These are your Pittsburgh Pirates

In the aftermath of Francisco Cervelli’s extension yesterday, a lot of people all noticed the same thing at the same time. Going around the horn, the Pirates’ contract status looks like this:

• C- Francisco Cervelli, signed through 2019
• 1B – John Jaso, signed through 2017
• 2B – Josh Harrison, signed (including options) through 2020
• 3B – Jung Ho Kang, signed (including options) through 2019
• SS – Jordy Mercer, first year of arbitration, Pirates have rights through 2018
• LF – Starling Marte, signed (including options) through 2021
• CF – Andrew McCutchen, signed (including options) through 2018
• RF – Gregory Polanco, signed (including options) through 2023

Every single regular, save John Jaso and Jordy Mercer, is signed through at least 2018. Jaso is the one position player who has a prospect knocking on the door right behind him, as Josh Bell is nearly MLB-ready, and Mercer is only in his first year or arbitration, and so the Pirates retain his services for at least two more years (they presumably could extend him, should they want to, though they may want to wait on the last couple of year’s worth of middle infield draft picks to progress further before deciding). In other words, the Pirates signing Cervelli is a confirmation from the team that the Pirates you see in front of your eyes on the field right now are the Pittsburgh Pirates of the future, and when Tyler Glasnow and/or Jameson Taillon join the rotation in the next 3-5 weeks, they’re going to be damn well close to turning the ideal of the Pittsburgh Pirates of the Future into a concrete and real baseball team in the present.

This is, regardless of current concerns about the distance behind the Cubs (which has now been slashed to 6 1/2 games with the Pirates’ three-game winning streak and the Cubs’ two-game losing “streak”), an exciting thing to think about. The Pirates spent 15 years with no clue how to build a winning team, and then steadily started building towards the Pirates of the Future with the trade of Nate McLouth and promotion of Andrew McCutchen in early June of 2009. The Pirates have since made the playoffs three times, but they’ve always done it with the notion that there were more prospects to wait on or more holds to fill. Once Taillon and Glasnow pull on the black and gold, all of that is over.

That doesn’t mean Neal Huntington’s job is done, of course. A rotation is five members deep and even Cole, Liriano, Glasnow, and Taillon only make four. As this year is proving, a bullpen is always a work in progress, even if you think you’re starting on solid ground. Injuries are always one pitch or ugly slide away. One of the hardest things for a small market team to do is properly evaluate and excise a player who is performing poorly once they’ve already decided to pay him. The competition in the National League Central is fierce, and so even with the lineup seemingly set from today going forward (and the lineup being decidedly not this current team’s problem), it’s now up to the Pirates to determine if this lineup is still every bit as valuable all through 2017 and 2018 (and then beyond 2018, when all of it is assured to remain in place except for one particularly central cog) as it looks today.

The phrase these are your Pittsburgh Pirates means something different today than it has in a while. If you’re going to see the Pirates hold champagne celebrations in the locker room and hold up trophies in October in the near future, almost all of the players that are going to do it are in front of your eyes right now. I think that’s exciting. For all of this current team’s flaws, I think the lineup is deeper and better than last year’s lineup, and I think the ceiling on the pitching staff basically disappears into the stratosphere in about a month. The final goal of the Pirates of today is to trim a few more games off of this Cub lead before the Pirates of tomorrow arrive for good. And what happens if the Cubs have sprinted too far ahead to catch in 2016? Well, at least we know no one’s going anywhere.

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