Bouncebacks, cold bats and trade bait: 40 Pirates observations after 40 games (2024)

The Pirates are nearly at the quarter mark of their season after the weekend, which featured two walk-offs and a whimper, and now head to St. Louis and Atlanta.

Since I started the season on parental leave, spending spring training and the opening weeks of the regular season pushing a stroller and perfecting the bedtime routine, I had a lot of baseball thoughts and no time to write them. So, let’s take out the ol’ notebook and, after wiping the pureed carrots off of the cover, turn it upside-down, give it a shake and see what falls out.

All stats and rankings are through Sunday.

1. A few weeks ago, I watched part of a Pirates game with my dad — a Tigers fan who was in town to see the grandchild — and when Adam Frazier stepped to the plate, I said, “When he was a rookie, I’d have put money on him becoming one of the best pure hitters in baseball. He came up and batted .500 in his first week, hit righties and lefties, and had a smart plate approach and such a sweet, compact swing. But now you look at his numbers, and he’s a completely average hitter. Like, the textbook definition of average.”

Through five seasons, Frazier had a .273/.336/.413/.749 slash line. His OPS+ was 99, where 100 is average. He found a home at second base, where he’s been a plus defender, but I couldn’t believe his hit tool hadn’t progressed.

2. Look at him now. In his sixth season, Frazier leads the league in hits (51) and has a .323/.390/.462 slash line that’s almost exactly 100 points higher in every category than it was in the shortened 2020 season. His OPS (.852) and OPS+ (135) are way up, too. Frazier isn’t hitting rockets — he is, in fact, in the bottom five percentile in hard-hit rate, barrels and average exit velocity — but he puts the ball in play. His 10.7 percent strikeout rate is the fourth-lowest in the National League (Kevin Newman is second, at 6.9 percent). This version of Frazier, contact hitter extraordinaire, not only could garner some All-Star chatter in the coming months but also start stirring significant trade interest.

3. Remove Frazier and the Pirates are batting .215.

4. Somehow, the teams with the worst batting averages — Seattle .205, Cleveland .208, Milwaukee .214 — all have records above .500. Baseball is a funny game.

5. The Pirates are, more or less, where we expected them to be. They are 17-23 and in last place in the NL Central. Their -44 run differential is the worst in the NL, so their record, hovering a little north of .400, feels about right, if not inflated. They have held together all right, but aren’t deep enough to withstand the injuries piling up (Ke’Bryan Hayes, Steven Brault, Colin Moran, Kyle Crick, Chad Kuhl, Phillip Evans and now maybe Jacob Stallings).

6. In more than a few games, I’ve had the thought around the third inning that the Pirates scoring a run against this starting pitcher feels impossible. Maybe you’ve felt that too. The offense has scored two or fewer runs in almost half of their games (18 of 40) and has one or zero runs in a quarter of their games.

7. The numbers support all sorts of conclusions about the sad start for this Pirates offense, but I’ll leave most of those alone. For now, consider the home run. The league loves the excitement. Teams love the run creation. Players love the accompanying payday. These Pirates don’t homer. Not often, anyway. Their 26 home runs are 10 fewer than any other teams through 40 games. (The Mets have 27 homers but have played six fewer games.) Without making your eyes glaze over, I’ll just tell you that the Pirates are last in the league in slugging percentage, hard-hit rate, barrel percentage and home run/fly ball rate. They’re also the worst fastball-hitting team in the majors by an order of magnitude. Got all that?

8. The only Pirates players on pace to hit more than 12 homers this season are injured: Moran and Evans. Sure, power can surge over the summer, but…

9. And yet the Pirates are 6-3 in one-run games.

10. Which means it’s time to praise the pitching staff, which is not a sentence I was prepared to write at any point this past offseason. There absolutely is still reason for concern here — I don’t trust this team’s starting-pitching depth, for one — but the Pirates have allowed three earned runs or fewer in 21 of 40 games so far. Pitchers have kept the Pirates in more games than the bats have.

