Pirates should add another starter into the rotation

The Pittsburgh Pirates appear to be going into 2019 relying on their rotation to carry them. There’s good reason for that as the group is lead by Jameson Taillon and Chris Archer, Joe Musgrove looked effective while he was healthy and Trevor Williams looked nearly unbeatable in the second half of last year. 

However, the team is also relying on Jordan Lyles, whose track record as a starter is really bad, and youngsters Nick Kingham and Steven Brault, who also haven’t shown much promise as starters yet, to hold the fort down until Mitch Keller arrives. 

So while the Pirates rotation has some things to like there, they also have many questions that lead me to believe this team could really use another established starting pitcher to really get the rotation to a new level. 

One question is health for sure. This rotation is one injury away from trusting Jordan Lyles and some combination of Nick Kingham, Steven Brault and Clay Holmes, which isn’t exactly promising. 

And it’s not like this group doesn’t have an injury rap sheet either. Taillon is coming off his first fully healthy season maybe ever, but his constant injury troubles over the years won’t just go away overnight because he had one healthy season. There’s still concern there for the Pirates ace. Chris Archer, who has a reputation of healthiness, exhibited a rare relatively major health scare last year that sidelined him for a good bit of time. Now that he’s on the other side of 30, those concerns start to creep up. Musgrove was only held to 115.1 innings last year with various injuries, so there’s concerns there too. It also does always seem one or two of the starting pitchers wind up missing a good chunk of time, so adding another guy to the mix to ensure they can handle an inevitable loss like that would be good. 

Another question is performance. It’s reasonable to expect Taillon will perform adequately, but the rest could exhibit a wide range of outcomes. You’d like to think the injuries and the sudden change of teams were reasons for Archer’s relatively lackluster performance last year and he’s due to be better because of those factors not being a problem and metrics working well in his favor, but you really have no way of knowing after his performance last year (though he seemed to figure it out better late in the season in Pittsburgh). Musgrove has metrics working in his favor as well, but he is still a younger guy with a small sample of big league success, so sustaining success is a big thing, especially since he is being relied on heavily in this rotation, perhaps unfairly so. And Williams is the biggest candidate for regression there is. This rotation as a whole has so much variability for it being the strongest part of the team. If things don’t work out well, it could even wind up being a weak point of the team. That’s a major problem. 

Another question mark is depth. The Pirates depth is currently Lyles/Kingham, Brault, Holmes and Brubaker. This is a far cry from the 4 guys currently in the rotation. Lyles looks better as a bullpen arm, and Brault and Brubaker are heading that way too. Kingham, despite a great debut, didn’t look too promising with his chance last year. It’s not fair to write him off based on that, but there are questions about whether his stuff can play in the majors since he doesn’t do much to trick hitters, similar to Williams but with less control. And Holmes is currently looking like nothing more than a depth piece, which always seemed to be the way he was going. 

It’s an easy assumption to make that the Pirates are keeping the seat warm for Mitch Keller, whose arrival could be in June or July of this upcoming season. They tried this same strategy in 2016 with Vogelsong and Nicasio keeping it warm for Taillon and Glasnow, and it didn’t work out well to say the least. And I can’t see it being effective here either because I don’t believe Keller will be up when he is supposed to be. He didn’t quite tear up AAA in his little time there and clearly still has work to do. I wouldn’t be shocked if he spent the whole year in AAA as the Pirates try to make sure a player is ready in every single way before calling them up and are very slow about it. It’s not uncommon for the Pirates have a player in AAA for a year and a half or more. Keller is no different. Additionally, even when Keller does come up, who’s to say he’s going to be good right away? That isn’t a slam dunk by any stretch. 

And with all these questions that give the rotation so much variability, I think it is a very important thing for the Pirates to get another starter for this staff. Another quality arm in this group would give them insurance in case things go wrong and would make them hard to beat if all goes right, which should be the goal for a team seemingly focused on out pitching teams instead of playing the high scoring game with them. 

But what options should be considered. Let’s take a look.

Corey Kluber (trade): 

This is way out of the realm of possibility, but the Indians have considered trading him and taking on some money to do so as an attempt to shed payroll back to normal levels after maxing it out and beyond the last three years. Kluber is under team control through 2021, like Archer, which is the amount of control years the Pirates would like. If Indians kick in some money, it could work money-wise too, though Kluber’s contract as is holds insane surplus value. The return would likely have to be Keller for it to happen though, which the Pirates would balk at every time. Imagine a rotation lead by Kluber, Taillon and Archer the next 3 seasons though. Wow. Maybe Kluber yearns to play with Lonnie Chisenhall again (probably not but it’s worth a try right). 

