I saw in-person Solo start a game for Altoona and now I'm skewed w SSS syndrome. He was very average. His FB was flat and his velo was down under 90. Anthony or others posted about tired arm given his IP for the season. But it's hard for me to get excited.....which isn't fair.....he's only 21.
There just aren’t that many good arms floating around right now. Somebody gotta fill the 100. The prevailing opinion still has Solo as a #4. A good JT Brubaker year.
I watched the reveal last night and the accolades about Skenes is exciting but also one of those "let's not jinx this" moments. Dan O'Dowd one-upped the other comments by stating " he's the best ever pitching prospect, he has even more to offer than Strasburg." He opined that the Pirates should be taking an 8/9 year approach with Skenes and let him get acclimated to a schedule/routine before calling him up. On the first part of that, will BN spend to buyout 3 years of free agency? Plenty of time to build up a reserve for that.
So signing Chapman was good, but now the Cubs have "called" that move with signing Neris. What is Ben going to do next to keep up with the competition?
If the Pirates are able to add within the next two years an ace(Skenes), a solid 3 (Solo and/or Chandler) and a closer (Jones) then I like their chances to actually reach the postseason in 25/26.
The Pirates infield is strong on both sides of the ball except for 1B. The OF is strong on both sides of the ball except for CF. The Bullpen is very strong, and the Rotation is just that - it's rotating, but we should be able to eliminate that problem by August of this year. Can we identify personnel on each of the other 29 teams that we would be interested in getting in trade. We will have surplus SP's, RP's, and MI's available to other teams for the right personnel.
The Pirates will be the worst defensive team in MLB, and part of that problem is the infield. Even if you love Cruz, you have to admit that he is, at his best, a subpar defensive SS. 1B is a disaster area with Tellez. We still have no idea who is going to play 2B. If it is Triolo or Peguero, the defense will be decent to good. Gonzalez is average at best by any account. Of course, 3B is a strength, but 3B is, perhaps, the least important defensive position on the IF.
For the infield to be "strong" offensively, Tellez will have to perform a houdini and become a much better hitter than he has shown recently. Cruz will have to meet expectations immediately after recovering from a season-ending and serious injury. Hayes will have to continue to perform all season at the level that he did last year, and one of Peguero, Triolo, or Gonzalez will have to figure out how to be a good MLB player. There are a lot of "ifs" here.
All 2b except Bae are above average. Cruz and Tellez are not, but Joe is able to hold his own at first. What I’m trying to say is that the infield is not as bad as you might think. The outfield, now there’s a problem, BRey play an awful LF last year, Jack might improve but he was below average and RF.....the best fielding option is Palacios and he might not make the team!!!!!
3B is not the least important part of the IF. That’s 1B, and it’s not even close. Also what measure are you using to say they’ll be the worst defensive team in MLB? Various metrics I’ve seen from 2023 have them around 20th.
Yeah... the standard logic is that 1B is the least important, but I don't think the old logic or the new metrics take a lot of things into consideration. Range, error rates and so forth do not measure all of the things that a 1Bman does in handling throws. So... it is... just like... my opinion man. Whatever the case 1B defense this year will be markedly worse by replacing Santana with Tellez.
Five in the top 100 is a good number, and it's easy to be optimistic about our pitching. On the negative side, when you look at the top of the list there is at least a suggestion that teams who recently went through rebuilding did a much better job at it than we did. And then there's Milwaukee that keeps putting competitive teams on the field and still has 4 guys in the top 50.
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again--the long rebuild was primarily a result of Cherington's wanting to prove his chops as a GM by building a team from nothing. I'll give him credit for being transparent when he was hired (maybe the last time he was transparent) as citing that as his reason for taking the job (ignoring that we were one year removed from a winning record, only the fourth time that had happened in 26 years!). There were ancillary parts to this, like wanting to find the next Justin Turner which led to us watching way too many ABs from players like Chavis, Gamel, VanMeter, and Evans. But I don't think he cared or cares an iota about the fans or the city--the Pirates are just his project to stake his claim to fame.
