I’ve admittedly been a skeptic but I’ll give him props for plate discipline that his chase rate belies.
I think his free-swinging ways are somewhat intentional. Yes, he’s improved at making contact with breaking balls but he’s also simply chosen to ambush anything close to the zone as means of avoiding 2-strike counts.
This is obviously limiting, as his average exit velo is substantially lowering than the raw power his max velo implies. He’s trading strikeouts for lesser contact which just might be good enough.
Thanks Anthony for a very straight look at Nick Gonzales - he was terrible in 2023, then came up in 2024 and put up a .918 OPS in May. I think he dropped about 275 OPS points in June to .638, then another drop of 105 OPS points down to .533. That's usually MLB caliber pitching catching up. But, give him credit because he did hit better after returning later in the season.
The Pirates are sitting now with 4 or 5 MI's and at least 2 or 3 could be used in trade. We paid a lot to get Liover Peguero who is better as a 2B than as a SS. In 2023 when Oneil Cruz went down, Peguero was called up and did better than any of the others that were tried. He is 2 years younger than NG, with more pop in the bat - possibly a 15+ HR hitter. Then we also have Nick Yorke who is a 2B who will be 23 next year, and our No. 1-4 Draft Pick in 2022, Termarr Johnson will probably see AA/AAA in 2025 in his age 21 season.
For those reasons I see Nick Gonzales as part of a trade, along with Ji-Hwan Bae, Alika Williams, and SP's Bailey Falter, Luis Ortiz, Braxton Ashcraft, Mike Burrows, and Johan Oviedo. Needless to say, that's a Rotation that many teams would like to have right now. That's based on Bubba Chandler and Thomas Harrington being promoted to the Pirates, possibly even at the start of the season. However, Harrington only had 8 Starts at AAA and Chandler only 7 Starts at AAA in 2024.
I hope they don't trade Oviedo. I've always been an Oviedo fan and think you can a lot worse than him as a 4th/5th SP.
I would be good with moving Falter. Who I thought should've been traded high last season. We all knew he was pitching over his head.
I would also keep Ortiz. He's a valuable bullpen piece who can eat multiple innings and can move into the rotation if need be.
I would also keep Burrows. Ashcraft's injury history still scares me a bit even though he's a horse of a dude, an elite athlete with elite control. I wouldn't hate moving him for the right price.
I also like Alika better than most. Many really good teams keep a backup SS that is a glove only. And if he just has a few seasons where he hits, he's value those seasons would be super high.
Trading Peggy is fine. Same with Nick G or Bae. And same with Termarr(again, for the right price).
The Buccos need to take a page out of the Rays playbook and learn when to sell high. With the exception of Ortiz, none of those guys are near peak value. Ashcraft appears to have some prospect value, but I’m not sure how much is really there from an outsiders prospective when considering injury history.
Not sure if anyone has touched on this, but guys like Peggy, Bae, Williams, Suwinski, Palacios, etc. have to be running out of options. No way a competitive 25-man roster has more than one of these guys on it, if any.
Agree. I’m still a firm believer Connor Joe had some value last season. And Falter definitely.
And I think they should’ve wrapped Bae/Peggy/NickG into a package last offseason with Ashcraft and gotten a better return than Edward Cabrera.
I think they could've made a package work for Jazz at the deadline too. Something like Ashcraft, Plaz, Bae/Peggy?? I think that offer is competitive or even better than the return Miami got.
They have to strongly consider trading Keller for an impact bat. He's a horse and he's under control at a reasonable price. The Pirates can't afford to trade too much pitching depth. This is nutting world, which means they have to consider payroll constraints.
IMO, 2024 was a seminal year for the organization. Outside of Skenes and Cruz bouncing back from injury, almost nothing went right for them, tons of disappointment up and down the roster. Maybe add in the Bart claim, but even that is TBD. Almost none of the younger guys stepped up, which is probably to be expected. And, none of the FA signings outside of Chapman yielded any value despite looking somewhat decent on paper prior to the season starting. Trade deadline ended up being a huge debacle, just pouring more gas on the fire. Fast forward to this off-season, and now we have more question marks than last year. Given their budgetary constraints, it would be remarkable for this FO to put a competitive team on the field that doesn’t consist of a handful of younger guys outperforming their projections or living up to their prospect hype. That’s not a place you want to be when roster building.