11. JT Brubaker has kept ‘em in all seven of his starts. He’s building off what he started last season, and he’s that much sharper. The 2.58 ERA catches your attention, but so does the stuff, the hair and the path he’s taken to Pittsburgh. Brubaker works all five pitches — in order of frequency: slider, sinker, four-seamer, curveball, changeup — and has cut his walk rate to 2.1 per nine innings. I’d like to see Brubaker going deeper into games, as he’s only eclipsed 90 pitches once this year, but I’d imagine it’s only a matter of time.

12. General manager Ben Cherington went into the offseason with a full rotation before trading away Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon, and it made sense for him to patch those holes in free agency. Rebuilding teams should be giving opportunities to a few free agents each year, even if they’re likely headed for a last-place finish, in hopes that they can flip them at the trade deadline. Trevor Cahill has been boom or bust, but Tyler Anderson has shown something that could interest trade suitors, with a 3.50 ERA across eight starts.

13. There’s boom or bust, and then there’s Mitch Keller. He has a 7.16 ERA, dogged by inconsistency. I don’t know what the answer is, but it isn’t to stop giving him starts. The Pirates have learned the price for giving up on a once-hyped prospect, and Keller should get starts for as long as the Pirates aren’t playing important games. He’s 25. He’s untouchable in the minors, like Tyler Glasnow was. He needs to attack hitters and throw strikes. Glasnow figured that out in Tampa — like, really quickly. Keller has alternated good and bad starts so far this season. His ERA doesn’t matter. Gaining experience does.

14. Meanwhile, early returns are starting to come in on the players Cherington acquired by dealing Musgrove and Taillon. (Musgrove has a 2.86 ERA and a no-hitter in San Diego. Taillon is carrying a 5.40 ERA in the Bronx.) For starters, David Bednar’s right arm is brightening the future of the Pirates bullpen, but more on that later. Right-hander Miguel Yajure has made two solid starts for the Pirates. There should be room in the rotation for him at some point this summer. Now, an accounting of the minor leaguers:

Double-A Altoona
SP Roansy Contreras: 11 IP, 0 ER, 5 H, 2 BB, 22 K
OF Canaan Smith-Njigba: .300/.421/.633/1.054, 4 2B, 2 HR, 7 BB, 7 K

High-A Greensboro
SP Omar Cruz: 6 IP, 4 ER, 1 H, 7 BB (!), 14 K

Low-A Bradenton
IF Maikol Escotto: .353/.463/.441/.905, 1 2B, 1 3B, 7 BB, 10 K
OF Hudson Head: .195/.283/.195/.478, 0 XBH, 4 BB, 17 K
C Endy Rodriguez: .325/.413/.550/.963, 3 2B, 2 HR, 5 BB, 8 K

Extended spring training
SP Drake Fellows

15. It is absolutely absurd to overanalyze 10 games of minor league baseball, much less grade trades based on that sample, but Cherington has to like the initial results. With the Pirates picking first this summer and potentially headed for another top-five pick next year, there’s a lot to like in the minor-league system right now — even if prospects are only that.

16. Speaking of prospects, former Pirates farmhand Rinku Singh — one of the subjects of the film “Million Dollar Arm” — is now a WWE wrestler with the ring name Veer. After he debuted on Monday Night Raw, I got texts from not one but three players who played with Singh in the minors. (He was a lefty reliever who reached Single A.) The ex-teammates were stoked for him.

17. For as tightly packed as the NL Central is, with 5 1/2 games separating first and last place, it’s something of a surprise to see the Pirates staying afloat while going 7-14 in the division.

18. The Pirates have missed Hayes in many ways, of course. They’ve gotten a .205/.253/.308/.561 slash line from the third-base position. Indeed, Erik González isn’t the answer there, and the once-hot Evans batted .138 in the month before his hamstring injury. But what’s missing, too, is the excitement Hayes brings to the field. For a fan base twiddling its thumbs through a rebuild, he’s a good reason to get off the couch and go to the ballpark.

