Given that the Pirates’ offseason is usually so slow, the release of STEAMER and ZiPS projections in November-December gave me something to write about when there was nothing else. But my life and the Pirates have been so busy recently that I’m just getting around to it now, a week-and-a-half after ZiPS were released and practically a month after STEAMER. So I’m going to keep this relatively short because there’s already been plenty of discussion of this online.
My biggest takeaway from the two projections is that the Pirates’ strengths and weaknesses are not where I thought they were. I though the rotation would be the best thing going for the Bucs in 2023, with Roansy Contreras, Mitch Keller and JT Brubaker all looking like competent starters, Johan Oviedo and Luis Ortiz adding some intrigue, and Mike Burrows and Quinn Priester waiting in the wings. The offense seemed like it had a lot of holes, with Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz, and maybe the Santana/Choi first base platoon being the only players from whom I expected above-average offensive production. But the projections hold the opposite; the offense has a chance to be halfway decent as it stands right now, while the rotation offers limited upside. The two major projection systems differed on their optimism, so let’s take a deeper look at the numbers.
Offense
Steamer (created by a science teacher and two of his former students from a Brooklyn high school where the teams were nicknamed the “Steamers”) is pretty bullish on the Pirates offense in 2023; it projects a whopping 14 players to finish with a wRC+ over 100, which means above league average. Two of those players (Malcom Nunez and recently-acquired Josh Palacios) are only projected to have one plate appearance, but to put it in perspective only 8 Pirates finished 2022 with a wRC+ over 100, and half of those players appeared in 22 games or less. Bryan Reynolds is once again projected to be the team’s best hitter (125 wRC+) and position player (4 fWAR), although Oneil Cruz is close behind with a 120 wRC+, 3.8 fWAR and a team-leading 27 homers. Steamer still has some hope for Ke’Bryan Hayes, projecting him to put up a .259/.327/.403 line and 3 wins. The front office may not think Endy Rodriguez is ready for the majors, but Steamer does — his 118 wRC+ is third-best on the team, and he’s expected to be worth 1.9 wins above replacement in half a season. If he was up for the whole year, Steamer thinks he’d challenge Reynolds as the team’s best player.
Steamer is a fan of the first-base platoon, expecting above-average production from both Ji-man Choi (112 wRC+) and Carlos Santana (109 wRC+), with 32 homers between them. It’s also bullish on the outfielders who hung around the 2022 team; Jack Suwinski, Canaan Smith-Njigba and Cal Mitchell are all expected to put up 110 wRC+ or higher, although limited playing time means they’ll all be worth about a win apiece. Even Miguel Andújar is expected to hit above average (105 wRC+). Despite a solid 2022 season, Steamer isn’t crazy about Rodolfo Castro, pegging him for an about-league-average 101 wRC+. But the fact that that counts as a disappointment shows how high Steamer is on the Pirates’ offense. Only three players are expected to accrue more than 20 plate appearances while putting up below-average offensive production: Diego Castillo, Tucupita Marcano, and Travis Swaggerty.
ZiPS, created by Fangraphs’ Dan Szymborski, is much more reserved. Reynolds gets a similar projection — 3.5 wins, 124 OPS+ — but the rest of the position players receive a more pessimistic outlook. Cruz is still expected to be a good player who hits at an above-average level, but not massively so (107 OPS+, where 100 is league-average) and is still worth 2.7 wins. Hayes gets the same win projection as Cruz, but his 89 OPS+ would be in-line with his production the past two years. Santana and Choi still project to be above-average hitters, but just about everyone else is projected to be below-average. Two notable exceptions are the club’s dynamic catching duo in the minors; ZiPS is bullish on both Endy Rodriguez (105 OPS+, 2.6 fWAR) and thinks that Henry Davis could provide above-average production if he started the season on the Opening Day roster (102 OPS+). The player with the fifth-highest WAR projection — after Reynolds, Cruz, Hayes and Rodriguez — is Kevin Padlo, so make of that what you will. “The Pirates will likely have a below-average offense in 2022, but there are reasons to watch them,” Szymborski wrote in his post on the Pirates.
I think reality will hem closer to ZiPS than Steamer, if only because I have to doubt a projection system that believes Miguel Andújar will be an above-average hitter in the Year of Our Lord 2023. I think Hayes will have a wRC+ somewhere in the 90s, and I’d take the over on Cruz’s ZiPS projection, too. Pirate fans should be excited by Rodriguez and not buy the BS about how his development demands he must start the season in AAA. They should also realize what a big hole Reynolds will leave in the roster if/when he’s traded.
Pitching
If you thought the end to that section was harsh, wait until you look at the pitching. The Pirates certainly have depth when it comes to the rotation; what they don’t have is a lot of good pitching. Last year, José Quintana put up 2.2 fWAR in 103 innings with the Pirates; no pitcher is projected to cross the 2-win threshold by Steamer in 2023 (Keller also did it in 2022, although he needed 50 more innings than Quintana). Roansy Contreras gets the best projection, possibly because he has the highest projected strikeout rate among starters. His 4.26 FIP is hardly eye-popping, but it’s only slightly behind JT Brubaker (4.17) and Keller (4.23). I thought the projections would be more bullish on Luis Ortiz, but his strikeout rate is less than 8 strikeouts per nine, and he’s got a high walk rate, although the FIP isn’t bad (4.17). Steamer doesn’t think Priester will get a shot this year, but thinks Burrows will toss 46 innings with an okay 4.43 FIP. Bryse Wilson is projected for a horrifying 18 starts with an ERA over 5m, so let’s hope that Steamer is unable to read minds of front office. In the bullpen, only David Bednar projects to be an elite arm; Steamer shoots a glance toward Yerry De Los Santos (3.87 FIP) and Robert Stephenson (9.08 K/9, second only to Bednar) but isn’t crazy about Colin Holderman (4.04 FIP).
ZiPS is arguably more optimistic here, even if it might not look like it at first. Contreras gets a 2.1 fWAR projection in Szymborski’s graphic, a strikeout rate over 9 per inning, and the upside for a pretty good season. ZiPS is less enthused with Brubaker and Keller; with the latter, the projection is confused why a pitcher with his stuff doesn’t strike out more batters. All of them are projected to have FIPs in the low 4s, however — even better than what Steamer expects. Ortiz’s projection doesn’t look all that bullish (1 win, 4.43 FIP), but Szymborski assures us that this is a pretty good for a pitcher without much of a track record in the upper levels of the minors. ZiPS likes Burrows a lot as well — his 4.17 FIP is better than every starter not named Contreras and Keller, and his 8.8 K/9 is better than every starter except Contreras and Brubaker. All that needs to be said about the bullpen projections are that Bednar is good and the rest is, well the rest.
I think the Pirates will at least have an average-ish rotation, leaning towards bad, but it’s a young enough group that there’s plenty of room for nice surprises. The individual one-win projections aren’t impressive, but Szymborski notes that the Bucs have twice as many 1-win pitchers than they did a year ago, which hopefully will translate into fewer blowouts and more competitive games. One thing looking at these pitching projections made me realize is that the Pirates are in kind of a weird spot when it comes to adding starters, something I’ve been wanting them to do all offseason. The Bucs have plenty of depth, but lack a truly good-to-great arm that could lead the rotation; unfortunately, those kinds of pitchers have been massively expensive this offseason and its unlikely Bob Nutting will open up the checkbook to get them. The Pirates will continue to dumpster dive for starters, but the result is unlikely to improve on what the Bucs already have. If it means we don’t have to watch Bryse Wilson again, though, it will all be worth it.
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