facebook.com/Pirates/
Sixteen Major League Baseball teams had more wins than losses at the end of the 2018 season, but among that group it’s rare to find an organization with less cause for optimism in 2019 than the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Pirates won 82 games in 2018, their fourth winning season in the last six years, but did so despite allowing more runs than they scored (693 to 692). As their -1 run differential would indicate, they were a pretty average team across the board: They finished tenth among 15 NL teams in runs scored, eighth in hits, ninth in on-base percentage and eighth in slugging. That mediocrity carried over to the pitching side as well, where they were eighth in earned run average (an even 4.00), seventh in home runs allowed and eleventh in strikeouts.
A very quiet winter would suggest the Pirates are content to straddle the middle of the road for another season. Their only headline-worthy move since the end of the season was a trade sending away starting pitcher Ivan Nova and beyond that it’s possible their largest offseason acquisitions to date were Brewers castoff Jordan Lyles, signed to a one-year, $2 million contract, and returning infielder Jung Ho Kang, who re-signed this winter after missing all but three games over the last two seasons due to work visa issues.
Around them, meanwhile, the NL Central could be becoming baseball’s best division. The Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs return most pieces from teams that won 96 and 95 games in 2018, respectively. The St. Louis Cardinals have added Paul Goldschmidt to their lineup and Andrew Miller to their bullpen in an effort to join that race. Even the Cincinnati Reds, who the Pirates have been able to look down upon even during the toughest of times, have bolstered their formerly weak pitching staff and appear poised to take a step forward.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
The Pirates could point out, of course, that their biggest acquisition for 2019 was made last summer: They were riding a hot streak at the trade deadline and acquired starting pitcher Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays, picking up the year and a half remaining on his contract and potentially keeping a one-time elite pitcher through 2021 with a pair of club options. Archer, however, was not enough to keep the Pirates in contention down the stretch in 2018 and has posted an ERA above 4.00 in each of the last three years, taking a step back from the promise he showed from 2013-15.
Beyond Archer, it’s unlikely the Pirates will spend the money necessary to make any kind of significant improvement. Cot’s Contracts estimates they spent just under $104 million on their 40-man roster in 2018, the 27th lowest mark in baseball (and $18 million less than the Brewers). They’ve been 24th or worse in spending by that measure every year since 2003. They’re about a year removed from the MLB Players Association filing a grievance alleging they and three other teams had failed to spend their revenue-sharing income as required by the game’s collective bargaining agreement.
Winning consistently under those constraints would require the Pirates to do a remarkable job of drafting and developing talent internally, and to date they’ve done reasonably well with that: Last fall Craig Edwards of FanGraphs estimated they had baseball’s eleventh most valuable farm system. A few players from that group, perhaps most notably right-handed pitcher Mitch Keller, appear poised to help the MLB team at some point in 2019. Beyond that, however, it’s going to be a while before most of the organization’s top prospects are ready to make any kind of big league impact.
Losing baseball is nothing new for Pirates fans, who saw the team endure 20 consecutive seasons below .500 in between a division championship in 1992 and a playoff berth in 2013. It remains to be seen if the organization is in for another drought of that magnitude, but they’re trending in the wrong direction while facing some of baseball’s stiffest competition.
