on Gonzales in the first round of the 2020 draft, but sent the advanced college hitter to High-A for his entire first season. This is a classic development timeline that, in my mind, models the straight, full of friction path from the Mythbusters brachistochrone example. My belief today is that Gonzales learned nothing important in High-A, and that his most important lesson that year would have been getting to the upper levels and seeing immediately how flawed his college approach would be.
To the Pirates credit, they didn’t repeat this mistake with Paul Skenes. The first overall pick of 2023 was sent to Altoona almost immediately. A little over a decade ago, the Pirates sent first overall pick Gerrit Cole to High-A for 67 innings and Double-A for 59 innings during his first season. Despite the time in the lower levels, he still had some hiccups in Triple-A in his second year, and never really reached that ace upside with the Pirates. At the time Cole was a rookie in pro ball, the Pirates were often accused of moving their players too conservatively. I never understood that at the time, but knowing what I know about Cole’s work ethic and competitive attitude, I can say today will full authority that the Pirates did not properly challenge Cole. His development was delayed, and his best accolades came away from Pittsburgh. My biggest fear is that Cole subconsciously knew he wasn’t ever being properly challenged in Pittsburgh.
The Pirates didn’t properly challenge Gonzales. When an advanced player plays in A-ball, he’s facing easy competition where he doesn’t have to strategize his skills. There might be one or two at-bats where a pitcher has to think. Gonzales is that type of at-bat for an A-ball pitcher. There is maybe one at-bat in an A-ball game for Gonzales that would represent medium leverage in the upper levels. His entire season in 2021 may have given him less than 100 true learning opportunities at the plate. Sending an advanced talent to this environment can build bad habits against weaker competition. Shortcuts that can’t be taken in the big leagues, and that wouldn’t work in the upper levels. If you send a player to Double-A immediately, they won’t have the flashy, promising facade of numbers in A-ball to build hype.
And that’s the problem with prospects being based on helium, rather than gravity. The prospect industry is based on a foundation of gas, rather than solid matter. The minor league development system itself is a giant model of the scientific process called Deposition, which is the act of turning a gas into solid material. The lower levels are where you send the players who are more “gas”, aka raw skill, and need to be deposed to the point where they matter in the game. Players who already possess the Major League mindset are solid matter. The Pirates, in sending advanced guys like Cole and Gonzales and others to A-ball, have essentially been trying to pass solids through the deposition process meant to turn gasses into solids. They’ve been wasting time, and likely doing unseen mental damage.
The Pirates are trying to find the brachistochrone curve for their prospects, which is the quickest path from their amateur selves to their potential as MLB starters and star players. They’ve been failing at this, due to putting their prospects through too much friction. It’s the friction of time.
Time exists in many forms. The macro form involves subjecting players to years of their lives with unnecessary training, which only enforces a mindset for some that they’re years away from being MLB talents. This isn’t just the first rounders receiving this subtle training.
Thomas Harrington is one of the most mature pitching minds the Pirates have drafted in the middle rounds in recent years. In May, I talked with reporters in Pittsburgh who raved about interviewing Harrington, after speaking with him in Bradenton. At the time, I knew that I would be speaking to Harrington for the first time in Greensboro at the end of the year, because the Pirates are still on the more linear development plan. After speaking with him, I simply saw that he is confident in his skills and abilities, always working to improve, and honest about his flaws. Once you have that Major League combination, you should be developing in the upper levels. In my opinion, Harrington should have been challenged this year with significant time in Double-A. His numbers might not have been as flashy, but he’d be better in the long run with the more frequent lessons against advanced hitters.
TRUE INDIVIDUALIZED DEVELOPMENT
The Pirates have moved to an individualized development system under farm director John Baker, who was one of the earliest hires under General Manager Ben Cherington. I personally like the mindset that Baker has brought to the organization.
Under Baker, the Pirates still have the development issues they had under Kyle Stark. My opinion today on this subject is extremely nuanced, as both men had different strengths, but both fell short in a key area.
The strength from Stark was his eye for innovation. His individual weakness was gearing a system toward one type of player: The classic, masculine dominated athletic personality. This was most notably displayed with the Navy SEAL training, but I saw many micro examples of this in my years.
Baker’s system is more relaxed. You don’t see players running in cleats to the next station as older coaches hold stop watches and bark a stern tone of enforcement disguised as encouragement. The players who would have succeeded under Stark’s system will still succeed here, but there are certain players who will have a better chance under Baker’s system. Some athletes were born under powerful mothers, and most of these players who grew up in feminine-dominated households are the ones who become stars. The improvement Baker brought was increasing the potential amount of players who could reach the majors. I believe this is why the Pirates are graded with so much “depth” by prospect evaluators across the industry. Their development system tone shifted from the less secure masculine dominated mindset to more of a neutral zone that allows all personality types to stand out. Not just the Navy SEAL personality.
The problem, under both farm directors, is that the Pirates are not challenging the advanced minds. Some players already have the Major League mindset, and just need upper level experience to know how to implement their mind and skill combination. The Pirates system does allow more individuals the potential to thrive, but the Pirates have shown reservation of actually challenging players with the Major League mindset. They just benefitted last year by taking Jose Hernandez from Double-A to the Majors in the Rule 5 draft, but you’ll rarely see them jump a college pitcher straight to Double-A, like they did with Paul Skenes.
