OT: Pirates Talk: That Skenes guy is okay at teh baseball

[ChaosAgent]

Hayes is actively hurting the team

Almost as much as carrying Cutch at DH is handcuffing options.. But Hayes doesn't even have the goodwill of the fanbase

If Hayes was really, really, pinky-swear-I-promise so badly hurt in 2024 that he became useless and we think he can rebound to even his 2021 season, then sure whatever we can keep him.

But outside of his 2nd half in 2023 his bat has been on a maddening and steady decline for years. I think his presence and the reality that the team paid him then his body/hitting ability went to shit hurts the psyche of the team.

Bracing myself for the possibility that we are stuck with him. If he doesn't bounce back, the boo birds will be out against the guy all year IMO.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I kinda think he does. Look at what we were willing to move for Rooker.

Doesn't Casas A) play a position well defensively and B) have 4 years of arb control?

I banged this drum most of last year, but I don't see what makes Jones a better bet than Ortiz per se. I think Jones both broke out and get pretty heavily overrated at the same time. I think at this point everyone agrees that we'd rather trade Jones than Chandler at least.

Casas is bad defensively at 1B, he only had a 0.6 bWAR last year due to his 1B defense.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Casas is bad defensively at 1B, he only had a 0.6 bWAR last year due to his 1B defense.

I suppose he hasn't graded out well. But what we heard about Rooker is that he was unplayable in the field. We have not heard the same about Casas.

Plus we'd have plenty of control on the guy going forward. At some point, Cutch is gone. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Casas immediately becomes our best hitter if he comes here.

 

[MrBrightside]

Not exactly coming from Heyman or Rosenthal, but it would be so on brand I'm inclined to believe it.

 

[BusinessGoose]

Hahaha of course they'd dumpster dive

 

[Empoleon8771]

Rizzo falls in that "expected but underwhelming" territory for me. He's another Tellez/Vogelbach type of addition that will likely do just about as well as those two did. I don't necessarily hate it but it's just more of the same old Pirates at this point.

 

[Factorial]

Who would want Hayes now given his chronic back problems and poor play last year?

If he can show he is "back" this season then he'd have value.

 

[BusinessGoose]

Who would want Hayes now given his chronic back problems and poor play last year?

If he can show he is "back" this season then he'd have value.

Welcome to our hell

Lol

 

[ImporterExporter]

I mean at the very least, he's got cred and a track record of being a positive bat, even if the last 2 years have been underwhelming certainly. I'd rather take a bounce back shot with a guy like Rizzo than Dan f***ing Vogelbach.

I'll wait until someone legit confirms it and we see the money but it's not unexpected as the name was floated and I think we could have done worse KNOWING Cherington doesn't have any real money to play with, especially w/today's market.

Rizzo has already tortured us many times and done well in PNC. Career .952 OPS/128tOPS at PNC which is very good.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I mean at the very least, he's got cred and a track record of being a positive bat, even if the last 2 years have been underwhelming certainly. I'd rather take a bounce back shot with a guy like Rizzo than Dan f***ing Vogelbach.

I'll wait until someone legit confirms it and we see the money but it's not unexpected as the name was floated and I think we could have done worse KNOWING Cherington doesn't have any real money to play with, especially w/today's market.

Rizzo has already tortured us many times and done well in PNC. Career .952 OPS/128tOPS at PNC which is very good.

Yeah like I'm not going to cheer for adding Rizzo because he has been bad for each of the last 2 years, but he was at least once an elite 1B that you might be able to milk some value out of. Look at what the Nationals got out of Winker last year, he put up a 126 OPS+ for them after having 2 underwhelming to horrible years with Seattle and Milwaukie (especially in MIL). I think you're better off gambling on players like him over signing guys like Tellez or Vogelbach, both of which are guys who were "never was" rather than "has been".

Rizzo has been bad for each of the last 2 years as well, but at least you know that he can be an elite 1B because he was an elite 1B when he was younger. What is Tellez's best case? His highest career WAR over a season was 1.1. It's not apples to apples because McCutchen didn't really have a season as bad as Rizzo's 2024, but adding Rizzo feels more like adding McCutchen than adding Tellez to me.

Anyway, that report is even being refuted now by other unverified accounts, so we'll have to wait and see if it actually ends up true.