Dallas Keuchel (free agent):

Another unrealistic one, but not as much so. It’s crazy how the best free agent starter remains unsigned. He’d fit well in Pittsburgh though. He’d fill the need of a lefty in an otherwise all-righty rotation. The problem is the money it would cost, but the concern becomes less and less as the time passes before Spring Training. Maybe now he’d be amendable to a shorter-term deal at a more reasonable cost. The Pirates aren’t the most attractive destination, but being a left-handed pitcher in PNC Park is helpful with the fact he’d face a lot of righty pull hitters and left field is rather big at PNC Park with the notch in left center. He’d also get to team up with Musgrove again. Maybe he really likes the guy (again probably not but worth a try). 

Wade Miley (free agent):

Miley had a good season in Milwaukee. Granted it was only a sample of 80.2 innings, so maybe not the most reliable. But it’s probably a fair assessment to say he’d be an upgrade on the 5th spot of the rotation over what they have. I probably wouldn’t make the move though based on that alone though. I’d rather not block a guy like Kingham for Miley. He is a lefty though, which goes in his favor here.

Gio Gonzalez (free agent):

This one is actually kind of realistic because Gio has been a guy the Pirates have always seemed to like. Gonzalez has always been very underrated as a pitcher. He was a 3 WAR or better pitcher every year from 2010-2017 and was almost consistently at 175 innings or better. This past season wasn’t quite as good, but he was still a 2 WAR pitcher and was much better in Milwaukee where he started to figure it out again. He’d really sure up the middle to back part of the rotation and take some pressure off Musgrove and Williams. He’d be a steady force in there. Did I mention he’s a lefty as well. 

I highly doubt the Pirates add another rotation arm. I think they trust their guys and their depth and are hoping for Mitch Keller to be there in the middle of the season and lift them up even further. 

For me, I think the Pirates are looking optimistically here. The rotation is the strength of this team, but even they come with a lot of variables that could just as easily turn them into a weakness. If this is the strength of the team, then why is it relying on so much to go right for it to be that way. That scares me, especially since it seems like they are banking on their pitching very heavily this season. It would be great for them to get another rotation arm that can be a steady piece in there. It would give the Pirates a deeper rotation that can handle one or two things going wrong but would be hard to handle if things go right. 

Joe Musgrove is the x-factor in the Pirates rotation

The strength of the Pirates team going into the 2019 appears to be the rotation. The group lead by Jameson Taillon and Chris Archer looks to give the Pirates a decent chance to win many nights. Many people think the Pirates rotation could be the most underrated one in the majors and could sneak up on people this year. 

It’s reasonable to expect Jameson Taillon and Chris Archer will be very productive amongst this group at the top, but I think there is one guy in the middle of the rotation that will wind up mattering a lot to the success or otherwise of this rotation. And that guy is Joe Musgrove.

Musgrove, 26, was acquired by the Pirates along with Colin Moran, Michael Feliz and Jason Martin in the Gerrit Cole trade with Houston last offseason. 

Last season, Musgrove was used as a starter for the Pirates after being relegated to the bullpen in Houston thanks to their surplus of starters at the time. Musgrove was pretty good for the Pirates too. He pitched to a 4.06 ERA/3.59 FIP and was worth 2.1 WAR. However, one problem that plagued him was health. He went on the DL a few different times with various injuries, before the season and throughout it as well, that held him to only 115.1 innings pitched. 

So while Musgrove is not an unknown entirely, it is still very difficult to pinpoint exactly what production he will bring. The injury troubles of last year certainly become a concern, and whether he can even pitch 170-180 innings this season come up as well if he gets to that point in September where he may need to be shutdown. And of course with players of his age with relatively minimal major league success, you wonder whether or not he can sustain success. 

If some of the metrics work to Musgrove’s favor this season and he is healthy, he can easily be the third piece to a really good trio with Taillon and Archer. However, there are certainly enough roadblocks to that happening that it can’t be a reasonable expectation he even gets to that point in 2019. If he does, the rotation will be in great shape. If not, the rotation might wind up being more middle of the pack than anything. And that is the exact reason as to why I think Joe Musgrove is a very important piece to this rotation as his production or lack thereof could swing the rotation from being either great or just slightly better than decent. 

Pirates picked the wrong time to open up a contention window

The Pirates seemed to open up a contention window for the 2019-2021 seasons. This is pretty clear to see since Dickerson and Cervelli are gone after 2019, Kela after 2020 and Marte and Archer after 2021 (with Polanco and Vazquez options there as well). It’s quite clear the emphasis is on these three years for the Pirates. 