Wrt Keller, I think they need to keep him for several reasons. One being stability within the rotation as an innings eater. Also, he is a good role model for the younger guys as he was a top pitching prospect that struggled initially and overcame the adversity. Not to mention, trading him after extending him a year ago would be a PR nightmare, potentially affecting future extensions and further tarnish their image in the eyes of FA and fans. I think it would be very different if he was a FA signing and in year two or three of a multi-year deal. Perception matters.
I don't see BC dealing his first 1st rounder Nicky as he already has egg on his face with #1 overall Hank. A small market GM can ill afford to miss on his first-round bats.
Your reference to the 2020 draft sent me back to see players around him in that draft. Not for any particular reason, but just curious. Just ahead of him was Emerson Hancock now a SP for Seattle. Immediately after NG came two HS LH OF hitters we could possibly want to trade for now - Robert Hassell by SD, now with the Nats, and Zac Veen of Colorado. Then came Reid Detmers LHSP by the Angels (already over 50 MLB Starts), and then Garrett Crochet LHSP CWS. Wow!
But, he traded for a younger Second Baseman Nick Yorke last year and picked Second Baseman Termarr Johnson first in the 2022 Draft, and he is already in AA. If I'm a GM faced with this, I trade NG because he had a decent year last year, and he is going to be traded sooner or later - I just prefer we do it while his stock is high.
I also like Peguero because of the power and the fact he has played a lot of Shortstop and 2B for the Pirates in the minors and MLB. In his '24 year in AAA at SS he was a .965 in 78 games, and at 2B in 47 games he fielded at .994.
Nick won't be a star but Im cautiously optimistic that he can be a regular 2 WAR second baseman with a half step offensive improvement along with his better than I expected defense. We need more ceiling offensively, but part of raising the floor is just not giving playing time to so many below league average players. Nick seems he can be a solid contributor at 2B and thats a win to me
I’ve admittedly been a skeptic but I’ll give him props for plate discipline that his chase rate belies.
I think his free-swinging ways are somewhat intentional. Yes, he’s improved at making contact with breaking balls but he’s also simply chosen to ambush anything close to the zone as means of avoiding 2-strike counts.
This is obviously limiting, as his average exit velo is substantially lowering than the raw power his max velo implies. He’s trading strikeouts for lesser contact which just might be good enough.
The craziest Nick Gonzales stat for me is bat speed, his calling card, in which he ranks in just the 37th percentile.
I think that should make us either question bat speed as a metric or our ability to judge such things with the naked eye, I’m just not sure which.
Soto is a FB hitter as well. But in order for that to work, you can't chase and have to spoil a lot of the spinny stuff.
Quick—- without using the old internet—- how many Pirates had a higher batting average than Nicky G. Don’t cheat!!! Go..
Not going to venture a guess, but what I do know is his RBIs with RISP was outstanding. A clutch bat is valuable, especially in our lineup!
I agree 1979
Thanks Anthony for a very straight look at Nick Gonzales - he was terrible in 2023, then came up in 2024 and put up a .918 OPS in May. I think he dropped about 275 OPS points in June to .638, then another drop of 105 OPS points down to .533. That's usually MLB caliber pitching catching up. But, give him credit because he did hit better after returning later in the season.
The Pirates are sitting now with 4 or 5 MI's and at least 2 or 3 could be used in trade. We paid a lot to get Liover Peguero who is better as a 2B than as a SS. In 2023 when Oneil Cruz went down, Peguero was called up and did better than any of the others that were tried. He is 2 years younger than NG, with more pop in the bat - possibly a 15+ HR hitter. Then we also have Nick Yorke who is a 2B who will be 23 next year, and our No. 1-4 Draft Pick in 2022, Termarr Johnson will probably see AA/AAA in 2025 in his age 21 season.
For those reasons I see Nick Gonzales as part of a trade, along with Ji-Hwan Bae, Alika Williams, and SP's Bailey Falter, Luis Ortiz, Braxton Ashcraft, Mike Burrows, and Johan Oviedo. Needless to say, that's a Rotation that many teams would like to have right now. That's based on Bubba Chandler and Thomas Harrington being promoted to the Pirates, possibly even at the start of the season. However, Harrington only had 8 Starts at AAA and Chandler only 7 Starts at AAA in 2024.
I hope they don't trade Oviedo. I've always been an Oviedo fan and think you can a lot worse than him as a 4th/5th SP.
I would be good with moving Falter. Who I thought should've been traded high last season. We all knew he was pitching over his head.
I would also keep Ortiz. He's a valuable bullpen piece who can eat multiple innings and can move into the rotation if need be.
I would also keep Burrows. Ashcraft's injury history still scares me a bit even though he's a horse of a dude, an elite athlete with elite control. I wouldn't hate moving him for the right price.
