I am hoping that Gonzales can continue the hot start. Last year he started very hot in May with 78 PA, 4 doubles/1 triple/3 HR, 913 OPS. Then it was downhill to finish the year with an overall 709 OPS. This year in sort of a stuttered start, he has 88 PA, 3 doubles/2 triples/3 HR, 824 OPS. We need THAT type of bat in the lineup. Hitters that start like that tend to be pitched differently as the advance scouts do their work on what pitches the hitter likes and what pitches are a problem. He's a year beyond that and that extra year could be very helpful because he knows what will be coming.
The above only counts one hitter, and Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds have been seeing that same treatment - if we could get another few hitters in the lineup, teams would not be able to concentrate their efforts on stopping 2 or 3 guys in the lineup.
Horwitz is showing better than I expected. I thought highly of him and his numbers after the trade, but wrist surgery is never a good way for a hitter to start a season. He is doing better than I expected after the surgery and rehab, so I am hopeful he will be a positive add. We've seen how Hamate issues can affect a hitter, so I am happy with the +0.2 fWAR, 90 wRC+, and 309 xwOBA to date. Question: The time missed due to the surgery - would that all count as Service Time because the injury was probably suffered during last year with Toronto?
"downhill to finish the year" is awfully tedious. He was a 93 wRC+ bat in the in the first half an 95 wRC+ in the second and finished with a hundred PA september at 109.
Jordan Rosenblum's projections at FG think Chandler and Ashcraft can come up now and likely reproduce something similar to Keller's line (around 4 ERA with 7-8% BB% and 20+ k%) albeit maybe with .8 fewer IP per start: https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/author/jarjets89/
With the Oneil Cruz breakout now muted a bit by an abysmal June, Nicky Gonzales really stands out as the bright spot.
Seasonal sample size noted, but this is a continuation of what we saw from him last year. Tracking like a 2+ WAR starting second baseman in this league, which is a healthy improvement from the path he was on when he graduated. Minor star Neil Walker was only appreciably better than that for a year.
What I liked about NG coming up is that every level he seemed to start off terribly and look like a bad pick, but he kept grinding and would eventually start hitting. Just made me think this guy is at least trying to adjust and get better. Hopefully even more improvements keep coming.
If he keeps improving against off speed stuff and as the game slows down for him some of the doubles and warning track flies start to turn into a few more homers, then I think we might really be on to something.
I'll take hunting fastballs and accepting the weakness on breaking stuff.
I think he's made an intentionally aggressive change to his approach that accepts some chase in order to avoid 2-strike counts. Never gonna be much of an OBP guy but it gets the ball in play, and his swing has that tendency to pull the ball in the air. Some guys can outslug their raw pop that way.
He's swinging at substantially more pitches in the zone than last year, and outside the zone less. He swings at a much higher % of in-zone than the typical hitter, and only slightly more outside. His % of called strikes is somewhere around half the MLB norm. That's on a team that ranks 8th in MLB in called strike %.
anyways, i was looking at his statcast page which has him at a 34% chase rate but now see his fangraphs page shows a 30% o-swing which now has me wondering if i know what either actually means.
also thats like 4 pitches out of 100 and thinking of it like that always makes me question why the hell plate discipline stats even matter.
BA has a list of standout hitting prospects for June. I’m sure anybody here can guess who heads the discussion.
Among other things, BA notes the sharp drop in the K rate. “His improving plate skills over the course of the spring are a reason to buy into Griffin’s ability to adjust on the fly.”
If he could put up 85% of his A+ line in AA for say the last 80 PAs of the season or so, he's a Top 20 guy in all of MiLB throughout the offseason and headed into ST.
I see those offensive rankings above, and they are what they are, but all I can think from the eye test of watching them is "dear God, how is there anyone out there WORSE than these guys". I struggle to think of a single thing they do well offensively
We are dealing with an historically bad team in the 6th year of BC’s tenure. Until there is a different person, hopefully better as a GM, directing this organization I have little hope that the Pirates can accomplish anything of note. If this were an actual Pirate ship it would be adrift at sea, with no direction, and no hope for the crew.
