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.
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