Hope Springs eternal in the baseball breast Until July, When in six towns, hurled backward from the crest, Passes by; And, stilled at last beyond the pennant gate, The ringing cheer Fades to a curse – and then the cry: “Just wait Until next year.” — Grantland Rice
There’s a reason why the phrase “wait till next year” has been popular with baseball fans and writers at least since Grantland Rice published the above poem in a 1914 edition of the Washington Times. It’s an acknowledgement of the disappointment that awaits every team save one at the end of each season, but it’s also a hopeful mantra for the coming year. This season may not have gone the way we wanted it to, but next year might. In baseball, every day brings a new ballgame to be won, a chance to wash away the frustrations and disappointments of yesterday; every year brings a new season and a clean slate. For baseball fans, “wait till next year” a phrase of perpetual optimism — this year wasn’t the year for us, but next year might.
For almost my entire life, though, the phrase “wait til next year” has been meaningless to me as a Pirates fan. There was no hope for next year, because we Pirate fans knew what a new season would bring — more losing — and we were almost always right. It’s tough to be a baseball fan who wakes up on Opening Day and knows your team has no aspirations of championships or playoff berths or even finishing over .500. And it’s hard to sit down in front of your laptop in early October, days after your team just wrapped up its second consecutive 100-loss season, and try to find reasons to be optimistic about next year when you know that team will make almost no moves all offseason. This has been the Pirates’ modus operandi for essentially three decades, and I can’t blame the many, many fans who have bailed since then.
We Pirate fans knew that the Bucs were going to be terrible in 2022, that they wouldn’t sniff a playoff spot and would finish well under .500. The fundamental question going into this season, then, was this: would the Pirates — as a franchise — be in a better place on the last day of the season than they were on the first? Would they be closer to a contending team than they were a year ago? The answer is a resounding “well, maybe” — not the most reassuring thing to hear after three straight seasons with a winning percentage in the .300s.
It could have been worse. There was a point this summer where I believed the franchise was tumbling down a path towards disaster. It was the middle of August; the Pirates had just lost 10 of their last 12 games, fallen into last place in the NL Central, and were back on pace to lose 100 games or more for the second straight season.
And it wasn’t just that the Bucs were faring poorly in the standings — the young guys on the team who were supposed to carry the franchise forward looked awful. Ke’Bryan Hayes’ bat was as punchless as it had been in 2021. Jack Suwinski’s hot June looked like a flash in the pan. Oneil Cruz was lost at the plate, and no other young player had stepped forward. The only above-average hitters on the team at that point were Bryan Reynolds — whose numbers were nonetheless down from 2021 — and Ben Gamel, a barely-above-average, 30-year-old impending free agent. The pitching was a little better, but even that was bleak: yes, Mitch Keller had taken a step forward, but José Quintana had been traded to the Bucs’ arch-rival and Roansy Contreras was having his service time manipulated away in Indianapolis. Top prospects like Henry Davis, Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero were in the midst of injury-plagued and/or disappointing seasons, and the farm system was starting to slide backwards in league rankings. When Boston broadcaster and Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley called the Pirates a “hodgepodge of nothingness,” I couldn’t help but agree. How could you look at the state of the franchise then and believe anything different?
Fortunately, some positive developments over the past couple months have cut a silver lining through that mid-August cloud, ensuring that this year-end post won’t be so grim. Cruz began to adjust his approach at the plate and didn’t chase as much. The result was a 134 wRC+ from mid-August to the season’s end, a performance that gave Pirates fans a tantalizing taste of his talent. Rodolfo Castro emerged from the minors to slash .230/.298/.441 over that same timeframe — not great, but enough to earn him a longer look at second base. Cal Mitchell hit a respectable 112 wRC+ (do not think about his outfield defense) while Suwinski provided a league-average bat down the stretch. The rotation finished strong with Keller, Conteras and JT Brubaker all putting up solid final numbers. Luis Ortiz emerged as a potential wild card for next year’s rotation with an electrifying MLB debut. In the minors, guys like Davis, Gonazles and Quinn Priester also put together solid final stretches, while Endy Rodriguez’s hot season in Greensboro continued on through Altoona and Indianapolis. If the recent Fangraphs Top 100 update is any indication, he’s hit his way into becoming one of the best prospects in all of baseball.
