The Pirates aren’t out of the woods yet

I’ve been trying to reconcile three things in my head for about 24 hours: 1.) My post from yesterday morning about the Pirates being worse than most people realize this year, 2.) My Pittsburgh Mag post about being excited to see how the year plays out, and 3.) My pre-season comments about the Pirates’ final record not mattering so long as they got good performances from the right people. 

The reality is that when the Pirates were in first place on July 25th, their run there wasn’t really spurred on by the “right” people. The rotation has been carried by Paul Maholm and Jeff Karstens this year, and the offense has been almost wholly disappointing besides Andrew McCutchen and maybe Neil Walker. Of the four players that we all had tabbed as the core of the offense, McCutchen’s broken out, Walker’s been solid but unspectacular if you look at the season as a whole, Jose Tabata hasn’t developed any power at all even if he’s flashed good on base skills, and Pedro Alvarez has been flat out terrible. Tabata and Alvarez missed big chunks of the season with injury. Morton and McDonald have both been solid mid-to-back-end rotation guys, but the Pirates frankly need a little more from both of them in the long run.

Ignoring these things is fine if you’re in first place, but the reality is that the Pirates aren’t in first place anymore and they’re not going to be in first place when the season ends. It seems to me that a lot of Pirate fans have taken their run to first place that lasted almost until the end of July as a sign that the end of the bad times are coming for the Pirates. That might be true, but it’s far from a given at this point. Intrinsically, I think all Pirate fans know this, because the 2011 teams and 1997 teams aren’t all that different. The Pirates had a decent foundation in place in 1997 that way overachieved, but prospects didn’t pan out and the front office panicked and things ended in disaster instead of triumph. The Pirates success earlier this year didn’t stem directly from the young players, and therefore it’s far from a sure thing to happen again in 2012. 

This is a bit of a problem. As Charlie pointed out yesterday, the Pirates’ minor leaguers haven’t had great seasons in 2011 (this is a wider discussion point that probably deserves its own discussion: the Pirates have had far from a bad year in the minors, but they also haven’t had many players that have had great years and the absence of breakout years from the most talented players in the system is a bit troubling because the Pirates’ system, to this point, is built mostly on depth of talent with the hopes that opening a thousand oysters would yield a certain number of pearls). The Pirates have some talented players in the upper parts of the minors, but from where we sit today, it’s plausible that the Pirates won’t get any real impact talent from the minor leagues until Jameson Taillon and Gerrit Cole get to Pittsburgh (Starling Marte and Robbie Grossman are also prospects worthy of longer discussion, and actually, now that I think of it … I like that idea). That means that the Pirates we see are the Pirates may be the Pirates we get, save trades or free agent signings, until 2013 or 2014. 

Is that team good enough to contend? Right now, it’s not. The Pirates need more from Tabata, they need need more of the July/August Neil Walker and less of the May/June one, they need more of the Morton and McDonald that we’ve seen (save the Philadelphia series) recently. They need way, way more from Pedro Alvarez. Perhaps most importantly, the Pirates need answers to these sorts of questions soon. They have certain surpluses (speedy, toolsy outfielders, marginal minor league pitching prospects, relievers) and they have budget flexibility and I think Neal Huntington’s going to have a busy offseason, but it’s tough to have a busy offseason without knowing exactly what to target. 

How will Tabata look when he comes off the disabled list? The same applies to Presley: can he hit over the long-term at a big league level? Will Pedro get himself out of the woods? What are McDonald and Morton exactly capable of? No matter what happened in the first part of this season, the Pirates aren’t out of the woods yet by a long shot, and they’re not assured of making it out of the woods anytime soon, either, even if they finish this season strong and end up with 82 wins. We’re going to learn a lot about the team in the next two months, I think, and what we learn should inform the path the front office needs to take going forward.