The Major League Baseball offseason always starts off slowly, but because there’s no pressure of an impending lockout, the 2022 MLB offseason feels like it’s moving through molasses. Still, though, moves have been made. The Angels have been an active team in the market, always trying to rectify their perpetual mistakes, signing Tyler Anderson for three years and trading for Hunter Renfroe and Gio Urshela. The White Sox have made a splash by securing Mike Clevinger on a one-year deal. I don’t think the market will really move until Aaron Judge puts pen to paper, but the biggest player during the offseason thus far is not a team you’d expect. That team is the Pittsburgh Pirates.
A longtime mismanaged small market team, the Pirates are in an opportunistic position in a National League Central that’s been on the decline for the worse part of the last few years. The Reds and Cubs are bottom-feeders after selling off or letting go of most of their best players over the past few seasons, while the Brewers can’t hold a payroll, as evidenced by the Renfroe trade and the rumors surrounding the potential departure of Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes. The only team that has a likely shot at finishing above .500 would be the Cardinals, who have question marks of their own on the pitching side. That leaves the Buccos, who have a fledgling offense and a pretty terrible pitching staff, yet optimism is beginning to surround them. Why is that, you ask?
Ji-Man Choi and Carlos Santana, that’s why.
Earlier in November, the Pirates traded for Ji-Man Choi from the Rays and just signed Carlos Santana from free agency for $6.7 million, their largest free agent signing in terms of average annual value in what seems like forever. Both Choi and Santana were above-average hitters in 2022 by plenty of standards, but the analytics go deeper than that. Pittsburgh had the worst production out of the first baseman spot in the batting order last year in terms of wOBA, wRC+, and fWAR (yes, I don't like using those stats without context, but this is still staggering). So, Pittsburgh’s first moves during this offseason were for first basemen. Pretty smart, right? In addition to that, Choi’s lifetime OPS against righties is .810, while Santana’s against lefties is .819. For little capital, the Pirates are trying to go from the worst in the league at something to at least the middle of the pack. That’s called efficiency, and it’s something that the rest of the small-market teams should watch closely.
When it comes to baseball, value is aggregated. The weakness of one aspect of a team’s run production can be offset by a strength. Weaknesses can be easily identified to mitigate them. When Bryce Harper left the Nationals after the 2018 season, they signed Patrick Corbin to keep their value stable year-over-year. Couple that with Anthony Rendon’s insane contract year, and the Nats didn’t lose that much intrinsic value after Bryce walked. Washington happened to have a lot of money at the time to secure Corbin and keep Rendon for his final year of arbitration, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t cheaper options to fix the gaping hole in their lineup. Does the word “Moneyball” ring a bell here?
There’s a power vacuum in the National League Central. By using simple statistics and identifying key areas of improvement, the Pirates are trying to capitalize on that vacuum through moves within their budget. “Being afraid to spend money” doesn’t exactly apply here because the Pirates don’t have much money to be afraid to spend. Instead, they’re hyper-focusing on faulty cogs within their means. The Pirates are also in the market for pitcher Kyle Gibson, a cheap contract that could pay huge dividends for their ailing arms.
Pirates GM Ben Cherington, who won the 2013 World Series as a part of the Red Sox organization, made it clear at last year’s Trade Deadline that Bryan Reynolds was not on the block. This was pretty shocking, considering the switch-hitting outfielder has been a topic of conversation for the last few 7/31s. His reasoning was that he believes in the Pirates young core. I’m not entirely sure Pirates fans agreed with Cherington this summer, but they can start to now, considering the Pirates are spending small-market money with big-market intelligence. There’s no telling if the Pirates will break .500 this year, but for the first time since the Andrew McCutchen days, there is light at the end of the tunnel in the Steel City.
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