Archive for Pirates

Ke’Bryan Hayes Needs a Bat Path Fix

Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Since 2021, Ke’Bryan Hayes is the leader in OAA among all infielders. As one of the best defenders in the sport, his floor is very high. Even with his career 87 wRC+, he has still been worth about 3 WAR per 162 games. If he could be a consistently average offensive player, he’d be one of the most valuable players at his position. This is a story we all know. With his name swirling in trade rumors, you have to imagine other teams are thinking about the possibility more so now than in the past. His issues stem from his suboptimal swing path, and if he’s traded, that will be what his new hitting coach tries to fix.

In the last calendar year (459 plate appearances), Hayes has a 60 wRC+. That is bad! But despite those struggles, it’s not like he is completely lacking offensive ability. His bat speed is only a little below average. His strikeout and whiff rates are better than league average over the past three seasons. He hits the ball hard more often than not, and he chases at about an average rate. Those are all things you could work with if you’re trying to manufacture a league average hitter. But if you’re doing all this and your path is rarely working in an ideal direction, you’ll always have limitations on what you do when you actually make contact. Read the rest of this entry »


Remembering “The Cobra,” Dave Parker (1951-2025)

Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Last December, 33 years after he last played, Dave Parker was finally elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The lefty-swinging, righty-throwing “Cobra” had once been regarded as the game’s best all-around player, a 6-foot-5, 230-pound slugger who could hit for power and average, had plenty of speed as well as a strong and accurate throwing arm, and exuded as much charisma and swagger as any player of his era. But injuries, cocaine use, and poor conditioning curtailed his prime, and while he rebounded to complete a lengthy and successful career, in 15 years on the writers’ ballots, he’d never drawn even one-third of the support needed for election. He hadn’t come close in three tries on Era Committee ballots, either, but buoyed by the positive attention he had generated while waging a very public battle with Parkinson’s Disease, and backed by a favorable mix of familiar faces on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee, he finally gained entry to the Hall, alongside the late Dick Allen.

Unfortunately, Parker did not live to deliver the speech he said he’d been holding for 15 years. Just shy of one month from the day he was to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, he passed away at age 74 due to complications from Parkinson’s Disease, which he was diagnosed with in 2012.

Parker is the third Hall of Famer to die between election and induction. Eppa Rixey, a lefty who pitched in the National League from 1912 to ’33, was elected by the Veterans Committee on January 27, 1963. He died one month and one day later, at the age of 71. Leon Day, a righty who starred in the Negro Leagues from 1934 to ’46, and later played in Mexico and in the affiliated minor leagues, was elected by the Veterans Committee on March 7, 1995. He died six days later, at the age of 78. Read the rest of this entry »


Built Different or Skill Issue? A BaseRuns Game Show: Offense Edition

Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

In a post yesterday, I wrote about the BaseRuns approach to estimating team winning percentages and how it attempts to strip away context that doesn’t pertain to a team’s actual ability, so as to reveal what would have happened if baseball were played in a world not governed by the whims of seemingly random variation. In this world, a win-loss record truly represents how good a team actually is. Try as it might, the BaseRuns methodology fails to actually create such a world, sometimes stripping away too much context, ignoring factors that do speak to a team’s quality, or both.

I delayed for a separate post (this one!) a deeper discussion of specific offensive and defensive units that BaseRuns represents quite differently compared to the actual numbers posted by these teams. To determine whether or not BaseRuns knows what it’s talking about with respect to each team, imagine yourself sitting in the audience on a game show set. The person on your left is dressed as Little Bo Peep, while the person on your right has gone to great lengths to look like Beetlejuice. That or Michael Keaton is really hard up for money. On stage there are a series of doors, each labeled with a team name. Behind each door is a flashing neon sign that reads either “Skill Issue!” or “Built Different!” Both can be either complimentary or derogatory depending on whether BaseRuns is more or less optimistic about a team relative to its actual record. For teams that BaseRuns suggests are better than the numbers indicate, the skill issue identified is a good thing — a latent ability not yet apparent in the on-field results. But if BaseRuns thinks a team is worse than the numbers currently imply, then skill issue is used more colloquially to suggest a lack thereof. The teams that are built different buck the norms laid out by BaseRuns and find a way that BaseRuns doesn’t consider to either excel or struggle. Read the rest of this entry »


Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, June 27

Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I got a chance to see many of my favorite baseball happenings this week: catchers making tough plays, exciting pitching matchups, and stars of the game at their absolute best. We also have plenty of goofy but delightful coincidences, just as Five Things patron saint Zach Lowe intended. A quick programming note: I’ll be on vacation, a nice restorative pre-deadline trip, for the next week and change. Enjoy baseball in the meantime – it’s a wonderful time of year for it.

1. Athletic Catchers
It’s amazing how much baseball knowledge your brain absorbs without actively thinking about it. For example, when you see an outfielder throw the ball home to cut down a runner trying to score on a single, you’ll immediately anticipate that the batter who hit that single might try to advance to second base. You might not even realize you’re thinking this. It’s just the natural timing of the sport. Long throw, cutoff man missed — how in the world is the catcher going to attempt a tag and then find a way to get the ball down to second base? It just doesn’t happen.