If he's successful, then I won't care. And maybe he will be because through his ego (or incompetence) leading to us enduring the worst three-year stretch since the 1950s (i.e., the worst stretch in most of our lifetimes), we got Skenes and maybe that will lead to an end that will justify the means.
I saw a comparison of the 2024 top 10 vs the 2020 top 10 (what Cherington “inherited”) and even if one chooses to favor the current list there’s no getting around the fact that it’s exclusively due to tanking and literally nothing else. No dev successes, no international, no deep cuts. Just intentionally sucking for top 5 bonus pools.
I’m not sure the Reds are a great apples to apples comparison to that. We didn’t have the sheer amount of talent to trade that they did, but they also won their trades by far larger margins than we did.
The Cubs are probably a better example. Four of their guys on the list were draft picks. Two in trades. One international signing. FWIW no reason we couldn’t have targeted Busch. But the way our FO looks at things, they’d rather have Tellez’s veteranosity and he’s a player that they sell to the fans because he hit a lot of home runs once or something.
Even with their sell off, Cincy was really only awful for one year, and I think that was due to their fluky awful start. They played at a 70 win pace after that; not good, but not Piratey either.
You’re certainly correct in that they had much more to work with, but they did so well in their trades too. Basically the Pgh fire sale netted Bednar so far. They’ll likely get more still, but that’s bad.
Busch looks like Colin Moran 2.0 to me so I’ve never seen him as a good target. Right down to the school, beating up on AAA when he’s over 25, bad defense, etc. he’s like Moran. I’m certainly not advocating for Tellez, mind you.
It doesn't _seem_ right that Evan Carter is on the list, but after watching him in the postseason I'd rank him #1. Even top prospects have trouble making the jump to the majors, so with what he did in September and October (including the eye test), I'd bump him above Holliday and Chourio.
It would be like a student on an exam--Carter scored slightly below a few others on the regular part of the exam but then was the only one to get the extra credit problem that the teacher didn't expect anyone to get and ended up with the highest score overall :)
Signs of help coming for the Pirates Starting Pitching. They ranked 23rd out of 30 teams in 2023, a one slot improvement from 2022 when they were 24th. Jared Jones is the "old man" of this group entering his age 23 season. Paul Skenes will enter his age 22 season while Solometo and Chandler are both entering their age 21 seasons. They are all slated to begin 2024 at AA Altoona, along with probably Thomas Harrington as the other SP. Where these 5 guys go from there is anybody's guess, but 2024 will be an important year for the Bucs.
Terrmar Johnson will start his 2024 season probably at A+, but I expect he will play the majority of his '24 season at AA after he turns 20 in June. After only 63 AB in 2022, last year he started at A and was promoted late in the year to A+ and put up, IMO, better numbers offensively than he had at A. The OPS numbers are close 868 at A, 842 at A+, but the difference I see are the BB/K numbers - 72 BB/88 K in 250 AB at A, and 29 BB/32 K in 99 AB at A+. Figuring that out for 250 AB it would be 72 BB/80 K at a higher level of competition. For an 18/19 year old, excellent maturity in the box.
Prospect lists are generally useless, but fun to talk about. So here’s my early as all get out prediction for mid-season prospect list:
1. Chandler will be top 50.
2. Ashcraft will be top 100.
3. Skenes will still be on prospect lists because Pirates won’t promote him until after Super 2 has safely passed despite him showing he’s more than ready several weeks earlier.
Thomas Harrington, BA #6 Pirate Prospect, will at least make the Top 100 lists, and he may be the first of the AA guys to advance to AAA - how's that for a prediction. Poster child for a pitcher with very little time on his arm. Did not start pitching till his Junior year in HS in 2019. Senior year washed out by the Pandemic, Walked on at Campbell and as a Freshman was 6-3, 3.45 ERA, 28 BB/75 K. As a Soph 12-2, 2.53 ERA, 18 BB/108 K. Drafted, but did not pitch for the Pirates in 2022. In 2023 at A, A+ (Same as TJ), he was 7-6, 3.53 ERA, 127 IP, 41 BB/146 K. Will start 2024 as a 22 year old and turn 23 in mid-July. The only negative was the 14 HR's - 11 at GBO.