Bravo sir you hit the proverbial nail on the head. With a captain like BC there truly is no hope for this sinking ship. I believe 6 years is a long enough time to actually say he sucks at his job.
I want to present the devil's advocacy for GMBC. Not because I'm desperately in love with a guy who somehow saw value in the combination of Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier, but because I'm obnoxious and argumentative.
1) The pitching prospects are real. They have legit depth in the system, with room to get better as dudes like Jones rehab and guys like Chandler arrive. Lots of teams would give to have a Skenes-Keller-Jones-Chandler rotation, especially if they're comfortable giving a bounceback contract to some leftie vet in FA.
2) There are hints of hitting on the way. There's a non-zero chance that Nick the Stick is legit. Hank shows pop and improvement while getting markedly better at C. Yeah, you'd like to see someone like Termarr a little closer to the majors than he is right now, but let's see what time does. It's hard to call a 19 y.o. in A-ball legit, but a world-beating Konnor Griffin promotion in June 2026 would make a big apology for the last six season. There are still some potential guys in the mix like Will Taylor, Jack Brannigan, Esmerlyn Valdez. If the Pirates fire GMBC, the next GM is going to look smarter than he is.
3) a) The cupboard was empty at the end of GMNH's time. I can make a pretty good argument that Joe Musgrove was the only meaningful trade piece GMBC had. And a couple of GMBC's trades have been surprisingly good -- the Adam Frazier trade comes particularly to mind.
3) b) These sorts of rebuilds take forever to yield on-the-field results. Look at the Orioles rebuild. Heck, go back and look at the Astros rebuild. Doing a full teardown sucks, and it sucks even more when you barely have any trade pieces.
4) GMBC has done a good job snagging guys on comeback contracts in FA to fill the holes in the rotation year after year. Someone in the organization is very good at this part of the job. Maybe just Oscar Marin has the magic pixie dust; I don't know for sure. But it's consistent performance.
All things tallied up, I'd rather be the guy taking over the organization from GMBC than the guy who had to take over from GMNH.
But if all things are tallied, I still have no idea what makes you think the corpses of Pham and Frazier were worth $7m/yr on a team with Scrooge McDuck as owner.
In 2019, the Pittsburgh Pirates' farm system was ranked as a borderline top-10 system, with some publications placing them around 9th or 10th overall. MLB Pipeline, specifically, ranked them 15th in their preseason rankings. However, the system was considered to have strong potential, with several players later making an impact on the major league roster.
BA had them 18 as of Feb 2019, and the curve was headed the wrong way for a while. Especially with a top-heavy system at the time -- top four were Keller, Hayes, Cruz, and T-Swag. #5 in the org was Cal Mitchell, which is a hell of a drop-off.
The cupboard was bare because all the good dishes were ready to go on the table. After that, there we're even Dixie plates.
You can cherry pick what you want. The system had: Mitch Keller, Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Braxton Ashcraft and Kevin Newman in the system. It’s not nothing. Plus the MLB roster had some talent at positions too.
The fact of the matter is BC is a failure to this point. NH at least built a winner, just couldn’t sustain it longer than 3 years.
Where's the cherry picking? There was a gigantic fall-off after the top group of nearly MLB-ready guys.
The cupboard was bare.
And if we're talking about cherry picking, then you don't get to cherry pick Reynolds, who was the 8th OF in the organization at the time and the product of the injury bug eating everyone above him.
"The fact of the matter is BC is a failure to this point. "
Did you even bother to read the preamble to what I said? I said "to play devil's advocate for GMBC". No one is seriously defending GMBC after this offseason's killer batting acquisitions like Pham and Frazier. The point of playing devil's advocate is to at least consider a position that would otherwise go unrepresented.
