2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
my extreme math skills tells me that is roughly $30 a person per game assuming 8,500 asses in the seats per game. $245,000 per game. barf.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Trying to figure it out is probably worthless. Concessions, parking, etc. Some teams include the numbers, others don't get any revenue from it, the list goes on.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Did not know he was a pitcher again
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
You're using that term rather loosely
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
It's the Rays...again.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
I got the formerly known as pirates prospects, 2020 prospect guide. I was interested in getting some insights on all the new players they brought into the system. I'll get the gripes out of the way first, the tiering, and their ceiling/floor/likely upside method for rating prospects makes no sense. there's no reason to tier when you issue number grades, the number value does the tiering, so any time spent writing about the tiers is wasting space. The ceiling, floor thing makes plenty of sense for those top tier prospects, where those outcomes are identifiable, this is mostly about the floors, so all these lower level prospects "floors" are couple of sentences of them guessing what level of the minors the guy might get to. Just a waste, they need to hire an editor or just someone asking them 'why' during the development of this analysis.
I got to about #20, saving the rest for later. a few observations. The Quinn Priester hype is because he added velocity since 2019, which is great and it explains why he is getting hype from the prospect hypers. Nothing of note on swaggerty, just basically that he needs to produce offensively to progress. Cruz's comments are still that his swing has holes in it, and it makes it so he could stall in the upper levels, which has always been the case. Nothing else standing out.
I got to about #20, saving the rest for later. a few observations. The Quinn Priester hype is because he added velocity since 2019, which is great and it explains why he is getting hype from the prospect hypers. Nothing of note on swaggerty, just basically that he needs to produce offensively to progress. Cruz's comments are still that his swing has holes in it, and it makes it so he could stall in the upper levels, which has always been the case. Nothing else standing out.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Pirates prospects was good when they first started because nobody else provided that level of information on the prospect pipeline. But once prospect analysis became more mainstream, it stood out like the JV blog that it is.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Jack Wilson....welcome to hell.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Here's some color on TSwags:
Basically, he's Manual Margot. but could be better.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-to-use- ... -tutorial/
Basically, he's Manual Margot. but could be better.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-to-use- ... -tutorial/
It’s easy to take a current big leaguer (especially one who has been around for a while) and see where they would have fit on the FV continuum had we known exactly how they’d perform. I go over a couple examples in the video but here’s a good one: If I’m considering where to put Travis Swaggerty on the FV scale, I consider his broad strokes abilities (he can really play center field, and he has impact raw power but has struggled to get to it in games and has instead been a passable, but mediocre offensive player) and look for current big leaguers who fit that description. In this case, Manuel Margot is a great comp in almost every way. Margot has generated about 1.5 WAR annually throughout his career to this point (prorating the 2020 season due to the pandemic), which is a 45, so I should start with Swaggerty in the 45 FV bucket. But when I consider Swaggerty’s handedness relative to Margot’s (Swaggerty’s going to have more of a platoon advantage than Manny does) and the fact that he still has an opportunity to make a swing change to tap into that aforementioned power (while for Margot that time has come and gone), I should at least consider making Swaggerty a 45+ FV based on the chance that he might be more than Margot ended up being, even if it’s toward the end of his pre-free agency years.
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
The Pirates finally decided to hit the plunger, blow things up and start over. NH should have done that 30 seconds after Marte tested positive in 2017, but he lacked balls. Instead he kept the ghost ship coasting along without any real plan or direction, hoping to end up near .500. This would have worked until the heat death of the universe. Then 2019 was a total disaster both on the field with results and off the field with players fighting coaches, players fighting players and their best pitcher getting busted for crimes against minors. Cherington should have blown it up right after taking the job, but he took the job late in the cycle and decided to sim to the end of the 2020 season before doing anything. It's finally done. This of course means short-term pain and man this team is going to suck.
Taillon was moved for a bunch of prospects. He'll probably put it together in NY where he'll get a huge strike zone and favorable umpire treatment. I'll be sad when it happens but I won't be too mad- the pieces were there, it just never totally happened here. Musgrove went to SD. As much as I enjoyed him throwing 7 shutout innings then getting blasted after 2 innings his next start, I won't miss him that much. He may very well find consistency elsewhere. It wasn't going to happen here. Trevor Williams gets to annoy the hell out of the Cubs. (With Musgrove and Williams gone, the Pirates reduced by 66% their number of exhausting starters with horrible tattoos.) Bell was dealt for two minor leaguers. I won't be mad if Bell mashes 50 homers- we know the power is there. I'll be incredibly mad if Bell turns into Keith Hernandez defensively after the Pirates had him for 8 years and couldn't teach him how to throw a baseball. I've just named most of everyone worth caring about from the 2019 and 2020 rosters.
