Fresh off their first non-playoff season since 2012, the Pirates will prioritize improving their run prevention over the winter, reports Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In 2015, when the Pirates won 98 games, they finished third in the majors in runs surrendered (596). That figure skyrocketed during a 78-win 2016 campaign for the Bucs, who allowed opposing teams to cross home plate 758 times (22nd in the league).
The better your pitching, the better your chances of stopping rivals from scoring, but general manager Neal Huntington isn’t optimistic about ameliorating the team’s staff via free agency. As Sawchik notes, the average starting pitcher deal during free agency last offseason was worth $10.02MM. Now, with so few appealing options set to hit the market, “it will be worse this year,” Huntington told Sawchik. “It is a reminder of how important it is for us to develop our own starting pitching,” the GM added.
The Pirates have one of the league’s top soon-to-be free agent rotation pieces in right-hander Ivan Nova, whom they acquired from the Yankees at this year’s trade deadline. Nova was a revelation in Pittsburgh and now looks primed to land a richer deal than anyone would have expected before he joined the Pirates. The club is trying to re-sign him, but the likelihood is he’ll hit the market, according to Sawchik.
With Nova perhaps on the brink of departing, Huntington opened up about the difficulties of working with a low payroll, saying that “every significant contract is a risk. When you look at Francisco Liriano at $13 million, when he performed well it is an affordable contract. But it’s the equivalent of $30-$40 million (per year) for the Dodgers. Percent of payroll is real. It’s not an excuse. When a contract is 13 percent of your payroll versus 4 percent, the level of risk tolerance is so very different …. How far do you stretch? It is a case-by-case situation.”
Huntington’s spending limitations played into the Pirates’ inability to re-sign left-hander J.A. Happ and add fellow southpaw Rich Hill last year. The Pirates lost out by $500K on Hill, whom the Athletics signed for $6MM.
“Sitting here now it’s easy to say we should have moved on J.A. Happ or Rich Hill,” commented Huntington. “We don’t have the benefit of hindsight.”
As for Liriano, the Pirates traded him to the Blue Jays at the Aug. 1 non-waiver deadline. Liriano was outstanding with Pittsburgh in 2015, the first of a three-year, $39MM deal, but that wasn’t the case this season. As a result, the payroll-challenged Bucs dealt two prospects along with Liriano in exchange for $18MM in savings and right-hander Drew Hutchison.
With none of Happ, Liriano or Hill in the picture, the Pirates unsurprisingly have rotation questions going forward. Righties Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon are sure to fill two rotation spots for the club. Tyler Glasnow, Chad Kuhl, Steven Brault, Trevor Williams and Hutchison are among their other potential in-house rotation candidates. They’re not the most confidence-inspiring choices, which Huntington addressed.
“Some will continue to progress. The real world shows us some will regress,” he said.
If Huntington decides he’s not content with that group, he revealed that dealing position pitchers to “strengthen” his team’s rotation is a possibility. It’s unclear which players Huntington could part with, though center fielder Andrew McCutchen‘s name has come up of late. While the longtime face of the franchise is a five-time All-Star and one-time NL MVP, his all-around performance drastically fell off last season and he especially hindered the Pirates’ ability to prevent runs. McCutchen’s minus-27 Defensive Runs Saved “catches your attention,” said Huntington, who attributes some of the 30-year-old’s fielding woes to the shallower alignment the team deployed this season. The Pirates are now evaluating how they’ll align their fielders in the future, per Sawchik. One thing that will remain is an emphasis on inducing ground balls.
“(The ground ball) is something that we’re going to keep as one of our cornerstones,” manager Clint Hurdle told Sawchik. “We’ve had a recipe for success and we want to follow it.”