I want to clarify that I don’t place this on Stark or Baker. I don’t think either person has the power to make these aggressive prospect assignments. I honestly don’t think know if that is a singular job in the system. Stark and Baker both essentially created a “uniform gravitational field” of development, working off the “gravitational fields” from the MLB coaches. My disagreements with Stark’s system largely boil down to the limited personality acceptances, to the point where I can recall several instances of players being verbally abused or practice-tortured in public in order to build them up from boys to men. Baker’s system features pitchers walking barefoot in the grass with their thoughts after a bad start; or relaxing by throwing a football with their teammates; or taking practice off if they deem it necessary; as their minds rest from the mental toil that comes with the physical activity of playing baseball. The reality is that Baker benefits from a foundation of innovation research that Stark put in place, and both were in the unfortunate position of being tiny cogs in a larger organization that historically lacks innovation from within. The downside to this is that the Pirates have never really known how to properly utilize their innovative resources.
The Pirates are a passive organization in many ways. Their winning approach is passive, secondary to providing an entertainment option for families who don’t really care who wins on the field. Their development approach is passive, collecting depth but never really challenging those who have proven to be true individuals. Every single cycloid curve that projects a player to big league success is drawn the same way, when in reality, every player has an individual development curve that can’t truly be unlocked until they start getting challenged by players on their talent level.
IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, YOU DON’T HAVE THE BRAINPOWER TO WORK TODAY, BUT TELL YOUR BOSS I SAID HELLO
The easiest way of explaining the root of the Pirates’ development issues is with Nick Gonzales and proper swimming pool entry techniques.
The Pirates could have thrown Gonzales into the deep end of the pool in 2021 and trusted that he knew how to swim. Instead, they slowly walked him into the shallow end, and his swim suit puffed up. When he tried to submerge, all of that air escaped, and it looked like he farted to everyone watching the pool. The reality is that Gonzales didn’t fart. The Pirates farted by slow walking him into the pool, when he was drafted seventh overall for his swimming skills. His suit would have filled up with air if they threw him in the pool, but no one would have noticed it, because they would have been distracted by the splash. He would have then quicker acclimated to the deep end, with the worst case being that we all would discover that there’s no linear development path to a batting title.
In brachistochrone curve terms, the Pirates weren’t going to start establishing the cycloid of Gonzales’ ascent to the majors until they got him extensive time in the upper levels. They wasted an entire season of his development in A-ball in 2021, and only started making important changes to his game in late 2022/early 2023. Gonzales is about to enter his age 25 season, and doesn’t stand out among a group of prospects who are all trying to find that path from Point A to Point B. The Pirates, rather than quickly subjecting Gonzales to the effects of gravity/helium, instead gave him a lot of friction-filled runway that didn’t build momentum.
In pure, baseball development terms, the Pirates drafted Nick Gonzales because of his hand-eye coordination. He has fast hands and an ability to track the baseball like very few players. The combination means he can not only see the ball better than most players, but he can also put the bat on more pitches. The problem is that his approach in the lower levels, against lesser competition, is essentially lazy when compared to what is needed for the Majors. Gonzales can just throw the bat directly to the ball and crush an amateur pitcher, with their pitches looking to him like beachballs. In A-ball, he gets exposed a bit for this direct swing plane against “smaller” pitches that he has less time to react toward. As he reaches the upper levels, this habit from the weaker pitching starts to get exposed. Gonzales can no longer rely on seeing the ball early and quick hands to make hard contact with the pitch. His contact becomes later, weaker, less certain as the game speeds up and adds more variation. His raw talent clears way for the need to strategize the implementation of his skills. These are things he can learn to overcome, and hopefully he has done that in his work in Triple-A at the end of 2023. We’ll find out in 2024 if Gonzales is finally on the upward climb. If the Pirates had challenged him in Double-A to start his career, I believe he would have been at this questionable point one year ago, and might be entering his age-25 season with a bit more confidence after an additional year of upper level experience. Instead, I question today what Gonzales actually learned by spending his age 22 season in High-A Greensboro.
This isn’t a problem that is isolated to Gonzales. The Pirates do not challenge their individuals. They have a development program that allows more individuals to be comfortable in their work, but their system is still designed in a way to hold back their best talent.
Ultimately, this leaves Oscar Marin and Andy Haines in no-win positions, as they’re left with more development work than time to develop players, which leaves less time to have impactful conversations with guys like Robert Stephenson.
NOTES
**I wrote most of this article before the hiring of Assistant General Manager Sarah Gelles, which sounds like a good addition that I’ll cover this weekend.
**I’ve also got an article on the Philadelphia 76ers, which will see me dive deeper into the concepts of nano-focus and the brachistochrone curve as it related to player development. Mostly, I’m more excited to watch the 76ers take on the Boston Celtics tonight than I have been for any MLB game in a long time. I don’t know if you can tell by my writing, but I’m kind of bored explaining my knowledge about this game. I’ve been secretly using the NBA to warm up my adjusted writing style for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2024 and beyond. Tomorrow’s article will get a first look at that style as it relates to game analysis.
**Tell your bosses that I apologize for your lack of productivity today. If they, or anyone else needs to reach me: tim@piratesprospects.com.
SONG OF THE DAY
Well, in these times, well, at least to me
There’s a lot of rappers out there tryin’ to sound like Jay-Z
I’ll help you out, here’s what you do
You gonna need a wide lens ’cause that’s a ver’ big shoe
And you got a couple of beans and you don’t have a clue?
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Fuckin’ with me, you gotta drop a mil’
‘Cause if you gonna cop somethin’, you gotta cop for real
Don’t only talk it, walk like it, from the bricks to the booth
I could predict the future like Cleo the psychic
You can’t date skeeos and wife it (Uh-uh)
And you can’t sell me bullshit, we know the prices
So what your life is?
We gon’ roll ’til the wheels fall off, y’all motherfuckers check the tires
Off we go, let the trumpets blow
And hold on, because the driver of that Bentley is a pro
The ruler’s back…