Keith Law of the Athletic wrote late last summer that the best start he had seen all season was a Chandler start at Wilmington. I suspect that he will have Chandler higher on his list than others. I think he’s also not dinging Johnson as much as other outlets.
I like Ashcraft too, but if he starts at age-appropriate Altoona, I just don’t see how a half-season is long enough to completely change his scouting/ prospect profile. He would have to do absolutely nothing but shove the first half of the year, like 15 or so virtually unhittable starts.
I’m not saying he’s going to make people forget about Skenes and Chandler, but don’t be surprised if he’s mentioned as the 3rd best pitching prospect for Pirates by AS break. Ahead of Jones, Solo, Harrington, and Shim.
I will be happily shocked if that was the case, but I doubt that will happened unless the other pitchers you mentioned regress. We don’t even know if this kid is able to hold his stuff past the 5th inning.
I saw in-person Solo start a game for Altoona and now I'm skewed w SSS syndrome. He was very average. His FB was flat and his velo was down under 90. Anthony or others posted about tired arm given his IP for the season. But it's hard for me to get excited.....which isn't fair.....he's only 21.
The numbers confirm what I saw too. Allowed an .894 OPS in August with a 1.60 whip. He got hit hard that month.
Kinda surprising Pipeline overlooked that.
There just aren’t that many good arms floating around right now. Somebody gotta fill the 100. The prevailing opinion still has Solo as a #4. A good JT Brubaker year.
I’ve only seen him on stream and I have never been impressed.
I watched the reveal last night and the accolades about Skenes is exciting but also one of those "let's not jinx this" moments. Dan O'Dowd one-upped the other comments by stating " he's the best ever pitching prospect, he has even more to offer than Strasburg." He opined that the Pirates should be taking an 8/9 year approach with Skenes and let him get acclimated to a schedule/routine before calling him up. On the first part of that, will BN spend to buyout 3 years of free agency? Plenty of time to build up a reserve for that.
Uh oh. The Dan O'Dowd Seal of Approval. He's doomed.
Another bad GM sighting! Do you think he has barbecues with Ned Colletti and Ed Wade? I’ll bet they’re all chums.
Hopefully someday we’ll see a cage match mayhem event pitting those three against Littlefield, Huntington and Cherington.
Everybody will get lost on the way to the cage.
So signing Chapman was good, but now the Cubs have "called" that move with signing Neris. What is Ben going to do next to keep up with the competition?
"What is Ben going to do next to keep up with the competition?"
So far, the answer has always been to set the bar lower.
Hoping for a Peggy breakout in MLB & Termarr 20+ homers and another 100 walk year in A+/AA. TJ as the headliner for a star CF or SP next offseason.
KC signed Adam Frazier, which is fine. Made no sense for the Pirates.
Glad they did. Didn’t really want him back, unless they sign a worser version of him now haha
If the Pirates are able to add within the next two years an ace(Skenes), a solid 3 (Solo and/or Chandler) and a closer (Jones) then I like their chances to actually reach the postseason in 25/26.
Three aces or GTFO
That would be something, 3 bust and one backend starter is more likely!!!!!!!!
The Pirates infield is strong on both sides of the ball except for 1B. The OF is strong on both sides of the ball except for CF. The Bullpen is very strong, and the Rotation is just that - it's rotating, but we should be able to eliminate that problem by August of this year. Can we identify personnel on each of the other 29 teams that we would be interested in getting in trade. We will have surplus SP's, RP's, and MI's available to other teams for the right personnel.
The Pirates will be the worst defensive team in MLB, and part of that problem is the infield. Even if you love Cruz, you have to admit that he is, at his best, a subpar defensive SS. 1B is a disaster area with Tellez. We still have no idea who is going to play 2B. If it is Triolo or Peguero, the defense will be decent to good. Gonzalez is average at best by any account. Of course, 3B is a strength, but 3B is, perhaps, the least important defensive position on the IF.
