Backup plans

Last year, the Pirates started the season with Pedro Alvarez at third base, Travis Ishikawa at first base, Wandy Rodriguez and Charlie Morton in the rotation, Jason Grilli in the bullpen, and a right field slot reserved for Gregory Polanco. By the end of the season, Polanco was the only one of those players even still on the active roster, and the Pirates made the playoffs anyway. When looking back on 2014, it’s easy to say that everything went wrong and the Pirates still made the playoffs (I say this a lot), but there’s a second part to that:  a whole bunch of other things had to go right. Josh Harrison played like an MVP candidate, Travis Snider finally turned into a big league regular, Vance Worley regained his early-career form, Tony Watson kept up the dominant streak that started in the second half of 2013, John Holdzkom wandered out of the rows of corn, Starling Marte caught fire at the exact right time, and so on and so forth.

It’s entirely possible that the Pirates will breeze through 2015 without any major issue (they did just that in 2013, more or less), but it’d be ridiculous to count on that. What that means is this: while most season previews will (and should!) focus on Pedro Alvarez and Starling Marte and Gerrit Cole and Gregory Polanco and Josh Harrison (and I’ll get to them this week, I promise), there’s a decent chance that the Pirate season will at least be partially decided by players like Nick Kingham, Jung Ho Kang, Corey Hart, Clayton Richard, Sean Rodriguez, Tony Sanchez, or someone like them.

This is, I think, one of the most interesting parts of the Pirates’ off-season. To a casual glance, they’re pretty much the same team. They have a new catcher, but the new starters at first base and right field were on the team last year. The bullpen has been reworked, but that’s the nature of bullpens. The two biggest off-season moves were to re-sign Francisco Liriano, who was already a Pirate, and to sign AJ Burnett, who was recently a Pirate. Part of the reason that most people think that this Pirate team will be so good is because the core of the team is the same as the two Pirate teams that were good in 2013 and 2014.

Beneath that core, though, the Pirates changed quite a bit. Their infield depth is completely different this year; Corey Hart completes the first base platoon, Jung Ho Kang fills the “utility guy with a bat” role (maybe/hopefully), and Sean Rodriguez slides into the “have glove, will play,” position. If you assume that Hart can play a little outfield (I’m skeptical of this given what happened in Seattle last year, but the club lists him as an outfielder on the team site and everyone seems to be treating him like a potential extra outfielder), then you probably assume that he and Andrew Lambo (who’s only played a bit role on the two playoff teams) will form the outfield support network.

If you consider those four players and add Tony Sanchez into the mix on the assumption that neither Francisco Cervelli nor Chris Stewart are likely to play a ton of games in 2015, you’ve got the five position players that are most likely to be leaned on in case of an emergency in 2015. In the rotation, Jeff Locke will likely open the season as the sixth starter, but as the season goes on, I’d imagine opportunities will go to Nick Kingham and Clayton Richard, should they earn them in Triple-A.

That means that this is the group: Hart, Kang, Rodriguez, Lambo, Sanchez, Kingham, Richard. I’d be willing to bet at least one of them finds themselves in a prominent role on the 2015 Pirates. I think it’s a fascinating group of players: Kingham is the only straight prospect in the group, Sanchez and Lambo are fading prospects trying to establish themselves as big leaguers before they turn into minor league veterans, Rodriguez is a solid utilityman likely headed for a journeyman career, Hart and Richard are trying to get their careers back on track, and Kang is a total wild card.

You can probably argue that Hart is the most important, as he’s the guy that will hit for Alvarez and Polanco against tough lefties, he’s the first option in the event of another Pedro Alvarez funk, and he might be the first option behind Polanco (depending on his health). We’ll have to see him in action to be sure, but I’m guessing the Pirates wouldn’t have given him a big league deal and put him in this role if they weren’t reasonably sure he was healthy. Kang has obviously gotten a ton of attention, but the Pirates have actually built a decent safety net in case he struggles: Rodriguez can play the same positions he can (probably better, from a defensive standpoint) and he’s not an awful hitter. Should Kang struggle and need to be sent down, Rodriguez could fill the main utility infield role well and Pedro Florimon could slide into the Clint Barmes role that Rodriguez seems to be occupying right now (Justin Sellers is an option here as well). I have no idea what to make of Sanchez, either, but mainly because the Pirates are clearly judging their catchers by things that aren’t immediately apparent to the casual observer, and Sanchez hasn’t played enough in the bigs to really judge. The pitchers are their own story, which we’ll get to later this week.

We all got a lot of laughs this winter when the Pirates snapped up every available utility player, but honestly, looking the big picture from a week before the season starts, it makes sense to me. Sometimes the difference between a good season and a bad one can be a team’s safety net. That’s always a bit of a scary proposition because the safety net players are usually, by definition, players that aren’t good enough to start. The Pirates have built an interesting one in 2015, though, and while I don’t know if they have any Josh Harrisons waiting to blast their way into the All-Star Game, I do think they are deep enough to withstand some choppy waters.