Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Pittsburgh Pirates
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
We are on to the third-worst team in the league in 2022, my (former) hometown Pittsburgh Pirates.
Another really bad season for the Pirates, who broke my heart from about 1995-2012 and then were really fun from 2013-2015, and then I gave up on them in 2016 because I had better things to do. That’s my story.
They pitched to a 4.66 team ERA, fifth-worst in the league (Rockies, Nationals, Reds, Royals), and their team OPS of .655 was third-worst in the league (Athletics, Tigers)
That said, I think their short-term future may be a bit brighter than the first two teams we’ve reviewed here (Nationals, Athletics - check those posts out in the Glossary linked above). Let’s get into it.
Pitchers
JT Brubaker
It’s going to be pretty thin to draft Pirates’ pitchers in 2023, but there is some actual upside here. That starts with Brubaker who did this in 2023
28 GS, 4.69 ERA, 1.47 WHIP, 22.8% K%, 8.4% BB%
I mean that is a trash line. Nothing good there at all outside of the league-average strikeout rate. The upshot is that he has an above-average swinging-strike rate (13% in 2022, 12.7% in 2021), and did go for a more-than-decent 30.7% CSW%.
The arsenal is somewhat encouraging as well
The slider is really good and always has been. The 22.6% SwStr% on his slider was the 10th-best mark in the entire league (500+ sliders thrown minimum). The league average on that pitch is 16.5%.
The problem is, as is so often the case, that he doesn’t have a reliable fastball. Now, the 6.1% SwStr% on the sinker isn’t actually all that tragic as the league average for a sinker is just 7%. The problem is the 7.1% Brl% and the 45.5% GB%. If you’re going to lead your pitch mix with a sinker, you really want to get a bunch of ground balls and limit barrels with it, which Brubaker hasn’t figured out how to do.
The sinker doesn’t have a ton of vertical movement, but it’s pretty much right in the middle of the rest of the league’s sinkers in terms of movement:
So I don’t know, maybe there is hope that the pitch can perform better next year.
The four-seamer was awful, but the curveball has pretty good marks with a SwStr% and CSW% a couple of points above the league average as well.
Brubaker’s ERA indicators:
xFIP: 3.87
SIERA: 3.97
FIP: 3.92
xERA: 4.56
I need to dig into this xERA (from Statcast) figure, because it seems to often be really separated from the rest of the numbers there. Point is that I think it’s safe to say he underperformed with the 4.69 ERA, and the WHIP near 1.50 seems crazy high as well given the league-average walk rate.
This plot shows that Brubaker had some pretty strong starts int he second half, rarely dipping below the league average in CSW% there after June or so. These two stats are far from the tell-all, but they are important and he’s pretty good at them.
I feel confident Brubaker will improve next year, but he needs a lot of improvement to become a great fantasy asset. I do think the chances of a huge step forward in 2023 are higher with Brubaker becomes he has these really good breaking pitches and mainly suffered from hard contact (.324 xwOBA, 7.9% Brl), which has proven to be pretty variable year-over-year, or at least more variable than the other stats we like to talk about with pitchers.
Roansy Contreras
It was a disappointing season for Contreras, who Pirate fans had high hopes for. In the Majors:
18 GS, 3.79 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 21.1% K%, 9.6% BB%.
In the minors:
9 GS, 3.15 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 32.6% K%, 9.2% BB%
Big difference there in the strikeout rate, but it’s also encouraging to see a guy over 30% even in AAA, especially a 22-year-old.
His slider is actually one of those nine that we mentioned above that beat Brubaker’s in SwStr%.
He has good velocity on the fastball as well, but it got squared up a ton with that horrifying 13.9% Brl%.
The pitch mix was relatively steady throughout the year. He doesn’t have a sinker as of right now, and he rarely throws the changeup that he has. That means he’s mostly four-seamer and slider, which does not tend to work unless both pitches are good.
Again, we are talking about a 22-year-old here who has had less than 20 starts in the Majors. There is so much time ahead for him to improve, and I don’t think he’s all that far off from being pretty good.
The key will be the four-seamer. He gave up an ungodly .404 xwOBA on the pitch along with that 13.9% Brl%. It’s hard to do worse than that. I imagine he just didn’t command the pitch and tipped it quite a bit (he threw it 67% of the time when behind in the count). So what you have is a guy who doesn’t throw a ton of strikes who is predictable with his fastball when behind in the count, that just doesn’t work in the Majors. Maybe a sinker or a cutter will show up next year, which I think will help keep hitters off balance. Anyways I’m in full-on speculation mode now and that’s not what we’re here for!