Dude, they are 18 games below .500 with the 3rd worst record in baseball, and only 1 starting pitching prospect and 1 2B-only prospect in the upper minors. Don't overthink this.
Good effort. But even the worse GM can be a blind squirrel who finds an occasional nut. It's the totality of his work, and the totality of 5.5 seasons.
Oh, the totality of his work eventually has to include the glaring problem of "what the hell were you thinking each offseason when it came time to sign FA batters???"
You need a PhD in some mushy field (like multicultral studies) from a New England liberal arts college (preferably Dartmouth... no one does it better) to have any chance of tossing enough word salad to make GMBC's tenure look successful.
I am hoping that Gonzales can continue the hot start. Last year he started very hot in May with 78 PA, 4 doubles/1 triple/3 HR, 913 OPS. Then it was downhill to finish the year with an overall 709 OPS. This year in sort of a stuttered start, he has 88 PA, 3 doubles/2 triples/3 HR, 824 OPS. We need THAT type of bat in the lineup. Hitters that start like that tend to be pitched differently as the advance scouts do their work on what pitches the hitter likes and what pitches are a problem. He's a year beyond that and that extra year could be very helpful because he knows what will be coming.
The above only counts one hitter, and Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds have been seeing that same treatment - if we could get another few hitters in the lineup, teams would not be able to concentrate their efforts on stopping 2 or 3 guys in the lineup.
Horwitz is showing better than I expected. I thought highly of him and his numbers after the trade, but wrist surgery is never a good way for a hitter to start a season. He is doing better than I expected after the surgery and rehab, so I am hopeful he will be a positive add. We've seen how Hamate issues can affect a hitter, so I am happy with the +0.2 fWAR, 90 wRC+, and 309 xwOBA to date. Question: The time missed due to the surgery - would that all count as Service Time because the injury was probably suffered during last year with Toronto?
"downhill to finish the year" is awfully tedious. He was a 93 wRC+ bat in the in the first half an 95 wRC+ in the second and finished with a hundred PA september at 109.
Bucs sign Genesis Cabrera, option Darrell-Hicks, DFA Stratton.
Another lefty option with Borucki/Mayza hurt and Wentz now pitching for the Twins.
Billy, don't you lose my number
We’re in a Land of Confusion!
An upgrade over all those guys that you listed, except maybe Borucki-- sort of comparable in results to Borucki (though not style).
Jordan Rosenblum's projections at FG think Chandler and Ashcraft can come up now and likely reproduce something similar to Keller's line (around 4 ERA with 7-8% BB% and 20+ k%) albeit maybe with .8 fewer IP per start: https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/author/jarjets89/
Morel a double short of a cycle.
Got a single, stole 2nd and 3rd, made it home on a wild pitch.
He singled for his fourth hit and then stole two bases. That ought to count.
Yep
With the Oneil Cruz breakout now muted a bit by an abysmal June, Nicky Gonzales really stands out as the bright spot.
Seasonal sample size noted, but this is a continuation of what we saw from him last year. Tracking like a 2+ WAR starting second baseman in this league, which is a healthy improvement from the path he was on when he graduated. Minor star Neil Walker was only appreciably better than that for a year.
Super happy to be wrong on this guy.
According to the article on Gonzalez in the P-G today he is the best defensive second baseman in MLB over the past three weeks per FanGraphs.
What I liked about NG coming up is that every level he seemed to start off terribly and look like a bad pick, but he kept grinding and would eventually start hitting. Just made me think this guy is at least trying to adjust and get better. Hopefully even more improvements keep coming.
If he keeps improving against off speed stuff and as the game slows down for him some of the doubles and warning track flies start to turn into a few more homers, then I think we might really be on to something.
I'll take hunting fastballs and accepting the weakness on breaking stuff.
I think he's made an intentionally aggressive change to his approach that accepts some chase in order to avoid 2-strike counts. Never gonna be much of an OBP guy but it gets the ball in play, and his swing has that tendency to pull the ball in the air. Some guys can outslug their raw pop that way.