19. Twitter beef is bad copy and best avoided, but I’ll make an exception for Todd Frazier. The 35-year-old corner infielder joined the Pirates midstream in spring training and hit well, but didn’t make the Opening Day roster and opted out of his contract. He returned on a minor-league deal and was called up in late April. And the beef commenced. Frazier (Todd, not Adam) lashed out at local columnist Dejan Kovacevic, who had advocated for Evans getting a roster spot over Frazier, and referred to him as “Honey Dijon. I mean Dejan.”

Frazier had told the Post-Gazette earlier, “Learning names is always the biggest problem for me. I just call everybody ‘Big Dog’ until I know everybody’s name.” But it seems that even when he does know someone’s name he’ll call them “Honey Dijon” instead. Childish stuff from someone who has beefed before.

Frazier went 3-for-35 and was designated for assignment. He chose to tweet through it, lobbing an afternoon of insults at local radio personality Mark Madden after Madden threw the first stone. Not sure what Frazier was going for in Pittsburgh, but he’s gone now, and he burned every bridge behind him.

20. People aren’t going to read all the way to 40, are they?

21. Now, we tip our caps to the Pirates bullpen. The team’s relievers have a combined 3.87 ERA, smack in the middle of the league rankings, but the back end of the bullpen demands some respect. Sam Howard has proven perfectly dependable since last summer, with a 3.67 ERA over 41 appearances. Cut down on the walks and his numbers this season would be superb. He has allowed just five hits (two homers) but nine walks in 13 1/3 innings, with 21 strikeouts. Bednar and Crick both boasted sub-2 ERAs through the first month of the season. Bednar has gotten hit around a little lately, but he has gas and the swing-and-miss stuff.

22. The Pirates are 13-0 when leading after six innings.

23. I’m convinced the baseball world is still sleeping on Richard Rodríguez. Since joining the Pirates in 2018, Rodríguez has a 2.78 ERA, which is the seventh-best mark among all relievers with at least 150 appearances over the past four seasons — just behind Adam Ottavino and ahead of Alex Colomé, Taylor Rogers and Brad Hand. Rodríguez’s Statcast page is a delight. (Red is good. He’s almost all red.) He’s throwing 90.3 percent four-seamers, with the slider at 9.7 percent, and even without elite velocity he’s dominating hitters. It’s a winning combo of missing barrels, weak contact and limiting walks.

24. The trade market often isn’t particularly active at this time of year, but it’d be interesting to hear what offers the Pirates start hearing for Adam Frazier, Anderson and Rodríguez, in particular. In an ideal world, they’d shop Gregory Polanco and Chad Kuhl as well, but their slow starts (and time on the injured list) have rendered that moot for now. Last year, the Pirates were only able to flip Jarrod Dyson at the trade deadline. It’s a long way to late July, but so far there’s some optimism that they’ll have a couple of players contenders will like.

25. It’s fine for the Pirates to express optimism about Polanco’s ability to crush the baseball. That’s always been the case. When he barrels a ball, we see some truly top-end exit velocities. But the holes in his swing are real, too, and persistent. He swings and misses much more now than he did as a younger player, and he struggles to catch up to fastballs. He’s in the last guaranteed year under contract, and it seems certain that the Pirates will pay $4 million in buyouts rather than pick up his options, worth $12.5 million and $13.5 million.

26. Once Polanco is gone — either during this season or after — the Pirates will no longer have any of the players who signed long-term extensions with them over the past decade. (I’ll have a story on one of those up later this week.) Not all extensions work out for the team, but the Pirates saved more money than they lost with those extensions. The Pirates have approached a few players about extensions in the past year, but nothing has come of that yet.

27. For now, the Pirates outfield situation isn’t terribly future-focused. Polanco owns a starting spot, and another has belonged to the revolving cast of mostly former waiver claims — Anthony Alford, Dustin Fowler, Ka’ai Tom, Ben Gamel and Troy Stokes Jr. (until he was DFA’d on Monday).

28. So far, though, no outfielder is banging down the door at Triple-A Indianapolis. Travis Swaggerty has three homers early in the season but is also batting .200 in his first experience above High A.