Sadder than who is gone is who is left. Colin Moran is in a heated competition with Fred Rogers to be the ugliest statue in Pittsburgh. The emergence of Ke'Bryan Hayes (more on The Prince Who Was Promised later) means instead of butchering third base he'll butcher first base. He's an average bat who gives back all of his value on defense. We've known this for a while. Hopefully someone gets desperate. If Adam Frazier is a utility guy, you're probably a good team. If he's a regular starter, you're a 75 win team. He might be the 2nd best Pirate on the roster. So...yeah. Erik Gonzalez got everyone excited for a week last season before pitchers remembered this dude sucks. Brault looked good in 2020, so unfortunately he's parlayed that into coming back. I tend to think the larger sample of him being bad means more. Kyle Crick is still stealing money in the bullpen. The rotation looked shaky before Musgrove and Taillon were dealt. It's now a tire fire. And then there's Polanco. He's become the avatar for the previous regime's failures. It isn't his fault NH was too terrified to trade him for Stanton in 2014. He's had some weird injuries that aren't because of anything he did wrong. A decent amount of the hate is unjustified. And yet...
Hopefully this is the last year I'll have to use that GIF. We know what to expect from him. He'll be unplayable, then have two great weeks, suffer a seemingly minor injury and turn into Derek Bell. It's a tired refrain.
So who actually matters on this team? They need Reynolds to hit like it's 2019. I'm willing to disregard 2020 if given a solid reason. They need Mitch Keller to throw strikes. (Getting rid of Williams helps, as that dude avoided the strike zone like it was his job.) They need O'Neil Cruz to find a position and stay out of jail. And they need Hayes to hit like he did last year, where he was arguably the best rookie in baseball but didn't get the award because no one notices the Pirates he didn't play enough. He's still eligible for the ROY this year. He now gets to bear the burden of being the centerpiece of a rebuild. If all of those things happen, 2021 will still suck, but 2023 might look pretty good. (It would look even better if the Cards didn't steal Arenado for magic beans. God I hate them.) They'll likely add Kumar Rocker to Nick Gonzales and Logan Priester, who's gotten rave reviews already, and a top prospect from the 2022 draft. There's probably some guys they can salvage from the NH regime. Cherington has done a good job at landing interesting looking prospects. The next step is turning them into major leaguers. That's the hard part.
In summation, this team will be bad. Like, really, really bad. Somehow the Rockies are projected to be worse. I'd joke that they're playing cardboard cutouts, but cutouts have more defensive value than Moran so that's not the answer. There isn't going to be a lot to love about the major league team. No one wants to hear about the minors because they're burned out on *waves hands at last 30 years*. They want the Pirates to be the romanticized version of the Penguins the last 20 years. (Mario's beloved, so people memory-holed all the bad parts. These things happen.) I can't say this latest reboot will actually work, or that they'll ever spend money. They do have a plan for the first time since 2016. And I'll probably end up watching every game because I will forget to cancel my MLB.tv subscription and feel obligated to get my money's worth.
Taillon was moved for a bunch of prospects. He'll probably put it together in NY where he'll get a huge strike zone and favorable umpire treatment. I'll be sad when it happens but I won't be too mad- the pieces were there, it just never totally happened here. Musgrove went to SD. As much as I enjoyed him throwing 7 shutout innings then getting blasted after 2 innings his next start, I won't miss him that much. He may very well find consistency elsewhere. It wasn't going to happen here. Trevor Williams gets to annoy the hell out of the Cubs. (With Musgrove and Williams gone, the Pirates reduced by 66% their number of exhausting starters with horrible tattoos.) Bell was dealt for two minor leaguers. I won't be mad if Bell mashes 50 homers- we know the power is there. I'll be incredibly mad if Bell turns into Keith Hernandez defensively after the Pirates had him for 8 years and couldn't teach him how to throw a baseball. I've just named most of everyone worth caring about from the 2019 and 2020 rosters.
Sadder than who is gone is who is left. Colin Moran is in a heated competition with Fred Rogers to be the ugliest statue in Pittsburgh. The emergence of Ke'Bryan Hayes (more on The Prince Who Was Promised later) means instead of butchering third base he'll butcher first base. He's an average bat who gives back all of his value on defense. We've known this for a while. Hopefully someone gets desperate. If Adam Frazier is a utility guy, you're probably a good team. If he's a regular starter, you're a 75 win team. He might be the 2nd best Pirate on the roster. So...yeah. Erik Gonzalez got everyone excited for a week last season before pitchers remembered this dude sucks. Brault looked good in 2020, so unfortunately he's parlayed that into coming back. I tend to think the larger sample of him being bad means more. Kyle Crick is still stealing money in the bullpen. The rotation looked shaky before Musgrove and Taillon were dealt. It's now a tire fire. And then there's Polanco. He's become the avatar for the previous regime's failures. It isn't his fault NH was too terrified to trade him for Stanton in 2014. He's had some weird injuries that aren't because of anything he did wrong. A decent amount of the hate is unjustified. And yet...
Hopefully this is the last year I'll have to use that GIF. We know what to expect from him. He'll be unplayable, then have two great weeks, suffer a seemingly minor injury and turn into Derek Bell. It's a tired refrain.