For the infield to be "strong" offensively, Tellez will have to perform a houdini and become a much better hitter than he has shown recently. Cruz will have to meet expectations immediately after recovering from a season-ending and serious injury. Hayes will have to continue to perform all season at the level that he did last year, and one of Peguero, Triolo, or Gonzalez will have to figure out how to be a good MLB player. There are a lot of "ifs" here.
Tellez needs to perform a Houdini? The dude hit 38 bombs a couple years ago.
All 2b except Bae are above average. Cruz and Tellez are not, but Joe is able to hold his own at first. What I’m trying to say is that the infield is not as bad as you might think. The outfield, now there’s a problem, BRey play an awful LF last year, Jack might improve but he was below average and RF.....the best fielding option is Palacios and he might not make the team!!!!!
Worst in MLB may be a bit strong, but I too have my reservations...
3B is not the least important part of the IF. That’s 1B, and it’s not even close. Also what measure are you using to say they’ll be the worst defensive team in MLB? Various metrics I’ve seen from 2023 have them around 20th.
Yeah... the standard logic is that 1B is the least important, but I don't think the old logic or the new metrics take a lot of things into consideration. Range, error rates and so forth do not measure all of the things that a 1Bman does in handling throws. So... it is... just like... my opinion man. Whatever the case 1B defense this year will be markedly worse by replacing Santana with Tellez.
Five in the top 100 is a good number, and it's easy to be optimistic about our pitching. On the negative side, when you look at the top of the list there is at least a suggestion that teams who recently went through rebuilding did a much better job at it than we did. And then there's Milwaukee that keeps putting competitive teams on the field and still has 4 guys in the top 50.
And annoyingly, two of those teams who have done much better jobs are the Cubs and Reds.
Asset management 101
Exhibit A and B as to the long rebuild not being necessary.
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again--the long rebuild was primarily a result of Cherington's wanting to prove his chops as a GM by building a team from nothing. I'll give him credit for being transparent when he was hired (maybe the last time he was transparent) as citing that as his reason for taking the job (ignoring that we were one year removed from a winning record, only the fourth time that had happened in 26 years!). There were ancillary parts to this, like wanting to find the next Justin Turner which led to us watching way too many ABs from players like Chavis, Gamel, VanMeter, and Evans. But I don't think he cared or cares an iota about the fans or the city--the Pirates are just his project to stake his claim to fame.
If he's successful, then I won't care. And maybe he will be because through his ego (or incompetence) leading to us enduring the worst three-year stretch since the 1950s (i.e., the worst stretch in most of our lifetimes), we got Skenes and maybe that will lead to an end that will justify the means.
Some irony that Skenes was the result of lottery balls. Yeah tanking helped with the odds.
I saw a comparison of the 2024 top 10 vs the 2020 top 10 (what Cherington “inherited”) and even if one chooses to favor the current list there’s no getting around the fact that it’s exclusively due to tanking and literally nothing else. No dev successes, no international, no deep cuts. Just intentionally sucking for top 5 bonus pools.
To each their own I suppose.
Your last paragraph is kind of where I am.
I’m not sure the Reds are a great apples to apples comparison to that. We didn’t have the sheer amount of talent to trade that they did, but they also won their trades by far larger margins than we did.
The Cubs are probably a better example. Four of their guys on the list were draft picks. Two in trades. One international signing. FWIW no reason we couldn’t have targeted Busch. But the way our FO looks at things, they’d rather have Tellez’s veteranosity and he’s a player that they sell to the fans because he hit a lot of home runs once or something.
Even with their sell off, Cincy was really only awful for one year, and I think that was due to their fluky awful start. They played at a 70 win pace after that; not good, but not Piratey either.
You’re certainly correct in that they had much more to work with, but they did so well in their trades too. Basically the Pgh fire sale netted Bednar so far. They’ll likely get more still, but that’s bad.