He's swinging at substantially more pitches in the zone than last year, and outside the zone less. He swings at a much higher % of in-zone than the typical hitter, and only slightly more outside. His % of called strikes is somewhere around half the MLB norm. That's on a team that ranks 8th in MLB in called strike %.
My point of reference was between now and him as a minor leaguer, fwiw.
anyways, i was looking at his statcast page which has him at a 34% chase rate but now see his fangraphs page shows a 30% o-swing which now has me wondering if i know what either actually means.
also thats like 4 pitches out of 100 and thinking of it like that always makes me question why the hell plate discipline stats even matter.
fellas, look at the bright side. they're down to only two negative-WAR regulars.
With the deadline looming, I’d keep this under wraps.
Typo - “…record of 32-29…” should be 32-49. Not that we all aren’t painfully aware.
Sorry. Missed the earlier comments. Note to self - refresh the page before commenting.
In the Bradenton piece yesterday I mentioned that Gavin Adams hasn’t pitched in a while in the FCL. He’s starting today, so that’s good.
And Estuar Suero has resurfaced.
BA has a list of standout hitting prospects for June. I’m sure anybody here can guess who heads the discussion.
Among other things, BA notes the sharp drop in the K rate. “His improving plate skills over the course of the spring are a reason to buy into Griffin’s ability to adjust on the fly.”
If he could put up 85% of his A+ line in AA for say the last 80 PAs of the season or so, he's a Top 20 guy in all of MiLB throughout the offseason and headed into ST.
He's also walking more in Greensboro.
I stand by my theory that Griffin wasn't taking walks in Bradenton because why should he?
No argument here.
I see those offensive rankings above, and they are what they are, but all I can think from the eye test of watching them is "dear God, how is there anyone out there WORSE than these guys". I struggle to think of a single thing they do well offensively
quite literally what I've been saying as my last remaining source of optimism. Mild competency equals huge improvements.
I love the old saying, “Their batting average might be low, but at least they hit for no power!”
What they lack in power, they make up for with a low batting average, especially with RISP.
Splitting hairs but we were 32-49 at the halfway point.
I was wondering what year he was talking about. 32-29 -- over .500 after 60 games?
It was originally 31-50! Needs Aurorus to do his editing.
We are dealing with an historically bad team in the 6th year of BC’s tenure. Until there is a different person, hopefully better as a GM, directing this organization I have little hope that the Pirates can accomplish anything of note. If this were an actual Pirate ship it would be adrift at sea, with no direction, and no hope for the crew.
And an owner that leaves little or no margin for errors by a gm.
Maybe our problems are nutritional! We have scurvy batting averages…anemia is one of the symptoms.
And scurvy. They’d all have scurvy.
The ship would actually go in circles.
The pitchers rowing forward on one side; the hitters rowing backward on the other.
Even more accurately, the pitchers are rowing hard on one side and the batters are barely moving their oars.
(the ship would still go in circles)
Ha! You’re right!
(Resigns as Pirates coxswain)
Heh, coxswain
Seems that way since the 70s.
That’s not accurate of course. In the early 90’s and teens of this century we were a strong team. Notably though these were brief eras.
Bravo sir you hit the proverbial nail on the head. With a captain like BC there truly is no hope for this sinking ship. I believe 6 years is a long enough time to actually say he sucks at his job.
I want to present the devil's advocacy for GMBC. Not because I'm desperately in love with a guy who somehow saw value in the combination of Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier, but because I'm obnoxious and argumentative.
1) The pitching prospects are real. They have legit depth in the system, with room to get better as dudes like Jones rehab and guys like Chandler arrive. Lots of teams would give to have a Skenes-Keller-Jones-Chandler rotation, especially if they're comfortable giving a bounceback contract to some leftie vet in FA.
