Prospects struggle: It’s part of the plan
FORT MYERS, Fla. — For all those excited to get a glimpse of the Pirates’ future in this year’s spring training, there might be some disappointment.
The young players are struggling as a group.
Outside of third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, who is, unsurprisingly, 13 for 30 at this point, there aren’t many impressive statistical performances from the group of prospects that have played for the major league club this season.
After Sunday’s win over the Boston Red Sox, the position players on MLB Pipeline’s top- 30 ranking of Pirates prospects, excluding Hayes, were a combined 12 for 95 (.126) this spring.
Shortstop Oneil Cruz, for instance, is 10th on the team with 23 at-bats, but has only one hit. Outfielders Jared Oliva and Travis Swaggerty are a combined 5 for 32. Infielder Rodolfo Castro has three hits, two of them home runs, which might qualify him as having the most impressive spring at the plate among the group.
The list goes on from there. While all of that might seem concerning on the surface, it really isn’t a problem. Many of these players wouldn’t even be in Bradenton in a typical season, but Major League Baseball allowed more players to be invited this season amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. First- round 2020 draft selection Nick Gonzales has never played a regularseason professional baseball game at any level.
What’s more, nearly all of the young building blocks of the future have been reassigned to minor league camp already, so it’s not like they were expected to make an instant impact this season and get an early call-up to the majors.
It’s more a sign of the types of growing pains that the Pirates feel are still helpful in development.
“I like to sit back and watch and try to understand who each one can be someday. I daydream,” hitting coach Rick Eckstein said Saturday. “I daydream about Oneil Cruz and Nick Gonzales.
“For me, it’s really exciting because you see major league quality talent. In the short amount of time I’ve seen them, I’m very excited. I’ll need to get to know them more so that observation process will play for me. In a short look, it’s extremely exciting to see.”
Those observations are things Eckstein sees every day. He sees the 6-foot-7 frame of Cruz and the raw physical talents, comparing the way he moves to Michael Jordan on a basketball court.
That isn’t always easy to see from the outside.
That might be especially true for fans who are waiting anxiously for Cruz to make an impact in the majors. He didn’t struggle at all in his first spring training, smoking two home runs in nine at-bats. This year has been a tough one.
But the point from the Pirates’ perspective isn’t performance for those players, even Cruz who has technically been here before. It’s a much more macro view than that.
“Our job is to guide these young men. It’s a guided discovery,” Eckstein said. “We’re trying to guide them in a direction to say keep working in this direction. And then once they discover it themselves, they blossom and really bloom into the player that everybody’s dreaming about.”
Even the players competing for the major-league roster have some perspective for the difference in approaches.
Infielder Cole Tucker remembers his first spring training very clearly, and it isn’t for what he did in the batter’s box. It’s for all the “first time” experiences he had.
“I think people get caught up a little too much on, like, ‘Oh, this 19-year-old kid didn’t hit [ well] in big league spring training.’ … Who cares?” Tucker said Saturday after a loss to the Tigers. “It’s just cool for them to come in and be around the major league staff and major league players and play in a major league atmosphere.
“I remember the first time I ever backed up those spring trainings here in Lakeland. I was so freaked out because Yoenis Cespedis, Miggy [Miguel Cabrera] and Jose Iglesias were there. I’ll never forget that. I didn’t even get an at-bat, but I still remember the day. For them to have those experiences is what this is all about.”
To further the point, when MLB Pipeline’s 2021 rankings of the Pirates’ minor league system came out, neither Cruz nor Gonzales plummeted down the rankings because of a tough spring training.
It is a flash in the pan compared to actual minorleague seasons and full games played, in terms of development or projection.
There is room to grow, for sure, but much of that growth will be done after the players depart from Bradenton at the end of camp.