Competition will be rule come spring
Derek Shelton spent a significant chunk of his Winter Meetings Zoom call on Tuesday afternoon emphasizing the need for competition at all positions and said the Pirates should have several job openings come spring.
“I think there’s going to be competition everywhere, honestly,” Shelton said. “We have a lot of positions that are open.”
What Shelton said certainly sounds good, especially to those who are (understandably) upset following the Pirates’ 19-41 slog in 2020, but time will tell whether the skipper’s comments amounted to anything more than smoke.
Will he actually bench Gregory Polanco if the right
fielder can’t consistently hit the ball? Who’s actually pushing for time? What if someone endures another sizable slump; will Shelton make a move? Because while it’s easy to cite Ke’Bryan Hayes’ breakout performance this past summer, it’s also true that he lost starts to JT Riddle, who inexplicably appeared in 23 games and played seven different positions while hitting a whopping .149.
Put another way, it’s great for Shelton to talk about competition and later drop the word “meritocracy.” It would be even better for the talent-starved Pirates to simply let the best player play.
“There’s going to be a lot of competition, which is fun,” Shelton said. “It excites me.”
OK, so where will said competition occur? That appears to be the golden question here.
Hayes will play, the Pirates manager said. Same for Bryan Reynolds and Polanco in the outfield. Some way, shape or form, Josh Bell and Colin Moran will get at-bats before Shelton reiterated that Gold Glove finalists Adam Frazier and Jacob Stallings will play.
That means a of couple things. One, as currently constituted, the Pirates have just two open jobs: shortstop and either left or center field, depending on what they do with Reynolds, who said last season he’d prefer to play center.
But what it really said doesn’t have as much to do with a lineup card or winning games, as it was seemingly a strategic ploy to motivate his players, letting them know that no job is safe. It also could portend a trade or two, with Frazier remaining one of the most attractive Pirates on the trade block.
“If you’re playing well and doing a good job, you’re probably going to continue to get opportunities,” Shelton said. “We’re in a situation where we want to get better. We need to get better. So we will take each opportunity individually, but competition is a healthy thing.”
There’s also nothing wrong with Shelton saying what he said. Last year, while many expected Phillip Evans to start at Class AAA Indianapolis, he wound up winning a job out of spring training and performed well enough to stick around into the regular season.
Evans hit .359 over 14 games and established himself as one of the Pirates’ more reliable bench options heading into 2021.
Shelton should want to create a situation where the next Evans shines through and wins a job out of nowhere. It would also help if that player was an outfielder given how thin the Pirates are there.
“I think we have young players who are hungry,” Shelton said. “When we sat down at the end of the year in our exit meetings, we talked about opportunities, we talked about competition, and we talked about the specific things guys need to do to get better to put themselves in situations to play more. I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s something that’s going to create energy in our camp.”
The Pirates should certainly hope so. They also need to find a shortstop who can field and hit consistently. If you look at the three- man competition there now, Kevin Newman and Erik Gonzalez combined for nearly 30% (14 of 47) of the club’s errors in 2020, while Cole Tucker has yet to consistently hit major league pitching.
In fact, none of the three had an OPS over .614 (Gonzalez).
Newman, Gonzalez and Tucker have all experienced bumps at the major league level, though Shelton, general manager Ben Cherington and others badly need one of the three to separate himself from the pack. The Pirates, it seems, are planting those seeds now.
It’s sort of that way in the outfield, although the competition likely isn’t as stiff. Anthony Alford represents the early leader for the starting center field job, provided the Pirates don’t want to shift Reynolds over. Alford is incredibly fast, defensively sound and clearly a player Shelton and Cherington like a lot.
He’s also hit about 40 points (. 169) below his weight (210 pounds) at the major league level, which
“There’s going to be a lot of competition, which is fun. It excites me.”
— Derek Shelton
means that the Pirates, while offering opportunity, must see a couple of players take their games to new levels in order for the club to improve.
The more competitive environment, honestly, might be on the pitching mound, especially because of the weird transition that will occur from 60 games in 2020 to what many hope to be 162 in 2021. That will provide plenty of opportunities for pitchers, and the Pirates have very little set in stone there.
Asked flat-out if he has a closer right now, Shelton said he did not. Richard Rodriguez remains the Pirates’ best reliever, though he’s never been much more than a setup man. It’s the first time in probably a decade that the job is up for grabs.
Shelton also offered some additional clarity by saying JT Brubaker would remain a starter.
Among Jameson Taillon, Mitch Keller, Brubaker, Chad Kuhl and Steven Brault, the Pirates have the beginning of a decent starting staff, while the expectation here remains for Joe Musgrove to be traded.
Competition abounds in the bullpen, where only Rodriguez, Chris Stratton and a handful of others — perhaps Geoff Hartlieb and Sam Howard — have the inside track on jobs for 2021.
Rule 5 pick Luis Oviedo must stay on the roster, or the Pirates could lose him. Blake Cederlind earned the chance to prove himself. Kyle Crick and Michael Feliz have some history of success. The Pirates have
grabbed and stashed a halfdozen pitching projects while also looking for more to create a revolving door on the fringe of their roster.
In that sense, competition will abound, as it often does in the bullpen. But when it comes to position players and how the Pirates configure their lineup, it’s hard to see much legitimate competition outside of two positions.
Unless, of course, Cherington is mulling some sizable changes.
“I think [ competition] brings out the best in people,” Shelton said. “We’re definitely going to go into spring training where we have some opportunities for people.”