Youth movement starting to bear fruit
There’s a world where the Pirates have right-hander Bryse Wilson work out his troubles in the majors instead of optioning him to Class AAA Indianapolis, clearing the way for the callup of right-hander Roansy Contreras.
There’s a world where the Pirates send outfielder Jack Suwinski back down to the minors last month after Cole Tucker and Bryan Reynolds recovered from COVID scares.
That is not this world, though.
The Pirates, who have spent the better part of the past six years or so accruing young talent, building up to something in the future, are starting to reap some of the benefits rather quickly this season.
On Tuesday, with the callups of Contreras and outfielder Cal Mitchell, the Pirates now have five players on their MLB roster who began the season as top-30ranked prospects on MLB Pipeline, adding to Suwinski and infielders Diego Castillo and Rodolfo Castro.
Some of the call-ups were brought about by specific issues. Suwinski got an opportunity after a viral illness ran through the major league clubhouse. Mitchell’s call-up comes as designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach heads to the 10-day injured list. Perhaps Castro wouldn’t be here if regular shortstop Kevin Newman were healthy.
Last season, right or not, the Pirates might have been more patient with MLB deficiencies while their prospects continued to marinate. To an extent, they’re still doing that with other top prospects like Oneil Cruz and Mason Martin.
“It’s case-by-case. Individually, we’ve got to think about what the opportunity is, the timing, what are guys working on, to what extent have they met the targets in AAA?” general manager Ben Cherington said Tuesday. “A little bit at a time isn’t the worst thing in the world, I don’t think. We see around the league what’s happening, and we’re reminded that the major leagues is a really hard place to play.”
What is clear is that opportunities are not just available after injuries now.
After Tucker returned from his illness, he continued to struggle at the plate. Then, he opted to drop switch-hitting and hit lefthanded exclusively. While one part of the demotion to Indianapolis was to allow Tucker to work on the new approach, manager Derek Shelton made no bones about the decision — players have to produce.
Shelton struck a similar tone with Wilson, who had a 7.53 ERA over eight appearances.
“I think you have to be patient, to some respect, with all guys,” Shelton said Tuesday. “There’s very few guys that come up to the big leagues and then all of a sudden, boom, they’ve got it, they go. But on the flip side of that, you also have to perform at the major league level.”
Of course, the difficult part is, there are other Pirates who have struggled this season, both pitchers and position players. Certainly, some fans would view a handful of those players as expendable, assuming their absence would mean players like Cruz or Martin could get an MLB shot.
The Pirates, for good reason, don’t view everything like a fan would. Their public stance is that box scores don’t always tell the story, and that they have other benchmarks set for their players. Most of the time, they don’t like to expound upon those benchmarks in the media.
Suwinski is a good example. His surface-level numbers are underwhelming, slashing .182/.232/.377. The Pirates maintain that he is having good at-bats and handling himself well against the best pitchers in the world.
When trying to figure out if more prospects will be on the way in the near future, though, the Pirates insist that each situation is judged individually. Nonetheless, they have injected some youth into the roster this week, bringing up Contreras, Mitchell and 24-year-old pitcher Yerry De Los Santos.
“We want to see young players get opportunity because they’ve earned it, because they’ve performed at a level at [Class AAA] or accomplished development goals and they’re doing the stuff off the field we’re asking them to,” Cherington said.
“Obviously we’d like that to happen organically through earning that, performing and forcing their way on as opposed to because of injuries. But injuries are going to happen. We know that.
“Sometimes that is the way opportunity opens up.”