29. Have patience with these prospects. The future, bright as it appears to be for this farm system, is still a long way down the line. Only three of the Pirates’ top 30 prospects, per MLB Pipeline, are at Triple A: Swaggerty (No. 9), Yajure (No. 12) and outfielder Jared Oliva (No. 16). Cherington’s trades have stocked the lower minors. The payoff of those players won’t be known for a few years.

30. I’m not sure Jacob Stallings gets enough appreciation, and I’m admittedly as guilty of that as anyone. You don’t see many catchers like Stallings, standing 6-foot-5, and when the Pirates turned to him as their primary starter as he approached 30 years old I figured it was a stopgap solution. His body would break down, right? But Stallings has solidified himself as a good major league catcher. He has sound instincts behind the plate, works very well with the pitching staff and is currently among the better-hitting catchers in the league.

31. Heis31 now. But, importantly, Stallings has been durable — even though a foul tip caught him on Sunday. Stallings is only costing the Pirates $1.3 million this season, and he still has three arbitration years ahead of him. The Pirates have no immediate need to try to upgrade until Stallings shows signs of wearing down. For a team that had to go get Russell Martin, Chris Stewart and Francisco Cervelli and whiffed on Tony Sanchez and Elias Díaz, Stallings developed into a long-term answer that few (including me) were counting on.

32. It’s jarring to look at an MLB team’s payroll and see only two players making more than $2.8 million. And neither will likely be here much longer.

33. To my knowledge, the terms of Cherington’s and manager Derek Shelton’s contracts have not been reported. I asked the Pirates for the duration of the deals last year and received no answer. It’d be interesting to see how long of a deal they gave Shelton, a first-time manager. His teams are 36-64 since he took over, but, well, there’s not a manager in the game that would have lugged the 2020 and 2021 Pirates rosters to a cumulative .500 record. They didn’t hire Shelton expecting a World Series in 2021. It’s not entirely necessary to know the terms of the Cherington and Shelton deals right now, but it’ll be important eventually. Sounds like a job for a reporter. (Hey, wait!)

34. If you’re still reading, which team do you think Adam Frazier ends the season with? I’ll guess the Cardinals or Giants. They need reinforcements at second.

35. I don’t know if it’s possible for a Pirates fan to feel this way, but I caught a few of Gerrit Cole’s and Tyler Glasnow’s starts while on leave. To be honest, I enjoyed the heck out of them. Cole is otherworldly, living on the same planet as Jacob deGrom and maybe no one else. He’s just unhittable. Seeing him working with the same skill set as he had in Pittsburgh but now with all the pieces put together, it’s a spectacular sight. Glasnow is a completely different case, since he was never close to being this good in his two-plus years in the majors with the Pirates. He had too much to figure out. But, boy, has he figured it out.

36. There’s so much to like about Bryan Reynolds’ strong start this season. He’s back to putting up his rookie-year numbers, making last year’s 55-game sample look like an anomaly. I wonder what it would take to extend him.

37. Even so, the Pirates have the fourth-worst outfield WAR in the majors. The corners are a concern. Are Oliva and Swaggerty a suitable solution?

38.Reynolds and Adam Frazier have two of the 11 highest BABIPs (batting average on balls in play) in the NL — .376 and .360, respectively — suggesting that their hitting numbers could come back down to earth in the coming months. If I had to bet on only one staying hot, it’d be Reynolds. He leads the NL in doubles, is eighth in on-base percentage and 10th in walks. He works counts and can bang from both sides of the plate. But high BABIP or not, Reynolds and Frazier are bright spots in a weak lineup.

39. The over/under on the Pirates’ win total before the season was 59.5. They are on target for 69 wins. It would take a 42-80 finish for the under to hit.

40. Sunday was my 30th birthday. My wife got us tickets for a game at PNC Park later this summer. The thought of taking our six-month-old, Luke, to his first baseball game has me smiling ear to ear. Who knows if he’ll fall in love with baseball and follow it forever like his old man, but, if so, he’ll have to decide between a few teams to find his favorite. His mom is a Red Sox fan. His dad was raised rooting for the Tigers. And Luke was born in Pittsburgh. Either way, I can’t imagine a better ballpark for his first visit than PNC Park.

(Top photo of Adam Frazier: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)