So who actually matters on this team? They need Reynolds to hit like it's 2019. I'm willing to disregard 2020 if given a solid reason. They need Mitch Keller to throw strikes. (Getting rid of Williams helps, as that dude avoided the strike zone like it was his job.) They need O'Neil Cruz to find a position and stay out of jail. And they need Hayes to hit like he did last year, where he was arguably the best rookie in baseball but didn't get the award because no one notices the Pirates he didn't play enough. He's still eligible for the ROY this year. He now gets to bear the burden of being the centerpiece of a rebuild. If all of those things happen, 2021 will still suck, but 2023 might look pretty good. (It would look even better if the Cards didn't steal Arenado for magic beans. God I hate them.) They'll likely add Kumar Rocker to Nick Gonzales and Logan Priester, who's gotten rave reviews already, and a top prospect from the 2022 draft. There's probably some guys they can salvage from the NH regime. Cherington has done a good job at landing interesting looking prospects. The next step is turning them into major leaguers. That's the hard part.
In summation, this team will be bad. Like, really, really bad. Somehow the Rockies are projected to be worse. I'd joke that they're playing cardboard cutouts, but cutouts have more defensive value than Moran so that's not the answer. There isn't going to be a lot to love about the major league team. No one wants to hear about the minors because they're burned out on *waves hands at last 30 years*. They want the Pirates to be the romanticized version of the Penguins the last 20 years. (Mario's beloved, so people memory-holed all the bad parts. These things happen.) I can't say this latest reboot will actually work, or that they'll ever spend money. They do have a plan for the first time since 2016. And I'll probably end up watching every game because I will forget to cancel my MLB.tv subscription and feel obligated to get my money's worth.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
- Logan Priester? Is Logan a nickname for Quinn?
So who actually matters on this team? They need Reynolds to hit like it's 2019. I'm willing to disregard 2020 if given a solid reason. They need Mitch Keller to throw strikes. (Getting rid of Williams helps, as that dude avoided the strike zone like it was his job.) They need O'Neil Cruz to find a position and stay out of jail. And they need Hayes to hit like he did last year, where he was arguably the best rookie in baseball but didn't get the award because no one notices the Pirates he didn't play enough. He's still eligible for the ROY this year. He now gets to bear the burden of being the centerpiece of a rebuild. If all of those things happen, 2021 will still suck, but 2023 might look pretty good. (It would look even better if the Cards didn't steal Arenado for magic beans. God I hate them.) They'll likely add Kumar Rocker to Nick Gonzales and Logan Priester, who's gotten rave reviews already, and a top prospect from the 2022 draft. There's probably some guys they can salvage from the NH regime. Cherington has done a good job at landing interesting looking prospects. The next step is turning them into major leaguers. That's the hard part.
In summation, this team will be bad. Like, really, really bad. Somehow the Rockies are projected to be worse. I'd joke that they're playing cardboard cutouts, but cutouts have more defensive value than Moran so that's not the answer. There isn't going to be a lot to love about the major league team. No one wants to hear about the minors because they're burned out on *waves hands at last 30 years*. They want the Pirates to be the romanticized version of the Penguins the last 20 years. (Mario's beloved, so people memory-holed all the bad parts. These things happen.) I can't say this latest reboot will actually work, or that they'll ever spend money. They do have a plan for the first time since 2016. And I'll probably end up watching every game because I will forget to cancel my MLB.tv subscription and feel obligated to get my money's worth.
- Fangraphs just updated their draft rankings for 2021-2023. It does look Green is the cream of the crop, they have him at 45+ already (for context Kumar and the other top 2021 are at grade 50
- Which makes beating out the Rockies for the worst record imperative. I assume you are referring to the Pecota predictions that have the Pirates ahead of the rockies. My thought on that is that they probably have both the dodgers and padres over 100 wins, so that's why the Rockies are predicted to have so many losses. There is no chance that the Pirates finish ahead of anyone.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Bad baseball is better than no baseball
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Bad baseball is better than no baseball
The 2021 Pirates are going to test that theory.
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
They can't be worse than last year, can they?
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Then you're expecting an historically poor record. OK.
I'm going with they will have a better winning percentage than last year.
I'm going with they will have a better winning percentage than last year.
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
They got worse pretty much across the board. It's going to be historically badThen you're expecting an historically poor record. OK.
I'm going with they will have a better winning percentage than last year.
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
With all measure of pressure removed, polanco emerges as a triple crown threat, propelling the pirates to the third worst record in baseball.
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
he'll be hated even more if he ruins elijah green for us
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2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
That would be the second most Polanco thing ever. The most Polanco thing ever is him sucking and then getting a hilarious injury. My money is still on that.
2020-2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Off-Season Thread
Maybe not record-wise, but they're playing more than twice as many games. What they lack in intensity, they'll make up for in volume.They can't be worse than last year, can they?
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