PRESSURE ON FOR PIRATES OPENER
Core group of young players face pressure of reviving club
Diagram the Pirates roster, and the visual depiction of it might look a little like a Mandala, its shapes and patterns not necessarily showing anything spiritually symbolic but more players in certain stages of their careers.
Potentially tradeable veterans. Established big leaguers looking to get better. Project pitchers. Bounce-back candidates trying to prove last year was an anomaly.
In Pittsburgh, the most important portion of that geometric design includes future building blocks such as Ke’Bryan Hayes, Mitch Keller, Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman, talented players who’ve done some things but still have plenty of growing to do.
The guys who — if the Pirates can fix the minor league system and push toward better days in 2023 or 2024 — should help usher in that new era, allowing fans to get excited and maybe even purchase a jersey or two without feeling buyer’s remorse.
“We’ve got a good, young group here,” Reynolds said. “Everybody saw what Ke’Bryan can do. He’s going to be big for us. I think we have a solid core. We’re not going to roll over. We’re going to fight and have a good 2021.”
In many ways, these players have the toughest fight of anyone in the organization. Highly touted prospects such as Nick Gonzales, Quinn Priester, Oneil Cruz and Liover Peguero aren’t expected to immediately contribute. By the time they arrive, progress will have been made.
Meanwhile, the first group must offset the departures of Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove, Jameson Taillon and others; help the Pirates improve upon their MLBworst record of 19-41 in 2020; and grow into leadership roles as quickly as possible.
Through it all, fan frustration is high and patience is short, as the Pirates have stumbled to a .458 winning percentage (323-383) since the start of 2016.
The safest bet on fans’ jersey shopping list, Hayes will be the focal point, a legitimate candidate to win either a Gold Glove or become the rookie of the year in the National League.
He’s also just 24. Opening day will be his 25th career big league game. Even if his 2020 season — .376 average, 1.124 OPS — might make this seem impossible, he’s going to make mistakes and discover areas where he can grow.
The biggest could be gaining experience and some sense of ownership in that face-of-the-franchise role.
“I’m not the most vocal guy ever,” Hayes said. “But every day I’ve been here they’ve told me, ‘ Don’t change who you are. Don’t change what you do. Go about your business and lead by example.’ ”
From a national perspective, he’s one of the primary reasons people might follow the Pirates, his defense potentially rivaling that of new Cardinals star Nolan Arenado, who has won the past eight Gold Gloves at third while with the Colorado Rockies.
Yet as easy as it might be to make the Pirates’ present about Hayes, the Pirates need more. A lot more. That’s where the other three — and hopefully for their sake, a few more — come in.
Keller has been tantalizing with his talent since carving up the minor leagues and becoming the International League’s best pitcher before making his MLB debut in 2019.
Armed with a mid-90s fastball and two terrific breaking pitches, Keller has all the tools to blossom into a front- of- the- rotation starter. He showed glimpses last season, too, finishing the year with 11 hitless innings.
But this spring has been a tough one for Keller, the right-hander pitching to an 11.91 ERA in five stars and struggling with his fastball command. Even in his final start of the Grapefruit League season, Keller lasted just three innings and walked four.
What we’ve seen from Keller inspires more questions than confidence, but it’s undeniable that the Pirates need him to pan out, to find the type of elite form that eluded a former top pitching prospect in Tyler Glasnow.
After offseason moves that saw the Pirates lose four established starting pitchers, the time is now for the 24-year-old Keller.
“I think our young core here has really taken things to the next level of, ‘All right, we’re the group, and we need to get all these guys rallied around us and do something special here,’ ” Keller said. “Because I hate losing, and I know they hate losing. It’s time to really start something here. I think we’re excited with who we have to take us forward.”
Other parts of the spring training season actually did inspire some level of hope, starting with Newman, who hit .606 and looked even better than he did during his breakout 2019.
The shortened 2020 season affected Newman and forced the shortstop to change his approach. The same as many of his teammates, he struggled early, panicked and failed to successfully dig himself out of a sizable hole.
But for the Pirates to reach their destination, they need Newman to continue his strong spring and carry it into the regular season. They need it to potentially surprise some people in 2021-22, and they’ll need it for business reasons beyond that.
Because while Cruz or Peguero might be viewed as the shortstop of the future, Newman represents an important pivot point, someone who’s still plenty young — he’s only 27 — and also under team control through 2024.
If Newman reverts to his 2019 form and does that a couple more times, the Pirates could either try to sign Newman long-term or trade him as a way to backfill other needs.
“We talk about the new, young Pirates coming up,” Pirates owner Bob Nutting told the Pitsburgh Post-Gazette this spring.
“But I don’t want it to be a frozen- in- time group where we have three players that we watch. We need to have an organization that has extremely exciting younger players with another group coming in and another group coming after that.”
It’s not yet known into which category Newman will fall, other than the fact that he’s obviously not a veteran.
The Pirates must figure out exactly what they have, and they appear to have a solid player capable of authoring a bounce-back season.
That isn’t all that dissimilar from Reynolds, who was one of their most dominant hitters in 2019, the left fielder worth 4.1 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) according to Baseball Reference.
Back then, Reynolds was viewed as a future building block. A 2020 campaign much like Newman’s — where he struggled to adjust and get comfortable — clouded Reynolds’ future. The 2021 season will be about breaking the tie.
Because of his natural ability to hit and produce runs, Reynolds will be counted upon to lead a young team, especially on the offensive side of the ball. But similar to Hayes, that comes with time and mileage. The worst thing vocal leadership can be is forced.
“With the people we lost, we’re going to see some guys step up and take those roles,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “I’m excited to see who those people are, but I’m not going to tell someone they have to do that or appoint someone.”
So while the 2021 Pirates certainly come with their fair share of on-field challenges — from the composition of the rotation to defensive improvements to producing better than MLB’s worst OPS — this season should also be about the offthe-field stuff, the young group ushering in a new era.
“A lot of us played together in the minor leagues,” Hayes said. “So if we can build a strong core and add more talented young guys in the system … once we put that together and there’s chemistry, I think we’re going to be really good.”