Busch looks like Colin Moran 2.0 to me so I’ve never seen him as a good target. Right down to the school, beating up on AAA when he’s over 25, bad defense, etc. he’s like Moran. I’m certainly not advocating for Tellez, mind you.
It doesn't _seem_ right that Evan Carter is on the list, but after watching him in the postseason I'd rank him #1. Even top prospects have trouble making the jump to the majors, so with what he did in September and October (including the eye test), I'd bump him above Holliday and Chourio.
It would be like a student on an exam--Carter scored slightly below a few others on the regular part of the exam but then was the only one to get the extra credit problem that the teacher didn't expect anyone to get and ended up with the highest score overall :)
Signs of help coming for the Pirates Starting Pitching. They ranked 23rd out of 30 teams in 2023, a one slot improvement from 2022 when they were 24th. Jared Jones is the "old man" of this group entering his age 23 season. Paul Skenes will enter his age 22 season while Solometo and Chandler are both entering their age 21 seasons. They are all slated to begin 2024 at AA Altoona, along with probably Thomas Harrington as the other SP. Where these 5 guys go from there is anybody's guess, but 2024 will be an important year for the Bucs.
Terrmar Johnson will start his 2024 season probably at A+, but I expect he will play the majority of his '24 season at AA after he turns 20 in June. After only 63 AB in 2022, last year he started at A and was promoted late in the year to A+ and put up, IMO, better numbers offensively than he had at A. The OPS numbers are close 868 at A, 842 at A+, but the difference I see are the BB/K numbers - 72 BB/88 K in 250 AB at A, and 29 BB/32 K in 99 AB at A+. Figuring that out for 250 AB it would be 72 BB/80 K at a higher level of competition. For an 18/19 year old, excellent maturity in the box.
Prospect lists are generally useless, but fun to talk about. So here’s my early as all get out prediction for mid-season prospect list:
1. Chandler will be top 50.
2. Ashcraft will be top 100.
3. Skenes will still be on prospect lists because Pirates won’t promote him until after Super 2 has safely passed despite him showing he’s more than ready several weeks earlier.
Thomas Harrington, BA #6 Pirate Prospect, will at least make the Top 100 lists, and he may be the first of the AA guys to advance to AAA - how's that for a prediction. Poster child for a pitcher with very little time on his arm. Did not start pitching till his Junior year in HS in 2019. Senior year washed out by the Pandemic, Walked on at Campbell and as a Freshman was 6-3, 3.45 ERA, 28 BB/75 K. As a Soph 12-2, 2.53 ERA, 18 BB/108 K. Drafted, but did not pitch for the Pirates in 2022. In 2023 at A, A+ (Same as TJ), he was 7-6, 3.53 ERA, 127 IP, 41 BB/146 K. Will start 2024 as a 22 year old and turn 23 in mid-July. The only negative was the 14 HR's - 11 at GBO.
Keith Law of the Athletic wrote late last summer that the best start he had seen all season was a Chandler start at Wilmington. I suspect that he will have Chandler higher on his list than others. I think he’s also not dinging Johnson as much as other outlets.
I like Ashcraft too, but if he starts at age-appropriate Altoona, I just don’t see how a half-season is long enough to completely change his scouting/ prospect profile. He would have to do absolutely nothing but shove the first half of the year, like 15 or so virtually unhittable starts.
I’m not saying he’s going to make people forget about Skenes and Chandler, but don’t be surprised if he’s mentioned as the 3rd best pitching prospect for Pirates by AS break. Ahead of Jones, Solo, Harrington, and Shim.
I will be happily shocked if that was the case, but I doubt that will happened unless the other pitchers you mentioned regress. We don’t even know if this kid is able to hold his stuff past the 5th inning.
Wait, are you still under the impression SP’s are expected to go past 5th inning on this team (and most others, too)?
Unless you have 20 MLB quality relievers, if you don’t then yes, having starters that are able to go 5-7 innings are still needed.
Oh I know, I was being sarcastic. But in fairness, not many SP’s average more than 6 IP/start these days.
And the stuff probably has to be juiced too.
Which...I have no idea if that’s possible.