Pirates Offseason Thread 2022-23

[King Colby]

Pirates acquire 1B Ji-Man Choi for someone I've never heard of

[willeyeam]

Well there's our first baseman. Yay

[King Colby]

His OPS last season starts with a number greater than 5 so I guess that's better than I expected?

[willeyeam]

He's not horrible. He's just not anything that anyone would ever be excited for. But he's good enough that I don't see them getting another 1B so I guess that hole is filled (heh)

[King Colby]

There are multiple players on this list of whom I have never heard

[Troy Loney]

Delay seemed like he might stick around

[willeyeam]

People are saying Choi should improve with the shift ban

[Troy Loney]

Pirates acquire 1B Ji-Man Choi for someone I've never heard of

They should know better than trading with the rays

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

There are multiple players on this list of whom I have never heard

[Troy Loney]

Not that this would surprise anyone, but their 40-man is a mess right now.

They are sitting at 40 at this moment, as for the immediate MLB roster needs, they don't have a catcher, and they only have 2 catchers, so they need to add there and remove a spot somewhere else.

I would argue they need to clear 4 spots for rule V adds, but really should clear 6, Endy, Burrows, Bolton, Nunez are must adds for me, but they really should add Thomas and one of Sabol or Gorski. So, for the sake of argument and safe asset management, gotta clear 7 spots on the 40-man. Two easy calls, cut park and swaggerty, and here's the tricky part. The balance currently is 19 position players, 21 pitchers, even clearing park and swaggerty means that they net adding 3 position players, so the balance is now 22 position players to 19 pitchers.

Mostly just a long winded way of arriving at what I think they need to do. Slash some of the low ceiling, cheap position players (Mitchell, Canaan, Newman, Castillo and Marcano). Somehow fix the depth of the pitching staff. The current "depth" is all trash and needs to go. identify a couple of the cheap guys to keep and slash the rest (this is like the bucket including Thompson, Yajure, Wilson, Crow, De Jong, Baneulos, etc) and have all those guys in Indy as guys to call up during the season for injuries. So really, they have somewhere between 6-8 pitchers that should be on the ML roster, so they need 5-7 actual pitchers.

[Morkle]

I'll be surprised if the Pirates do any of that, honestly. They'll have a patchwork rotation that gets nowhere, position players who can't really hit the ball well, and they'll cruise to another 60 win season. Then they'll tell us how great the team is.

[Dickie Dunn]

I'll be surprised if the Pirates do any of that, honestly. They'll have a patchwork rotation that gets nowhere, position players who can't really hit the ball well, and they'll cruise to another 60 win season. Then they'll tell us how great the team is.

1000%

[willeyeam]

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

It will probably put GMBC in great pain to have 3 catchers on the 40 man. That means he will have to sacrifice space on the 40 man for marginal talents, which he seems to have an affinity for.

I also dont see him ditching too many of the pitchers on the 40 man. There are a few obvious ones…Mears has been dfa’ed before so he can be dfa’ed again. I didn’t know who Jeremy Beasley was until today. Robert Louis Stephenson got run last year but kinda stunk. The rest of those guys will have a case (I’m using the case very loosely here) to stick around on the 40 man either based on merit (again, loosely using the term) or at least in terms of role last year. So someone like yohan Ramirez or junior fernandez or del Los Santos will probably stick around.

Newman might get shown the door because he’s in year two of arbitration and is expected to get $2.8 million.

They wont be fixing the trashiness of the pitching depth unless its done in-house through the draft.

[Troy Loney]

Yeah, i don’t know who Ramirez, Beasley and Fernandez are

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Ramirez seemed to eat a lot of useless innings for the pirates last year. So he will probably stick around at least through camp. So he was like Duane underwood, except Latino instead of black. I’m not sure you can justify spots on the 40 man for both of those guys.

Fernandez pitched well in like 20 innings after appearing from….somewhere

[Troy Loney]

They wont be fixing the trashiness of the pitching depth unless its done in-house through the draft.