However, it seems like everyone else in the NL Central has the same idea. The Cubs will likely have at least two to three years left of contention before needing to step back, the Brewers opened up a window and proceeded to make good on it in 2018 and are still good going into this upcoming season, the Cardinals added big in their quest to contend again and they will always have a chance regardless. Even the Reds got the memo after adding for 2019 and possibly for that few years after that as well. 

So one could make the case that in what has become an even more rugged NL Central than usual, maybe the Pirates should have picked a different time to finally sell off future assets for established MLB players that fill high production (Archer and Kela) and perhaps sit out this arm’s race that is going on amongst division counterparts. This, instead, might have been an opportune time to do a little rebuild and come back in a few years once everyone else is tapped out or close to it. 

Perhaps the Pirates could have kept Meadows, Glasnow, Hearn and Baz and traded Dickerson, Cervelli, Marte, Vazquez and perhaps Polanco before the 2019 season ends and then proceeded forward with trading others after that. 

This would have built the farm system up pretty well and would have given the Pirates a good chance in 2022 while everyone else in the division might be starting to fall back a little bit after their three-year-long sprint to the top. 

You can see why the Pirates front office did not do this though. The team showed up enough in 2018 to warrant an opportunity instead of a rebuild. The team is also relatively young, so a rebuild for such a young team already is tricky. In addition to that as well, the Pirates front office may get cold feet about a rebuild considering they took over within the seemingly never-ending one from the mid-90s until 2010. They know what a horrible and painful process that can be for them, the players and the fans all alike. 

But with everyone in the NL Central going for it to some degree in 2019 and perhaps beyond that, you have to wonder whether or not the Pirates made the correct decision doing it also. The Pirates winning an arm’s race against their biggest foes is unlikely. Them competing with the likes of the loaded Cubs, the up and coming Brewers and the ever-present Cardinals is unlikely too. Even the Reds have a decent chance to be above the Pirates in the standings for the first time in awhile with their own big plays that they have made this offseason to be competitive. 

And this doesn’t just pertain to the NL Central. This pertains to the National League as a whole as well. The whole league seems to be on the rise all at once. The Dodgers will be a consistent threat and the NL Central will be tough as I mentioned, but the Braves and Rockies will return as up and coming teams as well. Additionally, the Nationals, Mets and Phillies have also participated in their own arm’s race with the Braves in the NL East. The Diamondbacks cannot be discredited either, and if the Giants are healthy, they have an outside chance. Even the Padres have the talented youth to take a leap similar to the 2018 Braves. So the NL is quite a tough thing to get through right now, and you can make the case that the Pirates would need a lot to go right themselves and a lot go wrong for many others to even have a chance at the playoffs.

The Pirates fight right now, as it stands, may be just to not finish in last place in a loaded division, and perhaps to finish 10th or better in the NL as a whole, both which may be a tall orders by themselves. And it is quite justified to wonder whether that is worth even going for. The Pirates might have been better off sitting this one out and lurking in the shadows during a rebuild, prepared to strike when the time is just right. 

My (probably wrong) theory on what the Pirates are up to

One fair criticism of the way the Pirates have operated over the years has been how they haven’t really seemed to have a plan. They have just seemed to do whatever in hopes of just being good enough to not suck. They seemed to be content with mediocre.

However, over the last year, there have been some signs that the idea of doing that is changing for the Pirates. While it is hard to see it now, I think it could become clear soon, and I have a theory that might help explain it (or I’m totally off-base as usual).

Let’s start with January of last year when the Pirates traded away Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen just days apart from one another. The team looked like it was headed towards a rebuild, but then something changed. The team came out in 2018 as a young group and kind of came together a bit and exceeded expectations by going 82-79. It is truly my belief that the team was leaning towards a rebuild, despite acquiring MLB pieces in both the Cole and McCutchen deals, but they gave the 2018 team a shot to show up and force them to pump the breaks. And they did. So as a result, the front office rewarded the group by instead opening up a new window for them to contend that spans 2019-2021 after they acquired Chris Archer (controlled thru 2021) and Keone Kela (controlled thru 2020) in very uncharacteristic moves for the organization. With a lot of their core in place through 2021 at least, besides Cervelli and Dickerson, and more big prospects coming up like Keller, Hayes and possibly even Swaggerty, within that time, this could be seen as a good time for this team to strike. 

But fast forward to this offseason. The Pirates have been rather quiet. They signed Lonnie Chisenhall to fill in for Polanco until he gets back then he’ll fill a bench spot. They re-signed Jung Ho Kang for a reserve role as well, and they signed Jordan Lyles to be a starter and/or a reliever depending on how they use him. 

