DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: How many hitters?

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: How many hitters?

[Music] [Applause] If you add one hitter to your lineup comes with real impact, you’re still adding one ninth of your lineup. Morning to you. Good Tuesday morning. I’m Dan Kajovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates presented to you by the Northshore Tavern. Comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into football andor hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this. We’re 5 days out now from the beginning of Major League Baseball’s winter meetings. Those are taking place this year in Orlando, Florida. DK Pittsburgh Sports will of course be there covering it. beat writer Jose Negron. And while that has been, how do I put this? Encouraged over the years by Major League Baseball itself to be an arena of activity, there’s nothing anyone can do to enforce that. And if you end up with some, you know, big deal, regardless of who you are, the day before the winter meetings or a couple days after everybody’s left town, that’s just how it goes. Ben Cherington, of course, has faced no such problems. The various winter meetings that he’s attended, he shows up, says the same thing to reporters four days in a row, does the rule five draft, leaves. If anything were to happen this year, given the amount of payroll space the Pirates have carved out for themselves, I’m not talking about the increase here. I’m talking about just how much has been subtracted, which everybody seems to have forgotten. Have you noticed that? Like a little bit of a an interlude here. Everyone’s like, “We’ll see if they actually spend this money.” Of course they’re going to spend it. They cut drastically over last season and then going on into this off season. They’re not about to spend less than the 87 million they just spent and they’re only at 62 at the current projection. So that’s 25 million they’re going to spend. Okay. End interlude. if they do what they say they’re going to do, and that’s to add to the offense, possibly to add liberally to the offense. One of the broader questions that has to arise from within, I think, is how many of these guys do we need? And within that, what positions are they going to play? Or are they going to be DH? and we’re going to find a way to nudge Andrew McCutchen out the door, which is of course a separate controversy that’s more than worthy of a separate episode some point. When I think about this, I tend to do it a little bit differently. I tend to look at, believe it or not, who’s there now or who’s the holdover from the 2025 season? Because even though that lineup as a whole obviously was the worst in the majors, there are certain pieces of it more than you might think that aren’t really all that disposable. And I’ll explain what I mean. In fact, I’ll just go around the diamond because if you go behind the plate, if you start there, what are you doing with Henry Davis? I know he hasn’t hit. I also know that he has dramatically improved defensively, which if nothing else tells you how committed he is to just becoming a better overall baseball player and that if he ever got major league level instruction, maybe he might turn into a major league hitter. I don’t know that he needs to be a great one. I don’t know that he needs to ever live up to being a 1-1, but this is the group that drafted him at 1-1 and they are in no position to throw him out. And then there’s Raphael Flores. He was the main acquisition in the David Bedar salary dump, I mean trade. And he’s a catcher, though he’s also played some first base. He’s 25 years old and he has 15 at bats, not 1500, 15 at bats at the top level. They have to give him a chance. Unless, you know, I mean, you were to move some of these guys, but again, I don’t think you can do anything with Henry. Maybe you can do something with Flores in terms of sending him to some other team or whatever. At first base, you have the way I’ve described Spencer Horwitz for months now. And that’s a platoon hitting, low power, known wrist issue, good fielding first baseman. That’s what he was supposed to be when he got here. That’s what he was once he got here and got healthy from the latest wrist issue. That scenario screams out for a platoon partner because even the pirates who might have had something to gain by at least trying him against lefties wouldn’t do it. They were terrified to see him against lefties. So what do you do there? Go and get yourself some big superstar hitter. Horwitz can’t play anywhere else on the diamond. That’s where he has to be. You getting rid of him? How about second base? You getting rid of Nick Gonzalez? You giving up on him? It’s another first round pick. He too has really really upped his game defensively, but he still has to be a bat first guy. And that should be okay because he was always a bat first guy his whole life. He’d been seen by some at the time he was drafted as the best bat potential player in the entire class. Giving up on him. Stay with me on this. You’ll be surprised. shortstop is going to be Conor Griffins. Whether it’s in March or whether it’s in 2028, it’s going to be Griffins. So, you’d be insane to go and put your free agency dollars into the shortstop position. They don’t have a spot yet. Ready? Third base. Okay, now we’re talking. Because unless you try to make Jared Triolo into something that he isn’t and almost certainly isn’t going to be, meaning anything more than a utility or super utility given everything that he can do defensively type of player, you’ve got to get yourself a third baseman and you got to get yourself one with some pop. You’ve got to make up for the fact that you had the fewest home runs in the majors by a ridiculous margin. The Pirates were the worst home run hitting team in baseball. Only 117 of those and the Cardinals, who were the team just above them, were at 148. Okay, so we can agree on third base. And from some of the names that have popped up, you can see that the Pirates are thinking similarly. In the outfield, you’ve still got O’Neal Cruz. You would not move him at his lowest possible value. And even if only for ego purposes, you wouldn’t dare send him somewhere where they have competent hitting instruction, and then watch him explode into whatever it is that everybody thinks can still happen here. 20 home runs, a batting average of 200. Good luck, everybody. I That’s That’s all I have to say about O’Neal. I just Good luck. But you can’t let him go. He’s not going anywhere. And the same thing goes for Brian Reynolds at a corner outfield spot whether it’s left or right. He of course spent this past season in right. Yeah, he was way down by his own standards. 