I also like Alika better than most. Many really good teams keep a backup SS that is a glove only. And if he just has a few seasons where he hits, he's value those seasons would be super high.
Trading Peggy is fine. Same with Nick G or Bae. And same with Termarr(again, for the right price).
The Buccos need to take a page out of the Rays playbook and learn when to sell high. With the exception of Ortiz, none of those guys are near peak value. Ashcraft appears to have some prospect value, but I’m not sure how much is really there from an outsiders prospective when considering injury history.
Not sure if anyone has touched on this, but guys like Peggy, Bae, Williams, Suwinski, Palacios, etc. have to be running out of options. No way a competitive 25-man roster has more than one of these guys on it, if any.
Agree. I’m still a firm believer Connor Joe had some value last season. And Falter definitely.
And I think they should’ve wrapped Bae/Peggy/NickG into a package last offseason with Ashcraft and gotten a better return than Edward Cabrera.
I think they could've made a package work for Jazz at the deadline too. Something like Ashcraft, Plaz, Bae/Peggy?? I think that offer is competitive or even better than the return Miami got.
They have to strongly consider trading Keller for an impact bat. He's a horse and he's under control at a reasonable price. The Pirates can't afford to trade too much pitching depth. This is nutting world, which means they have to consider payroll constraints.
IMO, 2024 was a seminal year for the organization. Outside of Skenes and Cruz bouncing back from injury, almost nothing went right for them, tons of disappointment up and down the roster. Maybe add in the Bart claim, but even that is TBD. Almost none of the younger guys stepped up, which is probably to be expected. And, none of the FA signings outside of Chapman yielded any value despite looking somewhat decent on paper prior to the season starting. Trade deadline ended up being a huge debacle, just pouring more gas on the fire. Fast forward to this off-season, and now we have more question marks than last year. Given their budgetary constraints, it would be remarkable for this FO to put a competitive team on the field that doesn’t consist of a handful of younger guys outperforming their projections or living up to their prospect hype. That’s not a place you want to be when roster building.
Wrt Keller, I think they need to keep him for several reasons. One being stability within the rotation as an innings eater. Also, he is a good role model for the younger guys as he was a top pitching prospect that struggled initially and overcame the adversity. Not to mention, trading him after extending him a year ago would be a PR nightmare, potentially affecting future extensions and further tarnish their image in the eyes of FA and fans. I think it would be very different if he was a FA signing and in year two or three of a multi-year deal. Perception matters.
I don't see BC dealing his first 1st rounder Nicky as he already has egg on his face with #1 overall Hank. A small market GM can ill afford to miss on his first-round bats.
Your reference to the 2020 draft sent me back to see players around him in that draft. Not for any particular reason, but just curious. Just ahead of him was Emerson Hancock now a SP for Seattle. Immediately after NG came two HS LH OF hitters we could possibly want to trade for now - Robert Hassell by SD, now with the Nats, and Zac Veen of Colorado. Then came Reid Detmers LHSP by the Angels (already over 50 MLB Starts), and then Garrett Crochet LHSP CWS. Wow!
But, he traded for a younger Second Baseman Nick Yorke last year and picked Second Baseman Termarr Johnson first in the 2022 Draft, and he is already in AA. If I'm a GM faced with this, I trade NG because he had a decent year last year, and he is going to be traded sooner or later - I just prefer we do it while his stock is high.
I also like Peguero because of the power and the fact he has played a lot of Shortstop and 2B for the Pirates in the minors and MLB. In his '24 year in AAA at SS he was a .965 in 78 games, and at 2B in 47 games he fielded at .994.
Peguro sucks. They should trade him for Everson Pereira.
Peguero 320 obp in the Minors does not get me too excited… I hope I’m wrong
Seems the biggest thing will be improving the plate discipline. Even a mediocre BB/chase % should help him along the path to being a viable regular.
Nick won't be a star but Im cautiously optimistic that he can be a regular 2 WAR second baseman with a half step offensive improvement along with his better than I expected defense. We need more ceiling offensively, but part of raising the floor is just not giving playing time to so many below league average players. Nick seems he can be a solid contributor at 2B and thats a win to me
He can be a solid contributor, but it still looks like second division regular.
Did not know Nicky G. had elite sprint speed.
Thought he was an above average base-runner similar to BRey....but interesting he's "elite".
With a pro-rata fWar of 2+ for a whole season, I think he has earned 2nd base job......but any kind of regression will make him vulnerable.
93rd percentile in sprint speed