However, they also have lowered payroll this offseason so far despite this. They declined Josh Harrison’s option, saving them nearly $10M, and they were able to dump Ivan Nova’s contract on the White Sox to save another close to $10M. They have also at least attempted to trade Cervelli, a move that’d give the team another big chunk of savings, but that seems unlikely now. 

Despite all of this mess that it looks to be now, I think there is a plan here that’ll be realized sooner rather than later.

One reason I think this is because, from a couple of different standpoints, it’d make no sense to trade for Archer and Kela then do nothing after despite a low payroll. 

It first wouldn’t make sense from a financial standpoint because they traded two guys making the league minimum and a few prospects with three future years of league minimum years once they reach the majors. They added about $11M to this year’s payroll and even more in future payrolls by adding these two guys while only subtracting just over $1M this year and up to $2-3M in future payrolls the next 2-3 years while Archer and Kela are around. If the team was so concerned with being financially conscience to the extreme, which is the main criticism of the organization, they wouldn’t have added $10M to the payroll and even more to the future payrolls for these two players.

It also wouldn’t make sense overall from an organizational perspective. A team that is always so protective of their future pieces wouldn’t trade them away for two players to play on teams that are more or less mediocre. The Pirates don’t use their big future pieces in trades for the most part, but when they do, it almost assuredly won’t be a waste. 

Another reason I think this is because it just seems like the Pirates have deliberately lowered payroll as much as possible. They declined Harrison’s option to save $10M about, they traded Nova to save another about $10M (both things I mentioned before). Heck, even Dickerson and Archer (who essentially replaced Cole and McCutchen) are overall cheaper. 

Even with the criticism of Bob Nutting’s low payrolls, the payroll of around the $70M it sits at right now would be their lowest Opening Day amount since 2012. 2012 was a weird year for them to decide whether they were contenders or not. They haven’t had a payroll as low as $70M as a team that knows they want to contend. It would be very strange to see that now, especially with the financial points of the Archer and Kela deals making no sense if the team is restricting payroll that I mentioned above. Their payrolls have typically been about $85-90M but they have increased it above $100M in the past if they think they have a legitimate chance, which I’d imagine they think they do. 

I doubt Nutting would give clearance to Huntington to trade league minimum salary players for Archer and Kela if he wanted payroll cuts in the offseason. If he wanted to do that, he would have called for trades of Cervelli, Dickerson, Nova and maybe even Marte and Vazquez last July and gotten payroll to $40-50M. 

Another reason I think this is because of Huntington electing to stay in Pittsburgh instead of going to San Francisco. Huntington had the job as President of Baseball Operations in San Francisco if he wanted it. He declined, noting “unfinished business” in Pittsburgh as his top reason for staying. Do you really think he’d want to stay in Pittsburgh, and not join another loyal organization like the Giants where he’d also have job security and a better position as well, if he didn’t have a plan in place that he got assurances from ownership that he could fulfill. I don’t think so.

But what exactly is the plan I theorize? Well, here is what I think.

I first think the organization was planning a rebuild after a second straight mediocre season in 2017 and traded Cole and McCutchen to start and were planning more but pumped the brakes knowing they had a young roster and they wanted to give them a real chance first to show themselves. So, they sat out of free agency because they didn’t have a true direction yet and they wanted to see how the team did as is. 

Then the team started off well but fell off and the organization was contemplating a rebuild. But then the team came together a bit and started winning to show enough growth together to award a chance, but the front office was still on the fence. But with such a young team, they didn’t see a rebuild as necessary. So, they decided to reward the team by opening up a contention window for 2019-2021 and starting it out by enhancing the team with Chris Archer and Keone Kela. 

The season ended an overall success despite not reaching the playoffs again. The Pirates realized they have a core that they can work with, one they may even find potentially better than what they had in 2013-15. But in order to enhance this group, they need financial ability. So, they declined the option on Harrison, signed Kang on a cheaper deal and traded Nova to save about $20M. They even attempted to trade Cervelli to give themselves more room to work with. 

They filled the roster with good back of the roster players like Chisenhall, Kang and Lyles to enhance their depth for cheap to start while waiting out the market for their key additions.

And now, with payroll low but thoughts of contention high, the Pirates find themselves waiting out the market on the top players on the market. Some top names still available as of now include Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, Dallas Keuchel, Craig Kimbrel, AJ Pollock and Marwin Gonzalez. Obviously some of these guys wouldn’t be fits, but a couple of them would be, such as Machado, Keuchel, Gonzalez or maybe even Kimbrel to a minor degree. Of course, no team would have any problem moving around some parts to land Harper if they had a legitimate chance to either. 