720 OPS, 16 home runs, 73 RBI’s across the board. Across the board was down. Now you can count on a rebound. You can work toward that. What you can’t do is bump him. You just can’t. So there’s a corner outfield spot left or right. I count two spots. Two. Now you can of course attempt to bolster your bench. You can get guys who can come in and do different things for you. Maybe what kind of used to be known for those of you who go back a little bit with the sport is the Matt Stairs role. Stairs spent part of his career in Pittsburgh, but he spent lots of other parts in lots of other places. All he was was a pinch hitting, home run hitting kind of guy. And you can go ahead and do some of that, but for the purposes of this conversation, there are two spots. Two spots. And I guess what gets me about that isn’t so much who do you get, how much money do you commit, and so forth. It’s how much can two hitters, two ninths of your lineupgrade what we just witnessed over the past calendar year when we come back J1Q. [Music] If you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. Located directly across Federal Street from PNC Park, next door to Mike’s Beer Bar, Northshore Tavern is Pittsburgh’s home for steak on a stone. Enjoy your steak finished on a hot lava stone in front of you where you ensure each piece is cooked to exactly your liking. Or try their rotating selection of entre, hot sandwiches, salads, and burgers, all while enjoying the ambiance dedicated to the great players and history of the Pittsburgh Pirates all around you. Come see why everyone’s talking about Northshore Tavern and Steak on a stone. It’s Gun Storage Check Week. Help prevent unwanted access to your firearms. No one wants their unsecured gun to be used in an accident, a suicide, or a crime. Use lock boxes, safes, and locks to secure your firearms. Learn more at gunstoch checkck.org. That’s gunstoch check.org. Brought to you by NSSF, the Firearm Industry Trade Association. [Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Anson who asks, “How much can we trust anything that comes from anyone inside the organization? The general manager is dead man walking. The general manager stays. The Pirates are going to spend. There are limitations. The pitching is solid. The pitching coach gets fired. Yeah, they’re going to spend something because they pretty much have to. But is it going to be a lot? No. Because no, the Pirates don’t work that way. What you’re going to see is the winter of 8485 all over again. Get ready for the 2025 26 version of Steve Kemp, George Hendrik, 6 to Lasano, and Bill Alman. Don’t expect much. Expect to be gaslighted. That is the pirates way. Anthony, you are the first person within city limits to refer to George Hendrickk without the obligatory jogging in front of his name. in the longest time. He is forever to be recalled as Jog and George Hendricks. So, take that one back before I get to the rest of what you bring up there. I do appreciate that you included in your cynicism, your righteous cynicism, that yes, the pirates are going to spend. They are for the reasons I just outlined with that little interlude thing in the opening segment. They spent 87. They are now at 62 for projected payroll for next year. So, of course, they’re going to spend and it’s going to look and feel like a bonanza compared to most years, even if all they do is keep payroll level. And again, as I’ve been reporting, by the way, trust anything that comes from inside the organization. I keep telling everybody this, my actual source here isn’t someone inside the organization. When I talked to someone inside the organization about this, their response was, “Wow, we wouldn’t want that out at all because it doesn’t help. It just doesn’t for exactly the reasons that you bring up here, Anson, which is it makes it look like they’re trying to boast about something that hasn’t happened yet. Take this from somebody who relentlessly criticizes what goes on in 115 Federal. I could see what they mean when they explain it to me that way. They really don’t have anything to gain. So my sources for this and they’ve been plural have been from people who are on the outside but who are intimately and directly aware of what’s happening on the inside. Does that make sense? Okay. Big big difference and not a great way to leak something if you’re trying to leak something. But to your your question there more than anything else is how can you trust any you can’t you can’t answer I think you’re actually over complicating this you can’t trust anything that comes from anyone inside an organization where they kept this general manager in place no matter what you think of him or his acumen or his intelligence or anything after six fully failed seasons. And when I say fully failed, I am not just talking about the one loss record at the Pittsburgh level. I’m talking about the whole thing top to bottom. Everything that Ben Cherington had set out to do, had discussed that he was going to do. And I can show you my original interview with him. All of it went poof. All of it. Except Paul Skins falling from the sky. And we’ll see. Maybe they will have nailed Connor Griffin. Maybe once he gets healthy, they’ll have nailed Jared Jones. But that’s six whole years of trading tons of players who had actual value at the time they were moved out and putting all of these resources, including tens of millions of dollars and coming away with skins falling from the sky just because you sucked and possibly one or two big hit picks. If you can trust an ownership group, let’s put this where it belongs. If you can trust Bob Nutting after he says, “Yeah, that’s my guy.” I mean, I don’t know what that says about you, Hansen. I couldn’t agree with you more. Remember, it’s jogging George. And those of you too young to get that reference, hit the Google on that one. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Pirates. We’ll be back with another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

How many hitters are really needed here?

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