Verdict: Roansy could be a disaster, but also has a huge upside.
Mitch Keller
He’s 26 now, and we were burned once again by the alleged upside. He came into Spring Training with huge velocity, he added something like three miles per hour to his fastball over the offseason. It didn’t help, though, as he had a disastrous start to the year and quickly reduced the four-seam usage.
The sinker usage rose as the four-seam usage fell, but at the end of the year he was throwing the four-seamer more again but much more even usage between the two.
He did have a moderate amount of success in the second half with a 3.09 ERA, but still a mediocre 1.31 WHIP and a lack of strikeouts (20.5%) with too many walks (8.7% BB%).
For the year
29 GS, 3.91 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 20.1% K%, 8.7% BB%
“Advanced” numbers
26.9% CSW%, 9.8% SwStr%, 7.1% Brl%, .311 xwOBA, 49.9% GB%
Look, I’m done with this dude. I don’t care what he does in the Spring, if I get burned I get burned - screw ‘em!
Luis Ortiz
My guy Luis Ortiz Dash Six Eight Two Eight Four Seven!
You can see he spent most of the year in AA and had a weird year there. Not what you want to see from a talented pitcher at such a low level. He’s 23-year-old but is just the Pirates’ #30 prospect right now. That is surprising to me, and it’s making me quickly lose interest - even though I know it shouldn’t.
What should keep me away from him is the mediocre numbers in the minors, and the high walk rate In his 26 innings above AA. I can deal with a 9-10% BB% if the K% is above 27%, which it isn’t with Ortiz.
I think what people will be excited about is the arsenal, which is very similar to Brubaker and Conteras.
His fastball is massive, averaging 98.4 miles per hour - but again you can see it didn’t translate to whiffs at just 6.9%. Nobody was able to barrel it in 159 pitches, which I’m not sure means anything with that small of a sample (he gave up a bunch of homers in AA - a bad sign). His slider had a great 25.5% SwStr% and a good 53.3% GB% - so he has two pitches we can maybe work with here.
So here’s what we know
His arsenal looks good
He had some good outings in the Majors
His minor league numbers were bad
Not much was expected of him prospect-wise
He potentially has massive walk issues
He would seem like a pretty good bullpen candidate with the heavy fastball and the wipeout slider, but I’m not drafting him as a starter for a fantasy team next year!
Hitters
Oneil Cruz
I think I can sum up Oneil Cruz pretty well with two screenshots.
Cruz is going to be “one of those” guys in 2023 where his ADP maximum and minimum have a wide spread. He has one of the highest ceilings in the entire league, nobody will dispute that - the dispute would be about what his floor is, what the chances of him hitting the ceiling are, and how much risk you should be drafting on your teams.
Cruz saw 361 PA in the Majors and did this
.233/.294/.450, 34.9% K%, 7.8% BB%, 17 HR, 11 SB (15 attempts)
In AAA:
.233/.340/.428, 22.5 K%, 12.6% BB%, 9 HR, 12 SB (18 attempts)
It’s pretty wild how much harder it is to make contact in the Majors as compared to one step down.
I did not realize how rarely Cruz swings the bat. His 40.5% Swing% was a bottom-20 mark in the league. When he did swing, he did not make contact at anywhere near the rate we want, but he saved his line a bit with how hard he hit the ball when he did get the bat on it.
I’m sure lots of people will go into crazy deep dives on Cruz this offseason, but I don’t think any of that is necessary. We have no idea what he’ll do in 2022. I think a lot of people will also get overly excited about the tail of his K% line:
On September 15th, his K% sat at an absurd 38.1%. From September 16th to the end of the season, he saw 74 plate appearances and struck out at a rate of just 23%. He actually swung LESS during those last few weeks (37.7%), so there was not a change made in swinging more often to avoid getting in two-strike counts, but his contact rate did get much better over that time up to 73.6%.
I’m not going to get excited about that tail of the blue line, I think it’s most likely just the result of randomness. That said, I don’t think he will really have a 35% K% next year just by virtue of that being hard to do and we should absolutely believe that a 22-year-old is hugely capable of making improvements where they need to over an offseason and with more experience at the highest level.
