Pirates may be in a better position this offseason than the Brewers were last offseason

*This is part two of the previous post. This is the other side of the argument. 

No moves last offseason have the changed the fortunes for a team this season more than the Brewers’ acquisitions of Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain. Yelich is the clear front runner to win the MVP in the National League and Cain was also in that race for three quarters of the season before his own teammate Yelich started to run away with it. They combined for a whopping 13.3 WAR (wins above replacement) this season. 

The Brewers, thanks to this, went from a middling team in 2017 to a division champ and a team that played in the NLCS. These moves not only changed the landscape of the league a bit, but it also provided a new blueprint for how to compete and succeed as a small market team (no market in baseball is smaller than Milwaukee) in the league. 

And I think the Pirates have already begun emulating it a bit.

It is very common in sports leagues for teams in similar situations to copycat each other a bit but do it their own way. The Pirates appear to be doing this here. But, they aren’t copying it move for move. In fact, I think there is at least potential that the Pirates can end up doing it better with how they have begun their version of the process.

While the Brewers did a majority of their work in the offseason, adding Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich (and $20 million) to their payroll. The Pirates, however, did a lot of work at the trade deadline by adding Archer and Kela (who will combined to make about $10 million in 2019 and not probably not even $15 million combined in 2020). While them being pitchers means they won’t rack up the same WAR combined as Yelich and Cain, the fact they are both very productive players in their own right at half the cost of Cain and Yelich is massive. A full season of them probably gets the Pirates a fair bit of extra wins. 

The Brewers began the offseason prior to this season with about a $60-65 million payroll, depending on what you look at. Then they added Cain and Yelich and it bloated all the way to around $80-85 million. The Pirates this offseason will begin with a payroll around $70-75 million before any moves are made. If they even expand payroll to $90-95 million, they are looking at around the same amount of money to spend as the Brewers did on Cain and Yelich. And keep in mind that the Pirates already added two significant pieces in Archer and Kela. This puts the Pirates ahead of the game in relation to where the Brewers were entering last offseason as they have both the two major additions already and still more money to spend. 

It is unrealistic to think the Pirates, or any team, can get 13.3 WAR from two offseason acquisitions while only spending $20 million on those players. What Cain and Yelich have meant to the Brewers in that way has been insane. However, knowing that the Pirates have already been able to add some wins with Archer and Kela before making any offseason moves and they still have money to spend similar to what Cain and Yelich made this past season. If they can add two pieces even close to that production to go with Archer and Kela, they certainly could make a jump in 2019 similar to that of the Brewers this year, or maybe even better. 

Pirates may have already made their splashy offseason moves

*Before I start, I would like to make it known that this is the first part of two. This is one side of the argument. The other part will be the other side of it. 

When the Pirates made the two big July trades of acquiring pitches Chris Archer and Keone Kela, the aim was of course to chase a playoff appearance in 2018. However, the bigger effect it has is to be seen in 2019 and beyond. The moves seemed to be more geared towards the future Pirates’ teams as opposed to the one we saw this past season. 

Chris Archer and Keone Kela both seemed destined to be dealt this past July, whether it was to the Pirates or to someone else. Neal Huntington snagged them knowing that if he didn’t get them then, he was not going to. 

So, it is a fair argument to say that Neal Huntington did indeed do some offseason shopping in July. But the bigger question that remains is whether these moves are just the start to Huntington building a solid contender through some major outside moves, or whether these were the only bigger moves we’ll see and if Archer ands Kela will wind up representing the big offseason additions for the Pirates. 

The Pirates will enter the offseason with somewhere around $70 million on the payroll if you include Polanco even though his DL status will mean he won’t be counted towards the active payroll until he is back, but his salary still factors in. This is also assuming the buyouts of Josh Harrison and Jung Ho Kang, which many think will be official shortly after the conclusion of the World Series. 

With this low of a payroll, it is assumed that the Pirates probably could make a splash this offseason. They probably have at least $20 million to spend even with the record low attendance in PNC Park’s history factoring into the revenue/expense equation. That is a significant amount. Maybe not significant enough to get a top player on the market, but definitely enough to get someone of note.

Despite this, however, I do not think the Pirates make another splash. I feel that they did the heavy lifting of adding significant outside pieces at the trade deadline by adding Archer and Kela and now any other additions will be to round out the edges of the roster. 