2) There are hints of hitting on the way. There's a non-zero chance that Nick the Stick is legit. Hank shows pop and improvement while getting markedly better at C. Yeah, you'd like to see someone like Termarr a little closer to the majors than he is right now, but let's see what time does. It's hard to call a 19 y.o. in A-ball legit, but a world-beating Konnor Griffin promotion in June 2026 would make a big apology for the last six season. There are still some potential guys in the mix like Will Taylor, Jack Brannigan, Esmerlyn Valdez. If the Pirates fire GMBC, the next GM is going to look smarter than he is.
3) a) The cupboard was empty at the end of GMNH's time. I can make a pretty good argument that Joe Musgrove was the only meaningful trade piece GMBC had. And a couple of GMBC's trades have been surprisingly good -- the Adam Frazier trade comes particularly to mind.
3) b) These sorts of rebuilds take forever to yield on-the-field results. Look at the Orioles rebuild. Heck, go back and look at the Astros rebuild. Doing a full teardown sucks, and it sucks even more when you barely have any trade pieces.
4) GMBC has done a good job snagging guys on comeback contracts in FA to fill the holes in the rotation year after year. Someone in the organization is very good at this part of the job. Maybe just Oscar Marin has the magic pixie dust; I don't know for sure. But it's consistent performance.
All things tallied up, I'd rather be the guy taking over the organization from GMBC than the guy who had to take over from GMNH.
But if all things are tallied, I still have no idea what makes you think the corpses of Pham and Frazier were worth $7m/yr on a team with Scrooge McDuck as owner.
like for obnoxious and argumentative while reasonable.
In 2019, the Pittsburgh Pirates' farm system was ranked as a borderline top-10 system, with some publications placing them around 9th or 10th overall. MLB Pipeline, specifically, ranked them 15th in their preseason rankings. However, the system was considered to have strong potential, with several players later making an impact on the major league roster.
The cupboard wasn’t bare.
BA had them 18 as of Feb 2019, and the curve was headed the wrong way for a while. Especially with a top-heavy system at the time -- top four were Keller, Hayes, Cruz, and T-Swag. #5 in the org was Cal Mitchell, which is a hell of a drop-off.
The cupboard was bare because all the good dishes were ready to go on the table. After that, there we're even Dixie plates.
You can cherry pick what you want. The system had: Mitch Keller, Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Braxton Ashcraft and Kevin Newman in the system. It’s not nothing. Plus the MLB roster had some talent at positions too.
The fact of the matter is BC is a failure to this point. NH at least built a winner, just couldn’t sustain it longer than 3 years.
Where's the cherry picking? There was a gigantic fall-off after the top group of nearly MLB-ready guys.
The cupboard was bare.
And if we're talking about cherry picking, then you don't get to cherry pick Reynolds, who was the 8th OF in the organization at the time and the product of the injury bug eating everyone above him.
"The fact of the matter is BC is a failure to this point. "
Did you even bother to read the preamble to what I said? I said "to play devil's advocate for GMBC". No one is seriously defending GMBC after this offseason's killer batting acquisitions like Pham and Frazier. The point of playing devil's advocate is to at least consider a position that would otherwise go unrepresented.
Dude, they are 18 games below .500 with the 3rd worst record in baseball, and only 1 starting pitching prospect and 1 2B-only prospect in the upper minors. Don't overthink this.
I was playing devil's advocate for GMBC. That requires some overthinking.
Good effort. But even the worse GM can be a blind squirrel who finds an occasional nut. It's the totality of his work, and the totality of 5.5 seasons.
Oh, the totality of his work eventually has to include the glaring problem of "what the hell were you thinking each offseason when it came time to sign FA batters???"
You need a PhD in some mushy field (like multicultral studies) from a New England liberal arts college (preferably Dartmouth... no one does it better) to have any chance of tossing enough word salad to make GMBC's tenure look successful.
I'll have to check what the PR person's degree is when they announce Year 7 of The Rebuild.