 

[BusinessGoose]

They can do some Jim Henson's Muppets x Pirates bobblehead with Rizzo the rat dragging home plate like the pizza rat

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Rizzo: terrible, seems like total BS but also it's plausible to fabricate this rumor because it seems like the exact kind of signing this team makes.... at least wait til January or something

Casas: I don't get any fuss over him. Not really sure about the health, no stand out tools. Certainly not the kind of player to give upside pitching in exchange for.

I'm not opposed to trading Jones in principle but I get the sense that he's divisive for strange reasons. In the dumpster fire that was most of 2024 if it wasn't directly connected to Skenes, I suppose it was possible to eye test him and be frustrated that the command wouldn't be so sharp at times and he'd get hammered for it.

But I think you have to ignore some of those legitimate concerns and also kind of set Skenes' phenom to one side and recognize that Jones had a pretty great rookie year and there's reason to think he'll continue to make strides forward. Plus, there's also a sense in which he is directly connected to Skenes - they are good friends, it's very possible that Jones being around Skenes will = mutually good things, maybe Jones crafting a new pitch, etc.

As messy as it is, we need to leverage whatever we can get out of the young pitching, both immediately and in the medium-term. In the worst case scenario that might involve a pretty murky path to success given that the offense has nosedived - Hayes might be cooked, Reynolds is another year older, Cruz might just be boom or bust supplementary power/speed guy and not a core threat, etc. But even if that's true, certain trades would risk being 1 step forward, 2 steps back. The only way I'm trading the best of the non-Skenes young pitching is for true impact level talent, i.e. the type of guys that are automatic nos from the other side, which in the case of the Red Sox is Anthony.


I don't really see any viable upside that doesn't start with paying a real baseball free agent real money to come in and be an everyday solution. Sagely spreading out 20-25M on one-year upshot moves might minimize risk and have some modest success stories, but it's the same plan we try every year that doesn't work. It's a Bryan de la Cruz solution for a Jazz Chisholm type problem. In free agency that means actually ponying up for Christian Walker or Anthony Santander (lol), and the pessimist part of me wants to say that even a shocking move like that would only have a median outcome of being somewhat enough to move in the right direction.

I dunno, maybe Matt Hague will be a miracle worker, but the total nightmare of 2024 looms to large in my head to summon up much optimism. I guess the draft lottery is getting determined tomorrow.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Rizzo: terrible, seems like total BS but also it's plausible to fabricate this rumor because it seems like the exact kind of signing this team makes.... at least wait til January or something

Casas: I don't get any fuss over him. Not really sure about the health, no stand out tools. Certainly not the kind of player to give upside pitching in exchange for.

I'm not opposed to trading Jones in principle but I get the sense that he's divisive for strange reasons. In the dumpster fire that was most of 2024 if it wasn't directly connected to Skenes, I suppose it was possible to eye test him and be frustrated that the command wouldn't be so sharp at times and he'd get hammered for it.

But I think you have to ignore some of those legitimate concerns and also kind of set Skenes' phenom to one side and recognize that Jones had a pretty great rookie year and there's reason to think he'll continue to make strides forward. Plus, there's also a sense in which he is directly connected to Skenes - they are good friends, it's very possible that Jones being around Skenes will = mutually good things, maybe Jones crafting a new pitch, etc.

As messy as it is, we need to leverage whatever we can get out of the young pitching, both immediately and in the medium-term. In the worst case scenario that might involve a pretty murky path to success given that the offense has nosedived - Hayes might be cooked, Reynolds is another year older, Cruz might just be boom or bust supplementary power/speed guy and not a core threat, etc. But even if that's true, certain trades would risk being 1 step forward, 2 steps back. The only way I'm trading the best of the non-Skenes young pitching is for true impact level talent, i.e. the type of guys that are automatic nos from the other side, which in the case of the Red Sox is Anthony.


I don't really see any viable upside that doesn't start with paying a real baseball free agent real money to come in and be an everyday solution. Sagely spreading out 20-25M on one-year upshot moves might minimize risk and have some modest success stories, but it's the same plan we try every year that doesn't work. It's a Bryan de la Cruz solution for a Jazz Chisholm type problem. In free agency that means actually ponying up for Christian Walker or Anthony Santander (lol), and the pessimist part of me wants to say that even a shocking move like that would only have a median outcome of being somewhat enough to move in the right direction.

I dunno, maybe Matt Hague will be a miracle worker, but the total nightmare of 2024 looms to large in my head to summon up much optimism. I guess the draft lottery is getting determined tomorrow.