The Pirates spending even $15 million on a free agent, let alone $20 million, is a fantastical idea. There is no evidence to suggest it will happen. It doesn’t mean they can’t get a good player though. There will be plenty of players to get within the $7-10 million range that could really help out a team like the Pirates, and that is the market I expect the Pirates to shop this season, as well as constantly browsing the trade market as usual.

I do have to believe that Huntington will expand the payroll this offseason. I cannot imagine him foregoing the free agent market for a second consecutive year and risk the optics getting worse for this organization that seemed to regain a little bit of credibility in the city after trading for Archer and Kela. The degree in which people think the Pirates can and will spend and on who is a bit out of hand though. 

They will improve the team this offseason. They made that direction clear in July with the moves they made. But they may have already done the majority of the big work in acquiring major outside additions when they added Archer and Kela. Now, Neal Huntington’s goal this offseason will likely be to round out the roster with nice, but maybe not splashy, additions. 

The MLB wildcard system continues to show its flaws

The wildcard games in the MLB have come and gone once again as they finish out their seventh year of their existence. Over that time, many fans have enjoyed this do-or-die game, well as long as your team isn’t the loser of such a game. 

However, the system in which this game resides has been ridiculed and under much scrutiny given its sudden-death nature in a sport that historically isn’t sudden death. Besides that, however, have been complaints about how teams that played well enough to earn a playoff series have been forced to play in, and in some cases lose, that game. 

This season is no different. The Chicago Cubs, who owned the second best record in the national league, were forced to play in the wildcard game despite their outstanding season comparatively to three of their NL playoff counterparts, including their wildcard opponent: the Colorado Rockies. Cubs lost the game 2-1 in 13 innings at Wrigley Field against the Rockies on Tuesday, a day after both lost tiebreaker games that relegated them there. This is yet another loss of many in the wildcard game era that proves that the MLB has an issue within this system. The wildcard game might be very exciting, but simultaneously it is problematic. 

I don’t know if it is just me, but doesn’t it seem unfair that a team that had the second best record in the NL was forced to put their season on the line in just one game? The Cubs deserved to play a series instead of just a game, especially when baseball is literally a sport of series’. 

In addition to the Cubs getting robbed, the Oakland Athletics got robbed as well. Despite owning just the fourth-best record in a stacked American League, they still won 97 games this season. That is certainly nothing to sneeze at. However, they were forced to play in a one-game wildcard against the Yankees, on the road no less. The A’s lost 7-2 on Wednesday to the 100-win Yankees. 

It seems pretty unbelievable that a team that wins 97 games doesn’t get a series in the MLB playoffs but instead has to settle for one game and gone even though they were one of the best teams in the MLB. 

At the same time, however, you cannot punish the likes of teams such as the Braves, Dodgers and Indians who earned their division crowns and deserve a series as well. So in my opinion, the core of the problem isn’t taking the privilege of a series away from someone else. Instead, the solution is to extend the privilege of a series to all 10 playoff participants. 

This plan would involve giving the two wildcard participants a series of their own against each other. This is a difficult task though as the most common idea is the best-of-three format with the home team hosting two of the games. The problem with this is that it would burn a pitching staff before they even get to the divisional round. As a consequence, to giver those WC teams additional rest, they may not begin the divisional series’ until the following Saturday and Sunday, instead of Thursday and Friday, which is a lot of time to make a team wait around, and that isn’t fair. There are some other options though.

The first is one I really like and have discussed at length in the past is the KBO format. The crash course on this is that it is a 2-game series. The home team must only win once while the road team must win twice. 

The good part about this is it can be done in two days as opposed to three or four. It would also give the home team an actual advantage because home-field advantage in baseball is pretty non-existent. 

The disadvantage to this though may be that it gives the home team too big of an advantage, being at home and only needing one win while the road team needs to win twice. This could lead to the road team winning game 1 but losing game 2 and still losing the series, and that may not be seen as very fair either. It is a fine line to draw between little advantage for the home team (which we currently have) or too much of an advantage (which this may be). However, seeing how road teams have a winning record in wildcard games over seven years now kind of proves that maybe they could handle it. But who knows?

However, I have another idea.

This idea being that they should play a best-of-three series over two days. Yes, this sounds weird, but hear me out.