All those positive developments do not change the fact that the Pirates lost 100 games this year — a one game improvement over 2021 — and finished tied for the third-worst record in all of baseball, tied with a Cincinnati Reds team that started the season 3-22. The Pirates’ -226 run differential was the club’s worst since 2010, and their Pythagorean record based on that run differential would be 58-104. The Bucs lost 10 games by 10 runs or more, possibly the first time they’ve ever done it in their history. When the season ended last week, I didn’t feel the usual melancholy that greets the end of another summer and another baseball season — I felt relief.
It’s easier to feel optimistic about the franchise when the Pirates are winning, and equally easy to feel pessimistic when they’re losing. The Bucs have a very good farm system, one that has not only depth but a couple of crown jewels emerging close to the majors. The Pirates’ system had its share of disappointments this year, as every farm system does — but it would be easier to feel better about that if the major-league product wasn’t such a disaster. For all the purported steps forward the team made with its middle infield or rotation, it still resulted in a season where the Bucs finished 25 games out of an (expanded) playoff spot. That’s a lot of ground to make up.
I’m glad the 2022 season didn’t end up being as bleak as I thought it would turn out in mid-August, but I wish I felt better about future of the franchise than I do now, sitting in front of my computer in October 2022. Yes, the farm system is good, but is it good enough to power them past the Cardinals, Cubs and Brewers? Are the best players in the system the ones who have come up (or will soon), or is the true “core” still a few years off? Are the Pirates prepared to start augmenting the roster with real, impact MLB players acquired through trades and free agency, or are they just going to continue to dumpster dive?
Ultimately, closing that gap between 100 losses and a playoff spot will come down to the way this team is run by the front office and ownership. My feelings toward Ben Cherington at this point mirror the team — conflicted. The pitching staff made big strides under Oscar Marin this summer, Cherington’s free agent signings have mostly worked out, and the farm system has a number of legitimately exciting prospects. On the other hand, his dumpster-diving on the waiver wire and through the Rule 5 draft has produced zero useful ballplayers, his trades have mostly been busts, and the “player-centric” culture he talked up hasn’t been put into practice. It’s pretty bold to claim you’re building a “player-centric culture” while holding Cruz and Contreras in AAA to manipulate their service time, and I hate that I can’t even dare to hope that Endy Rodriguez will make the 2023 Opening Day roster, even though he’s making league minimum and would be the Bucs’ best option at backstop.
But the buck stops, of course, with Bob Nutting. The Pirates payroll remains among the dregs of baseball, an embarrassingly low sum that ensured the 2022 season was a loser before it began. It cannot be put into words how much better, how much more watchable the 2023 Pirates would be if Nutting increased payroll to just $100 million. The lack of spending or concern for the on-field product from ownership is especially egregious when you consider the opportunity that currently sits in front of this franchise. As I am writing this, the Steelers are getting boat raced by the Bills and look a long way off from the class of the NFL. The Penguins will have Stanley Cup aspirations as long as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin suit up in (Pittsburgh) black-and-gold, but how many more years does that duo have on ice? The Pirates might just have the best long-term outlook of any franchise in Pittsburgh, and sitting in front of them is an opportunity to dominate the local sporting scene in a way they have not in decades. Nothing will come of it if Nutting isn’t willing to spend — and I have as much faith in him to do that as I have in Cherington to put Endy Rodriguez on the 2023 Opening Day roster.
And what’s especially egregious about all this is that there could be hope, real hope, going into Opening Day if the front office would just make some kind of investment into the roster. Unlike years past, I can see the foundations of a competitive Pirates team coming together. The rotation is promising. The infield has potential. There are many good prospects in the farm system who could help the Pirates through a promotion or a trade. The idea of the Bucs making the playoffs or even coming within shouting distance was laughable in 2021 and 2022, but it doesn’t have to be that way in 2023.
I am not optimistic that this will change. The only clear takeaway from the word salads Cherington spews out every time a microphone is placed in front of him is that the Pirates will not make any significant moves this offseason; Nutting remains the same absentee owner he has always been. For the front office, Rice’s phrase isn’t “wait till next year” but “wait till a few years from now” or “wait till some point in the ever expanding, indefinite future.” It doesn’t have to be this way. The performances we saw in on the field in Pittsburgh in 2022 — and read about in Indianapolis and Altoona and Greensboro — provided a modicum of hope for the future amidst another losing season. It’s time for the front office to supplement it. I don’t have to believe that next year will be the Pirates’ year; I just need something that will allow me to hope that it might.
Bucco Ball 
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