Why is Jones better than Ortiz or Chandler, truly?
I also don't think you can call a 4+ ERA "great" in this age. He is a great prospect but is overrated by being in Paul Skenes' penumbra. Finally, the guy is pretty dang small for how hard he throws and his body already took a lat strain for 8 weeks (he was pretty dreadful after coming back from that, too.)

In short, it isn't that I don't like Jones. I just don't like Jones as much as I suspect the industry does and so he would be the piece I would try to exchange for offensive value.

If Casas does not have any plus tools, what does Reynolds have? After all, Casas has been the better hitter the last two years.
He is a very legit middle of lineup bat with tons of team control.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I am as high as anybody else on Chandler, but Jones is better than him because he's demonstrated that he can get MLB batters out consistently over a reasonable stretch of time. Ortiz might have solid upside but he's shown spurts of inconsistency in his career.

Again, though, I am not opposed to trading Jones in general, but I would not trade established young pitching for a first baseman. I'm not saying you are necessarily doing this, but I just don't get the infatuation with Casas -- we can't just take his numbers in parts of two seasons and extrapolate them into a 162 game season where he's hitting 30+ bombs.

He'd be a nice player to have given our own issues, but it's not worth the cost of upside pitching when there aren't any guarantees in that department. Many teams cobble a platoon together for .250 and 25 HRs from first base, and Reynolds is an interesting name to bring up since it seems at least semi-plausible that he's the medium-term plan at first base (which in itself would give some credence to signing a crappy veteran like Rizzo to be a sort-of stop gap for one year).

Ultimately, although I think it makes sense to try and use pitching depth/the successful pitching development pipeline to trade for bats, I also think that we have to be very careful about wishing the one area where we do stand out a little bit to be something that we deplete too fast. There's no point in saying that a major injury to Skenes would screw us over horrible since it's so obviously true, but even a couple of injuries to the depth and we are in some fairly big trouble.

If we are looking at Boston, I'd be a lot more inclined to try for Wilyer Abreu and additional players, but even that seems like the kind of player we need to be able to manufacture and not deal young pitching talent for.

I don't mean to be so negative about the minimal possible realistic ideas for addressing the offense in some way, but I just think the whole situation is Sisyphean and depressing. The owner should spend real money on a real offensive player at a position of need that will probably help raise the floor for a couple of years even if it means we are "overpaying" (a truly fake idea given that we never seem to find ourselves even paying for anything). If we actually stepped up and signed a Santander, then cheaping out with a bad veteran like Rizzo for supplementary depth would be way more plausible.

As it is, we're probably looking around for another version of Bryan de la Cruz, i.e., a guy who doesn't cost much money who you might be able to squint at and see upgrade. It's all chipping around the edges given what the team's needs are, and I don't see a guy like Casas (or even Abreu) being a 4+ win offensive force that's worth being able to hopefully overrun some series with a Skenes-Keller-Jones combo.

 

[OnMyOwn]

When he’s not hurt he hits 20-30 HR. Problem is he’s old as shit and gets hurt.

Whatever, it’s the pirates and that’s about as good as they’ll do.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I am as high as anybody else on Chandler, but Jones is better than him because he's demonstrated that he can get MLB batters out consistently over a reasonable stretch of time. Ortiz might have solid upside but he's shown spurts of inconsistency in his career.

Again, though, I am not opposed to trading Jones in general, but I would not trade established young pitching for a first baseman. I'm not saying you are necessarily doing this, but I just don't get the infatuation with Casas -- we can't just take his numbers in parts of two seasons and extrapolate them into a 162 game season where he's hitting 30+ bombs.

He'd be a nice player to have given our own issues, but it's not worth the cost of upside pitching when there aren't any guarantees in that department. Many teams cobble a platoon together for .250 and 25 HRs from first base, and Reynolds is an interesting name to bring up since it seems at least semi-plausible that he's the medium-term plan at first base (which in itself would give some credence to signing a crappy veteran like Rizzo to be a sort-of stop gap for one year).

Ultimately, although I think it makes sense to try and use pitching depth/the successful pitching development pipeline to trade for bats, I also think that we have to be very careful about wishing the one area where we do stand out a little bit to be something that we deplete too fast. There's no point in saying that a major injury to Skenes would screw us over horrible since it's so obviously true, but even a couple of injuries to the depth and we are in some fairly big trouble.

If we are looking at Boston, I'd be a lot more inclined to try for Wilyer Abreu and additional players, but even that seems like the kind of player we need to be able to manufacture and not deal young pitching talent for.