Each team in this series will be allowed to retain their expanded September rosters, so they have every player possible at their disposal for these games so they may not wear down a smaller pitching staff. Additionally, these games would be six innings in length as opposed to the full nine of traditional baseball games. They would play the first two games at the better seed’s ballpark on the first day of the series. Then, if necessary, they’d play game three at the other park the next day. 

The good part about this is, like the KBO style, it can be done in two days, which wouldn’t delay things too much. 

However, the major negative to this is that, even with expanded rosters still in play, teams would elect to use their top pitchers to win what would be playoff games, and the consequences could turn dire after that for the teams that move through this round. 

There is also the thought of expanding the playoffs, but that makes little sense here. If it is expanded to six teams in each league (12 overall), then two teams in each league would get “byes” and the others would have to play series against each other, which just brings us back to square one with deciding what version of a series makes the most sense time-wise and logic-wise, and the whole thing just muddies the waters even more with more teams involved in the mess of this thing. 

The only way to expand to six teams in each league is if you had multiple wildcard games in each league. The 5th and 6th seeds would play each other to face the 4th seed the next day. While that could get done in two days, it’s doesn’t make sense to fix the problem of wildcard games by adding another layer of wildcard games. That would be like trying to put out a fire by lighting another fire. 

I am not sure there is one true right answer to how to fix this problem. The system as currently constructed is flawed, but who is to say that a new system that comes about wouldn’t just end up making the situation worse. Every solution currently brought forward that I have seen has glaring flaws that would make a lot of people mad with how “unfair” it may seem to them, while it may look fair to others. That is the problem the wildcard game system has; some people think it is great and fair while others think it is stupid and unfair. Any new system put in place would be the same way more than likely. 

The right answer may be out there somewhere, but the current system is not that right answer. 

The Pirates enter crucial offseason needing to add

The Pirates, by many estimations, overachieved this season to some degree by finishing 82-79. They enter the offseason with a belief that they can compete in 2019. This was proven with the acquisitions of Keone Kela and Chris Archer in late July. However, to compete, it is believed that they need more help. 

Last offseason, the Pirates traded away Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole while signing no MLB free agents. This all angered fans, but perhaps the Pirates were onto something when they did it. They then put belief in this group in July which will help them until 2020 at least. Given those moves showing the Pirates are not rebuilding and aren’t planning to for awhile and the fact they appear to be positioning themselves to win now, as well as the fact that if they have another offseason like they did last year, there may be only 10 people at PNC Park next year (I will be one of them by the way), makes this maybe the most crucial offseason of the Neal Huntington era. The team has treaded water and paddled around .500 for too long. It is time for Neal Huntington to continue the work he began and continue to give this group all the assets that they need to win. They can ill-afford to rearrange the furniture, so to speak, again.

Pirates will have money to spend after holding payroll down in both 2017 and 2018 after it hit franchise-high levels in 2015 and 2016. This combined with the likely option being declined on Harrison and the departure of Mercer and Sean Rodriguez (the trade of Freese saved money too) will create more money, even if it’s just balanced out by pay raises through contracts or arbitration. All in all, the Pirates should be able to at least spend some money, and not doing so would be an amazingly bad optics move by the organization, as well as the consequences it could have on the team potentially just falling flat like they have done recently and just be a mediocre team again. 

The Pirates could really use a hitter or two to bolster the lineup as well as a pitcher or two now that both Chad Kuhl and Edgar Santana are set to miss all of 2019 after Tommy John surgery. These are the greatest areas of needs, but helping out the depth of the team as a whole to handle injuries and other things is always an important thing to do as well. 

The Pirates were not great in 2018, but they had some flashes that show the potential is there. Adding Archer and Kela for a full season will add some wins to this team even before any other moves. This team is much more capable of handling misfortune than the previous seasons when they’d lose a key player or two to injuries or loss of production and crumble. That wasn’t the case this year, and that’s huge going forward. This team, as currently constructed can win 85 games in 2019 (which hasn’t been good enough for the playoffs most years), even if some big things don’t go right. This team’s ceiling may be beyond that though, and that is something Huntington has to tap into for them to return to the playoffs. Call me crazy, but adding a few more pieces to put the icing on the cake would make this team a legitimate threat to make the playoffs and maybe challenge for the division, like the Brewers have done this season. 

The Pirates are in a crucial position right now concerning where they are going the next few years, and they are closer to being good than being bad. Huntington cannot afford to be act like a deer caught in headlights this offseason. His job in the months to follow is to get this team those few extra pieces they need to really get this ball rolling.