Or, well, it’s not supposed to happen. But Carlos Narváez doesn’t care what heuristics are stored in your brain:

What a weird play. The Red Sox correctly played to prevent the runner from scoring, and that let Wilmer Flores round first and get a great look at the play at the plate to see if he should advance. Right around this point, Narváez seemed to have no shot at throwing out Flores:


Read the rest of this entry »


The Bigness of the Modern Pitcher Is Out of Control and I Can No Longer Abide It

Benny Sieu and Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

Like most people with an MLB.tv account and no serious responsibilities, I spent a large portion of Wednesday afternoon watching the Pirates-Brewers game. This midweek businesspersons’ special featured one of the most hotly anticipated starting pitching matchups of the season so far: Paul Skenes vs. Jacob Misiorowski.

Skenes, as you know, possesses such electrifying talent it became possible for a Pittsburgh Pirate to become one of the most famous ballplayers in the league. Misiorowski is just three starts into his big league career, but already his prodigious fastball velocity has made him a hipster favorite in baseball circles. Skenesian mainstream celebrity is sure to follow. Read the rest of this entry »


Shane Baz Addresses His December 2017 FanGraphs Scouting Report

Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

The path Shane Baz took to Tampa Bay’s starting rotation was anything but uneventful. He was drafted 12th overall in 2017 by the Pirates out of Concordia Lutheran High School in Tomball, Texas, where Ke’Bryan Hayes, Glenn Otto, and Adam Oller also played. The following summer, he was dealt to the Rays in a trade Pirates fans are loathe to remember. The Bucs acquired Chris Archer, while the Rays received Baz, Tyler Glasnow, and Austin Meadows.

Baz went on to make his major league debut in September 2021, and six months later he topped our 2022 Tampa Bay Top Prospects list. Then his elbow began barking. The right-hander subsequently underwent Tommy John surgery, and didn’t toe the rubber for the Rays between July 2022 and July of last year. He’s been solid since returning from his two-year recovery. Over 162 innings — including 82 2/3 this season — Baz has an 11-6 record to go with a 3.94 ERA.

What did Baz’s scouting report look like when he ranked third on our 2018 Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects list, which was published the previous December? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric Longenhagen wrote and asked Baz to respond to it.

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“Baz had among the most electric stuff in the 2017 draft. He was up to 98 in the spring, sitting in the mid-90s for most of his starts while also producing the best fastball spin rates in the draft class.”

“That was the big thing at the time,” replied Baz, who has made 15 starts and won seven of 10 decisions — albeit with a 4.79 ERA and 4.83 FIP — in the current campaign. “Everybody was talking about spin rate. I didn’t really know much about it, so I definitely wasn’t worried about it. I was mostly worried about trying to get the ball over the plate. But I do feel like I had good stuff when I got drafted. I was up to 97-98 [mph] and trying to live around 94-96. It was mostly about honing it in.”

“Baz can also spin a power breaking ball and throw a nasty cutter.”

“Yeah, I had a cutter at the time,” the righty recalled. “That’s a pitch I’ve kind of put in the back pocket, but it was a go-to back then, more so than my curveball was. My cutter kind of turned into a bigger slider, and now I’m throwing the curveball more.

“That happened more post-surgery,” Baz added. “I started throwing my curveball so hard that the two pitches were kind of running together. You want the one with more movement, so I stuck with the curveball.”

“Some scouts noted his heater was more hittable than they anticipated given its velocity.”

“At the time, probably,” the righty responded. “I mean, I don’t really remember how I pitched my first year of pro ball. It was awhile ago, so I don’t really know.”

“Baz is a tightly wound, but athletic, 6-foot-3 with a good build and room for more weight as he ages.”

“Yeah, I would say that trying to put on weight was a big thing at the time,” Baz said. “That and get stronger. I feel I’ve done a good job of that. I was probably 180 pounds when I came out of high school, and now I’m around 205 or 210. Another thing I was trying to do was working on making my delivery simple.”

“His head-whacking delivery toes the line between explosive and erratic, and he sometimes struggles to throw strikes.”

“That’s not too far off,” the Houston-born hurler said. “It’s gotten a lot better. Obviously, the more consistent you can make your delivery, the more you’re going to command the ball. So yeah, I would say that was accurate at the time. I did have [a head whack]. Back then, I just wanted to throw as hard as I could. I didn’t care about things like longevity, consistency, or the delivery.”

“That will need to improve for Baz to avoid an eventual move to the bullpen… Even if that’s where Baz ends up, his stuff is such that he’s a likely late-inning arm.”

“I think any way I could have gotten to the big leagues, I would have done it,” Baz said. “I was a catcher as a sophomore. I mean, growing up I was always told to try to help the team win in any way I can. That’s how I’ve always looked at it.”

“Baz also played the infield in high school.”