I think it's hard to attribute this problem to anything other than developmental issue. The pitching depth at AAA and AA is a couple of prospects (Priester, Burrows), some guys that have just been hanging around (Bolton, Thomas, MacGregor). You can't really blame Cherington for this yet, cause this is just the fundamental failure to move guys up through the system, either through garbage in, or poor development in the lower levels. And that takes time to fix. Guys like Keller and Priester move up due to talent, Luis Ortiz is probably a development case, I think he was probably a NH signing, but that's an interesting thought experiment to think about whether he shoots up the system with the old guard like he did the last to years.

All just goes to say, functional organizations have pitchers that are brought up through the system that would naturally fill those spots in the 40-man roster. The Pirates, for I don't know how long, have been cycling in these dog **** reliever cast-offs instead. I think you have to look at Low A and below to see a potential change to this dynamic.

[Morkle]

lol look at Low A to see the change. THat's like what 5-7 years away before we even consider any of the guys at that level to make it to even MLB?

Pirates are such a sadshit team.

[Troy Loney]

lol look at Low A to see the change. THat's like what 5-7 years away before we even consider any of the guys at that level to make it to even MLB?

Pirates are such a sadshit team.

To be clear, not saying this is something that is going to prevent them from competing.

There probably aren't actually that many teams that are able to continually pull from their farm system to plug holes in the rotation.

But, it is pretty weaksauce for the Pirates that have been tanking for 3 years and sold off probably over a dozen major leaguers in that time, to be constantly scanning the waiver wire for pitching depth. They should really have multiple Luis Ortiz types every year, because he's probably at best a 50:50, and he should probably be working his way through the ML bullpen, not having to break in as a starter.

[Morkle]

I just especially hate that former Pirates pitchers all played prominent roles for post season teams this year. Not that the Pirates could have afforded to keep them, the returns they've gotten for them have just mostly been nothing.

[Troy Loney]

I would argue they need to clear 4 spots for rule V adds, but really should clear 6, Endy, Burrows, Bolton, Nunez are must adds for me, but they really should add Thomas and one of Sabol or Gorski. So, for the sake of argument and safe asset management, gotta clear 7 spots on the 40-man. Two easy calls, cut park and swaggerty, and here's the tricky part. The balance currently is 19 position players, 21 pitchers, even clearing park and swaggerty means that they net adding 3 position players, so the balance is now 22 position players to 19 pitchers.

I was way off on this, they added Endy, Burrows, Triolo and some reliever named Selby.

In retrospect, there's no reason to protect Bolton, but leaving Nunez exposed seems like an unnecessary risk. Gorski, Sabol and Thomas are unnecessary adds, Thomas has been bad in the AFL and the other two guys are probably too low ceiling to bother trying to protect. Someone might take a flier on Thomas hoping he can stick around in the bullpen, but that's not going to hurt you.

I'd be worried about a tanking franchise (like the A's) snagging Nunez or Dariel Lopez, if they lose one of those guys, but kept Park on the 40-man? That'd be quite the blunder.

[robbiestoupe]

Not protecting Nunez is going to cost them. Protecting relievers is a terrible practice. I get it, they're easy to rip away from teams in the Rule 5 draft, but you could just as easily rip one away from another team or sign one off the scrap heap and get the same output. Unless you're protecting a future All-Star closer, let the guy go.

[King Colby]

Nunez is a luxury, we have a long standing history of right handed power hitting first basemen. Definitely more prudent that we protect Park Hoy, swaggerty, Canaan, "ryan vilade"

[King Colby]

Nunez played quite well in AA, he could easily get picked. Just so dumb

[robbiestoupe]

Nunez is a luxury, we have a long standing history of right handed power hitting first basemen. Definitely more prudent that we protect Park Hoy, swaggerty, Canaan, "ryan vilade"

I was about to respond with an all caps wtf you talkin about Willis before I realized this was sarcasm.