2021 ZiPS Projections: Pittsburgh Pirates

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Batters

Ke’Bryan Hayes! Hayes has been a long-time favorite of ZiPS, with the computer already seeing him as a league-average player entering the 2019 season despite having topped off at Double-A Altoona at that point. In recent years, ZiPS has been using a probabilistic method derived from MLB’s Gameday data for minor-league defensive stats, generating a rough catch probability for every ball hit. Sadly, it’s not UZR and DRS, but it can generally tell the good defensive players from the poor ones, and it’s certainly better than some GB/FB-modified range factor or throwing up your hands in despair. ZiPS had Hayes as the best minor league third baseman from 2017-19, at 13 runs above average per season. Now, that doesn’t mean ZiPS is going to project him quite that strongly, due to the inherent issues with this kind of defensive estimation. But it does mean that there’s a high probability that his positive scouting reports are on-point and his good major league performance in a small sample was not a fluke.

Hayes was good defensively in the majors, and between him and Luis Robert, I felt pretty good that this methodology successfully identified minor-league glove standouts without any scouting data involved. What ZiPS did not see coming was just how solid Hayes was with the bat in his rookie season. If I had voted this time around, he likely would have gotten a tally on the back of my Rookie of the Year ballot. Hayes is not a big dude, but his power was impressive where previously it had been a work in progress. Five homers in 95 major league plate appearances isn’t a huge body of work, but he was in the top 20 in exit velocity, between Kyle Schwarber and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. A .700 slugging percentage isn’t in the future, but both ZiPS and Statcast think that he hit the ball like a .500 slugger in 2020. ZiPS isn’t fully there in 2021, but he’s one to watch.

Or should I call Hayes “the” one to watch? The general theme of Pittsburgh’s offense is that although there are few gaping maws of performance in the lineup, there’s a real dearth of impact offensive talent. Being uninteresting is arguably even worse than being lousy, at least from the position of an analyst. There’s a reason the 1962 Mets are fondly remembered by history for losing lovably, and the 1962 Houston Colt .45s are not. Bryan Reynolds and Adam Frazier are competent regulars, but there’s little upside here, and they feel more at home for a risk-averse contender with a single, specific hole to fill, such as Houston, Atlanta or Cleveland (if that team still counts). Colin Moran‘s not a difference-maker, just Josh Bell’s replacement as an uninspiring first baseman. As for Gregory Polanco, the best the Pirates can hope for is that he’s healthy, returns to 2017-18 form, and nets the team a couple of good prospects when he follows his former outfield teammates out of town. That Phillip Evans ranks so highly in this list should be a great deal of concern for the front office, though the de facto starting shortstop having a Pat Meares top comp is ZiPS being mean, not me.

Ownership refused to aggressively invest in the team when there was a chance to go over the top, so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for investment when the team is lousy. At this point, it’s a waiting game to see if prospects like Oneil Cruz and Travis Swaggerty can make the roster before the Pirates panic about the prospect of having to pay Hayes actual money, though Cruz’s future remains uncertain.

Pitchers

When I ran the Pirates ZiPS, my biggest surprise was how the team as a whole didn’t project quite as poorly as I expected. Now, I’d be lying if I said that this wasn’t more a function of my complete lack of faith in the roster than any real fount of excellence, but there are actually a few things to like about this pitching staff. I’m specifically talking about the rotation, the main reason the Pirates are projected to be somewhere around 90 losses rather than challenging the century mark. I wouldn’t call this a good rotation, but the results may stay comfortably above replacement-level, which is at least something to look forward to.

Heading the starters is Joe Musgrove, who just missed my breakout list last spring and will likely make it this time around. He’s been trying to refine his curveball for a while, but 2020 was the first time it ever really clicked for him. Taking a little speed off, he got four more inches of horizontal break than he previously had, and it reflected in his stats, with only a single curve out of 139 ending up as a hit. The walks crept up a bit as well, but as in 2020, ZiPS thinks Musgrove is a good No. 2 who has a real shot at being something better.

Jameson Taillon still has upside remaining, but his second Tommy John surgery cost him another year and a half, a huge blow after he finally put together a healthy season in 2018. Just to show how fast time flies, Taillon is pushing 30 at this point and can hardly be classified as a prospect, but if he can finally stop rolling snake eyes when it comes to injury, there’s still a chance for him to have a real career beyond endless rehab. It may not ever happen, and if it does, it might not be in Pittsburgh, but many of the reasons we all liked him as a prospect are still there.

As for the rest of the rotation, ZiPS sees competent innings-eating, but not much more than that. Mitch Keller is the lone exception, but after walking 18 batters against 16 strikeouts, the computer’s giving him more side-eye than it did a year ago. JT Brubaker’s projection also hints at a peak-Trevor Williams level of adequate excellence. Still, while he’s more explosive than his former teammate, there’s also no real ace potential here.

Richard Rodríguez was a real find by the Bucs, but ZiPS sees little past him. One pickup the projections are a fan of is Shea Spitzbarth, taken in the Rule 5 draft. The Pirates have done well in the Rule 5 historically, and this looks like no exception, with Spitzbarth and his 92 mph fastball, solid change, and 12-6 curve getting the second-best projection in the ‘pen. That the team’s second-best reliever was just acquired for $100,000 ought to tell you quite a bit about the state of the relief corps.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.