Pittsburgh’s ground-ball percentage fell from 50.4 in 2015 to 46.9 this year, but the team still ranked third in the majors in that department. However, only nine clubs were worse at turning grounders into outs, StatCorner indicates . The Pirates ranked a far superior 12th at killing grounders the previous year, when they were a much better defensive team in general. Now, Huntington is trying to figure out how to restore the Pirates to their 2015 ways.
I like how the newest update automatically thinks I love hockey now.
They can say whatever they want, but we know – they are focusing on financial flexibility.
This article is good, but the title really bugs me. “Pirates Focusing On Run Prevention” is almost the equivalent of “Pirates Trying To Win Games This Season”.
It’s always about money! To lose out on a guy by 500,0000 when you had a rotation that had Jeff Locke in it after winning 90 plus games last year is mismanagement! You don’t go from 98 wins to 75 wins unless management wants to
The Pirates wanted Liriano to be terrible, Niese to be awful, Cole to be hurt and average, and McCutchen to have the worst season of his career. That’s what they were expecting and hoping for, correct?
Locke was in the rotation as a stepping stone to Glasnow or Taillon. He wasn’t there to make fifteen or twenty starts. Luckily Kuhl proved himself worthy of an opportunity as well.
Nicasio and Locke in rotation is inexcusable they are in their window now but management will not spend stop defending them!
Do you think the Pirates could have traded Liriano, Ramirez, Tarply, Reese and Tito Polo to the D-Backs for Robbie Ray and Daniel Hudson?
Anything was possible when Stewart was GM.
If you can’t afford veterans, then don’t rely on them in the first place? Pirates should be trading their expensive stars for prospects, and building a young, cheap core.
They do have a young cheap core. Marte, Polanco, Meadows (coming soon), Rivero, Taillon, Glasnow, Kuhl, Cole, Bell……. smh…..
So tired of this “Small Market ” crap. If you can’t afford to pay the top players, get out of the business ! Unless a collective bargained agreement is agreed upon that holds your hand in being able to sign big names, move the team, and or ownership.
They can spend money. Not on the top clubs level of course, but with very good revenue for a small market team $ 110-115MM-like payroll is very realistic for the Pirates. The problem is they don’t want to spend them. After almost 10 years of Nutting/Coonelly/Huntington regime it is most obvious.
What, are you guys MLBPA reps?
Why should Nutting get ‘out of the business’? He is making money.
Nobody is saying this team needs to spend Dodgers and Red Sox level money. What we are saying though is when you compare % of revenue generated that is actually put back into payroll, the Pirates are at a pathetic low at 38%. Now this number is comparing 2014 revenue to Opening Day 2015 payroll, but it can’t be much different.
Cancel the after ballgame concerts. We don’t need fireworks every other week. Put a competitive mothereffing team on the field. THAT is the secret here Nutting. God I wish Mark Cuban would have bought this team. There’d be a World Series championship in Pittsburgh had that happened.
I think the fans are on to the con that nutting and management are running. Attendance was down this year. I know I will not go unless they actually try to win. This says it all they would not trade prospects when they could have won over the past two years. They traded two prospects to dump liriano. They will run out a crap starting rotation again next year and come up just short on a couple of pitchers this off season so sick of the games they play to make money! Just wasting their window!
Attendance was down because the team wasn’t good. If the team performs it will go back up, and it won’t matter who the owner is.
You’ll still find reasons to be upset at Nutting no matter what happens.
It is easy to say trade McCutchen to get pitching, but you have to look at all angles. First, Meadows isn’t ready to take over for McCutchen in center field. Meadows didn’t hit in AAA this season and needs more time there. If they traded McCutchen, they’d likely have to bring in a stop gap who likely wouldn’t be anywhere near as productive. Also, what teams that would be interested in McCutchen have the pitching that the Pirates would want in return? The Blue Jays might be interested, but aren’t going to trade one of their starters for him because they don’t have the rotation depth in the organization. The Giants could be interested, but I don’t see them trading one of the starters for him. It might not be as easy to trade McCutchen for pitching help as one might think