Pittsburgh Pirates 2016 projections – Michael Morse

Will the Pittsburgh Pirates have a two-headed monster at first base in 2016?

When the Pittsburgh Pirates traded for Michael Morse at the July 31st deadline last year, the idea was that he would platoon with Pedro Alvarez at first base and also give Clint Hurdle a powerful option off the bench on days when he wasn’t in the starting lineup. Morse appeared in 45 games with the Pirates and accumulated 82 at-bats for a slash line of .275/.390/.391, an improvement on the .213/.276/.313 he put together in 174 at-bats in Miami prior to the trade.

The Pirates will head into 2016 with Morse and John Jaso sharing time at first base, with Jason Rogers also gunning for playing time there as well. Morse’s career high in home runs was 31 back in 2011 when he played for Washington, and since he will be in a platoon situation in Pittsburgh, he will almost assuredly come nowhere near that total this upcoming season. Instead, the Pirates will hope that he can hit somewhere between 15-20 home runs and get on base at a steady clip.

Below are Morse’s statistics for the last two seasons along with his projections from Steamer and ZiPS:

Both projections have Morse getting more at-bats than he did last season, with ZiPS seeing a pretty big increase from 2015. I think that 355 at-bats for Morse is a little aggressive since Jaso will likely see the majority of the playing time as the left-handed member of the platoon. Then there is Rogers, who may steal some playing time from Morse, and the impending arrival of Josh Bell at some point in the season.

When combining slugging and on-base percentage, both ZiPS and Steamer see Morse coming in at over a .700 OPS next season. This should put him right around league average which, while it isn’t ideal for a first baseman, it’s not terrible either.

Morse’s WAR for next season is where the two projections disagree. Steamer has him registering -0.1 while ZiPS at least has him in the black with a 0.2. Considering that in 2015 he registered a -0.5, anything close to or above zero will be welcomed by the team. Also, since Morse is in a platoon situation rather than in a starting role, it will be difficult for him to amass a high WAR if he only starts against left-handers, which very well may be the case.

Now it’s your turn to let us know how you think Morse will do in 2016. Do you think he’ll come out of the gate hot and get more at-bats than either of the projections see him receiving next season? Will he be able to get his batting average close to .280 like he did in 2014? Let us know in the comments below!

Thank you for checking out Pirates Breakdown!  Please follow us on twitter and jump into the hot stove conversation with us!