So the reason the Pirates have been mostly idle in free agency and have passed on affordable free agent fits as the desperation to sign before Spring Training has begun to hit could be traced to the idea that they have offers out on some notable free agents at the top of the market and are waiting those out before they move on to their plan Bs, which could include guys such as Jose Iglesias, Freddy Galvis, Gio Gonzalez, Wade Miley, Sergio Romo, Brad Brach and others. This could also apply to the trade market being waited out as well and why the Pirates have been quiet on that front as well (they usually prefer trades to signings). 

If the Pirates are waiting out for top free agents, they obviously would not want to risk signing or trading for middle or lower-end guys and risk being priced out of the market for one or more of the top guys just in case. And that’s why we haven’t seen them make any more moves despite the payroll being uncharacteristically low, even for them. 

But with the way the market is constructed, a few fallback options should be there just in case as a lot of guys are still waiting for the fallout of the top free agents to pass. So if the Pirates are in on the top guys, they likely are also in on the guys below them if they fail in their efforts, and they would not be the only team doing that, and that is why the “backup” free agents are still available as well. 

So between making uncharacteristic moves for Archer and Kela at the deadline to opening a 2019-2021 window of contention to Huntington electing to stay after turning down a better job because of “unfinished business” to almost purposefully lowering payroll below even normal operating standards for no discernible reason as of now, it all combines to make the appearance that there is something bigger planned that we do not quite see quite yet.

Right now, it appears there are a lot of pieces of the plan known to us, but no real plan outline that looks complete. What I have done is attempt to piece together those pieces while attempting to find the rest of the pieces that we do not know and put them all together as well.

In no way is what I think is going on is actually going on. I do not have any inside information on any of this. This is just what I think could be going on based on what we do know. I am probably absolutely wrong, but I guess we will find out in time. 

So are the Pirates in on Machado or not?

Well, I didn’t think for one minute that I’d be writing this, but there appears to be at least one credible report stating the possibility of mega free agent Manny Machado being on the Pirates radar.

Hector Gomez, a reporter based in the Dominican Republic, which is where his parents are located, reported that the Pirates could be the long-rumored mystery team in on Machado. Gomez a few days ago also quoted Manny Machado’s father saying that he thinks the team people don’t think about much will wind up signing Machado. 

Gomez has had quite an influence on the Machado rumors as he has had a few reports throughout the process that have helped paint the picture of his market. Since Machado’s parents are in the Dominican Republic and he seems to have a relationship with them, it is at least fair to think that he has those connections within the Machado camp that other reporters do not have. 

However, Jon Heyman, a rather respected baseball insider and writer in the United States, threw some cold water on the rumor, saying that the report has no legs, even mocking the idea that the Pirates would be in on Machado entirely. 

Gomez responded to Heyman’s tweet, reiterating what Machado’s father had said about a team you don’t think about much signing him. 

Reporting in sports on potential transactions is a tough business and being wrong is risky for reputation, so it’s hard to think either of these two would put something out there for all to see that they don’t believe is right. Neither of them has a reason to lie here. I guess it just comes down to who you believe more. 

For me, I’m more inclined to believe the guy who we know has spoken to people in Machado’s corner and people who are close to Machado and have at least some inside information on some things that are going on in his market. 

Not to mention that it is pretty bold of a career and reputation move to claim the Pirates could be in on Machado given their reputation of not going after major players in free agency. Again, I doubt he’d put it out there if there was no backing there to make him think there was truth to it because to make a bold claim like this requires thorough skepticism before putting it out there. 

Heyman could definitely be correct here, but it’s much harder to say that as all he is doing here is sitting back and refuting other reports. He provides no further insight but just simply saying it isn’t happening. If he would have added some additional context or reasoning, it may be a bit easier to give him some more reliability here. Also, Heyman missed on the most recent big MLB deal when he said last Thursday that the Reds were no longer really in on Sonny Gray. He then said a day later that the Reds were a front runner all along for him. Reds wound up acquiring Gray today. 

So overall, there are reasons to believe either guy given reputations and past history, but I just think in this specific situation Gomez is more believable. He appears to have close connections to Machado’s corner and is really putting a chunk of his reputation on the line by saying what he is, so he has big incentive here to not be fabricating something. And it’s obviously never a strong stance for a reporter to just refute a report from another reporter, especially since no other big time MLB insider has come to Heyman’s side here as of now. 

But you believe what you will. We likely won’t actually know who was right unless Machado signs in Pittsburgh because we’ll never know the Pirates stance in the Machado market otherwise.