The question I have is how low does the K% need to get for him to be a good pick at wherever his ADP ends up? We can’t even answer that question now with no ADP data, but I would imagine that a 28-32% K% will do the trick given that he
will hit home runs at a high rate (provided he’s healthy)
will steal bases
The upside is a top-25 hitter, I think. It’s not crazy to think he could hit 30+ homers, steal 20+ bags, and hit .260 or better if he gets some of that sweet, sweet BABIP luck.
I think I’ll be in on Cruz next year, but I’m putting him as “TBD” in the shortlist because I don’t want to go to him with a top 50 pick and we need to see the ADP.
Bryan Reynolds
Reynolds ended up with a decent line after the dust settled, but I would still call him a letdown in 2022. He was drafted with a top-100 pick and scored just 74 runs and drove in 62, a massive plunge from the 93 runs and 90 RBI he put up in 2021.
Here’s more of a comparison between 2021 and 2022
2021: 646 PA, .302/.390/.522, 24 HR, 5 SB, 18.4% K%, 11.6% BB%
2022: 614 PA, .262/.345/.461, 27 HR, 7 SB, 23.0% K%, 9.1% BB%
More 2021 → 2022 comparisons:
BABIP: .345 → .306
GB%: 35.5% → 43.2%
xwOBA: .378 → .318
Cont%: 76.1% → 72.2%
Brl%: 10.4% → 7.9%
2022 Percentiles
Everything here is between the 30th and 70th percentile.
I’m not one to forgive “slow starts”, but I’ll still note this
Reynolds in April: .194/.293/.306, 26.8% K%, 6.0% Brl%, .311 xwOBA
Reynolds after April: .272/.346/.485, 22.6% K%, 8.2% Brl%, .319 xwOBA
Big difference in the slash line there and some solid improvements with strikeouts and barrels.
Reynolds isn’t a comfortable guy to use a top-100 pick on since runs and RBI are quite important in fantasy baseball and the Pirates are very unlikely to offer much of that, but Reynolds feels like a very safe outfield pick with more upside than he may be given credit for as he enters his age-28 season with an offense that could improve markedly in 2022.
I also want to note that he ~seems~ like the kind of guy that could benefit the max amount from the stolen base stuff that will happen next year. His sprint speed is in that “good but not great” range (28.3 ft/sec vs. the average of 27.2), and he’s shown interest in stealing bases in the past. I think those will be the types that will benefit most, but that’s kind of just a theory at this point.
Ke’Bryan Hayes
Another underwhelming season at the plate for Hayes.
560 PA, .244/.314/.345, 21.8% K%, 8.6% BB%, 20 SB, 3.9% Brl%
He will be 26 for the full season next year, so we’re a getting past the “unknown upside because of age” thing with the former top prospect.
He does nothing very well, and the 20 steals should be less appealing with the changes in that category that we expect next year.
The one redeeming thing here that could make him interesting for deep leagues is that he put up a surprising 46.8% hard-hit rate with a max exit velocity of 113 miles per hour. That tells me he has above-average bat speed which is canceled out by the fat that he just rams the ball into the ground (50% GB%, 18% FB% - that’s egregious). If he could have one of those seasons where he exchanges a good amount of ground-balls for fly-balls, the homer number could really improve. I would still say that like 25 homers is the ceiling and the most likely outcome is 15 or so, but maybe that along with the outside chance that the Pirates improve massively make him a meritorious pick in drafts where you’re going for cheap upside.
Rodolfo Castro
The cell phone guy! Here are the stats
AAA: 320 PA, .248/.344/.442, 12 HR, 6 SB, 26.9% K%, 10.9% BB%
MLB: 278 PA, .233/.299/.427, 11 HR, 5 SB, 26.6% K%, 7.9% BB%
Maybe I shouldn’t even be reviewing him. The slash lines are unimpressive and the barrel rate of just 6.7% for the year and the 67.2% contact% are discouraging. He did have some really good games at the end of the year which is probably why I had initial positive thoughts about him, but overall he doesn’t seem like a fantasy contributor in 2023.
He is just 23 years old and was a top-30 prospect in the system, and he crushed left-handed pitching to the tune of a .263/.306/.600 line with an 11.6% Brl% and a 20% K% - but there are more bad signs than good, and the Pirates aren’t really a team to take these “probably bad” players from.
That is it for the Buccos! Thanks for reading.