Is now the time to leverage the pitching depth the Pirates have built?

Future rotation falling into place, but how will it be supported?

Photo Credit: WTM

It’s an off day for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but there will still be a lot of chatter surrounding the recently announced upcoming promotion of top pitching prospect Paul Skenes. So, I thought, why not start a spicy discussion to consume our day without Bucco baseball?

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Now, the reason I brought everyone here today. As is everyone, I’m very excited for Paul Skenes’ debut and a glimpse at the future star-studded rotation anchored by Jared Jones and Skenes. Add in they’ve extended Mitch Keller, and you’re looking at three-fifths of the Pirates rotation moving forward for some years. But what is the plan moving forward for supporting the rotation? And by supporting, I mean run support.

I don’t want to turn this into an Andy Haines bashing because that would just amount to beating a dead horse at this point. The hitting, from an overall standpoint, has not been promising. The league average OPS in MLB this season is .696 OPS and the Pirates’ .634 OPS ranks 28th (as of this writing).

A level down, the Indianapolis Indians have got things going a bit as of late with Nick Gonzales, Ji Hwan Bae, and Jake Lamb for a .770 OPS — good for 8th out of 20 — against a .765 league average OPS. Altoona Curve is 11th out of 12, with team OPS of .621 that is well below league average .690 OPS. In High A, the Greensboro Grasshoppers are showing life with the second overall team OPS of .743, well above the league average .671 OPS. Last is the Bradenton Marauders, who aren’t last, but 9th out of 10 with a .593 team OPS in the Florida State League with a league average of .655 OPS.

So, whatever the issue is of a well-underperforming organization as a whole, it doesn’t look good. Bryan Reynolds is 29, Ke’Bryan Hayes is 27, David Bednar is 29, and the aforementioned Mitch Keller is 28 years old. A point that Keith Law brought up back in April, and I’ve seen others mimic, is why waste bullets? That goes for Jones and Skenes. Then there’s the fact the Pirates have been burning the prime years of Reynolds, Hayes, Bednar, and Keller.

This is Ben Cherington and his regime’s fifth MLB season. I feel the one area we’re feeling comfortable with is pitching. Whether it’s finding a lesser thought of free agent — Tyler Anderson, Jose Quintana, or Martin Perez — and helping them on a path to success, acquiring and developing arms — Jared Jones, Johan Oviedo, and other upcoming arms — to build depth, or ability to put together a bullpen through Rule 5, designated for assignment players, free agents, or “failed” starters. The same can’t be said for hitting.

We could sit here all day tossing sample sizes back and forth, trying to use whatever metric of the moment fits a narrative that, “Ok. THIS time it’s going to work out.” The reality is that it’s not working across the board. Unless something clicks and the “process” that all the coaches and Ben Cherington keep speaking about somehow kicks into motion out of nowhere.

It would be great if the Pirates were looking like a mirror image of the Tampa Bay Rays or Baltimore Orioles, but the reality is they're not. Who they're looking more like is the Cleveland Guardians, who are known for their pitching development but have struggled to develop bats.

It sounds familiar, doesn't it? Also in a generally weak division. Lean into it. Use the building-up success of pitching development to their advantage.

If they don’t want to waste any bullets, they should be looking to trade off some of their starter overfill for established MLB bats. And I’m talking in the very near future. Acquire players that come with term, with their eyes set on building their 2025 opening day lineup, and leave open the possibility they can fight for a wild card spot and maybe the division this year.

Teams need pitching, of course, the Pirates included. The thing is, the Pirates will have Skenes and Jones in the majors. Braxton Ashcraft is in Altoona, along with Bubba Chandler and Anthony Solometo. Hunter Barco and currently rehabbing Thomas Harrington will both very likely be joining them at some point soon.

We could go deeper, and there have been young starters showing early signs of promise: Alessandro Ercolani, Wilber Dotel, Michael Kennedy or Zander Mueth. I haven’t even mentioned Sean Sullivan (you know I had to) yet, or that Michael Burrows is set to return at some point this year.

Especially come 2025, there are going to be arms aplenty to pull from. Maybe flip one of the high-end relievers like Kyle Nicolas, Hunter Stratton, or Carmen Mlodzinski around to a club in need of a relief pitcher for a blocked prospect. Kind of like how the Chicago Cubs got their hands on Michael Busch, who was essentially blocked, for two low-level prospects.

AJ Preller of the San Diego Padres frequently trades off prospects, and they develop more. Personally, I would’ve been apprehensive about it this past off-season, but the way things are looking, trading off a Bubba Chandler or Anthony Solometo for a quality big-league bat looks tempting.

Hold on to all their arms with hopes and dreams the hitting pans out and they might end up like the Miami Marlins. Which I'd say there's probably deeper concerns if every single high end arm ends up on the injured list long term. JJ Cooper of Baseball America recently wrote an article theorizing that maybe limiting young starters is actually hurting them, along with quotes from Driveline founder Kyle Boddy.