I don't mean to be so negative about the minimal possible realistic ideas for addressing the offense in some way, but I just think the whole situation is Sisyphean and depressing. The owner should spend real money on a real offensive player at a position of need that will probably help raise the floor for a couple of years even if it means we are "overpaying" (a truly fake idea given that we never seem to find ourselves even paying for anything). If we actually stepped up and signed a Santander, then cheaping out with a bad veteran like Rizzo for supplementary depth would be way more plausible.

As it is, we're probably looking around for another version of Bryan de la Cruz, i.e., a guy who doesn't cost much money who you might be able to squint at and see upgrade. It's all chipping around the edges given what the team's needs are, and I don't see a guy like Casas (or even Abreu) being a 4+ win offensive force that's worth being able to hopefully overrun some series with a Skenes-Keller-Jones combo.

1) What consistency did Jones demonstrate? Surely not after he returned from injury.
2) "Overrun" with Mitch Keller - I love you man, but even if the Pirates were a playoff team, Vegas would have them as underdogs in a Keller-started game.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Trading Jones over Keller is a non starter for me in any discussion. That's just a moronic take on every level, including the most important one. Financial. And we all know Nutting loves saving a buck.

Jones is cheaper, probably better.

You don't move that off a team with our handicapped payroll.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Trading Jones over Keller is a non starter for me in any discussion. That's just a moronic take on every level, including the most important one. Financial. And we all know Nutting loves saving a buck.

Jones is cheaper, probably better.

You don't move that off a team with our handicapped payroll.

Yes, that is also why Jones has much more value than Keller.

If course I would trade Keller 100/100x for the same return. But it wouldn't be the same.

 

[Fogel]

Keller would probably be an interesting deal, maybe next year. He is cost controlled through 2028 and has been worth 2-3fWAR in each of the past 3 seasons. He is fairly cheap for a #3, look at what Severino and Montas have gotten. Not sure what the FA class next year looks like, but it would be an aggressive play to dangle him for teams who missed out on the top arms if Jones improves and Chandler jump a level.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Correct. You need to allocate money for Skenes, if that is even in the realm of possibility with Nutting.

Trading Jones doesn't help free up money and while he'd almost surely bring back more in return, Keller would absolutely get us a 1-1 swap for a ML ready bat or solid established vet. Why trade the younger, cheaper, better P?

Keller has an attractive contract, especially for big market squads missing out on the top FA's.

Skenes should start opening day.
Jones is your #2
Luis Ortiz is your 3 based on what he showed last year
I'd give Chandler and Harrington both legitimate chances to make the ML roster out of camp. Let the better man win a spot for opening day.
Numerous players can fill the #5 spot, it's not that important at this juncture to dive into the throw shit at a wall and hope it sticks pond. Plus we have Oviedo coming back, should be able to retain someone like Falter for depth. Don't forget Mike Burrows and Ashcraft who could push for spots as legitimate prospects.

Sure, that's a young, a very young rotation out of the gate, but it also represent an extremely talented group, at an extremely attractive, dirt cheap collective.

This approach allows for you to actually (again hypothetically) spend a moderate amount on a bat, and coupled with an acquisition for Keller should give us a boost offensively.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Trading Keller a season after signing him to a new deal feels shitty to me personally, and it does nothing to dissuade the idea that the Pirates are a cheap franchise that won’t pay anyone money to compete.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Keller would probably be an interesting deal, maybe next year. He is cost controlled through 2028 and has been worth 2-3fWAR in each of the past 3 seasons. He is fairly cheap for a #3, look at what Severino and Montas have gotten. Not sure what the FA class next year looks like, but it would be an aggressive play to dangle him for teams who missed out on the top arms if Jones improves and Chandler jump a level.

Severino >>> Keller
Montas is a decent comp tho

 

[BusinessGoose]

What about severino AND keller?

 

[Empoleon8771]

Name to keep an eye on.

 

[TooManyHumans]

Hayes is actively hurting the team

Almost as much as carrying Cutch at DH is handcuffing options.. But Hayes doesn't even have the goodwill of the fanbase

Cutch is a free agent, so they aren't carrying him currently. Also, I am not sure how he would be handcuffing anything even if they did still have him. The Pirates have shown no inclination or ability to get anyone better at hitting than even old-ass Cutch and his 105 OPS+ from last year. The only things handcuffing the Pirates are a cheap owner and a GM who couldn't identify a hitter if he walked up to him and smacked him in the side of the head with a bat.