“I was told that as a position player I could go somewhere around rounds three to five,” recalled Baz, who bypassed a commitment to Texas Christian University to sign with the Pirates. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was going to go to college as a two-way player. I don’t know where I would have ended up playing. I mostly played infield in high school, but with the arm and the speed, I probably would have ended up in the outfield.

“I took the two-way thing seriously. It was back before [Shohei] Ohtani and [Michael] Lorenzen — guys like that who could do both — but I definitely thought about it. But not a lot of teams wanted both, even to try doing both, so I decided to just stick to pitching. Would I do it now? I think that ship has sailed at this point.”

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Previous “Old Scouting Reports Revisited” interviews can be found through these links: Cody Bellinger, Matthew Boyd, Dylan Cease, Matt Chapman, Erick Fedde, Kyle Freeland, Max Fried, Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, Ian Happ, Jeff Hoffman, Tanner Houck, Matthew Liberatore, Sean Newcomb, Bailey Ober, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Joe Ryan, Max Scherzer, Marcus Semien.


Oneil Cruz Looks Like a Center Fielder Now

Philip G. Pavely-Imagn Images

Two months ago, I checked in on Oneil Cruz, the center fielder. Things weren’t exactly going well. The Pirates shifted Cruz from shortstop to center at the end of the 2024 season, and the early returns were so discouraging I felt the need to write about the experiment just 17 games into the 2025 season. Here’s where the numbers stood at that point:

Cruz is currently sitting on -8 DRS, -2 OAA and FRV, and -0.1 DRP. Among all outfielders, those numbers respectively rank worst, third worst, fourth worst, and fifth worst. The advanced defensive metrics work on different scales and they often disagree, but on this point they are unanimous: Cruz has been one of the very worst outfielders in all of baseball this season. According to DRS, Cruz is the least-valuable defender in baseball, full stop.

There’s great news, though. Last week, reader AJ wrote into our newly introduced mailbag to ask for an update, because Cruz’s stats look totally different now. I decided the turnaround was worthy of a full article instead of a few paragraphs. I’ve broken everything down with my first article as the dividing line. There’s a chasm between Cruz’s first 17 games and his last 48.

Oneil Cruz’s Defensive Turnaround
Date DRS DRP OAA FRV
Through April 17 -8 -0.1 -2 -2
Since April 18 +3 +0.5 +4 +5
Season Total -5 +0.4 +2 +3

Deserved Runs Prevented is inherently more conservative than the other defensive metrics, but all of the advanced numbers agree Cruz has completely turned things around over the past two months. He hasn’t just stopped racking up negative numbers, he’s dug himself all the way out, grading as a net positive in every metric except Defensive Runs Saved. Over the past two months, they pretty clearly see him as one of the better defenders in the league. Put that together with career-best hitting and baserunning numbers, and Cruz is on pace for a career year. Read the rest of this entry »


When War Comes Easier Than Wins

Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

The Pirates beat the Phillies 2-1 on Sunday, and near as I can tell everyone was pissed about it. The Phillies, a would-be World Series contender, had just gotten swept by a team they’d been hoping to do some damage against, and dropped to 1-9 in their previous 10 games. The Pirates, for their part, had just gotten one over (three over, actually) on their intrastate rival, but Paul Skenes didn’t get the win.

The biggest, scariest pitcher in the league had gone 7 2/3 innings, allowing only one unearned run, but had left the game while it was tied in the top of the eighth. That left the NL Cy Young frontrunner with an ERA of 1.88 in 91 innings, but a record of just 4-6. Is it important for Skenes to get the win? Not exactly. But the incongruity between record and performance was just another reminder of how little support this disappointing team is giving the generational talent that had fallen into its lap.

Skenes is the class of the Pirates rotation, but he’s not the only talented pitcher the Bucs have. Even with Jared Jones and Johan Oviedo in the shop getting their elbows worked on, Mitch Keller is having a solid season. Keller is top 25 in the league in innings and WAR, and despite some indifferent strikeout numbers, he’s kept the ball in the yard and scratched out a 4.13 ERA — that’s a 100 ERA- on the dot — with a 3.27 FIP. Read the rest of this entry »


Job Posting: Pittsburgh Pirates – Director Baseball Systems

Director – Baseball Systems

The Pirates Why
The Pittsburgh Pirates are a storied franchise in Major League Baseball who are reinventing themselves on every level. Boldly and relentlessly pursuing excellence by:

  • purposefully developing a player and people-centered culture;
  • deeply connecting with our fans, partners, and colleagues;
  • passionately creating lifetime memories for generations of families and friends; and
  • meaningfully impacting our communities and the game of baseball.

At the Pirates, we believe in the power of a diverse workforce and strive to create an inclusive culture centered in Passion, Innovation, Respect, Accountability, Teamwork, Empathy, and Service.

Job Summary
We are seeking a Director of Baseball Systems to lead and inspire a team of talented software and data engineers responsible for building and enhancing our internal baseball decision-making platform. This web-based system is a critical resource for players, coaches, analysts, and executives, driving people across the organization to make better decisions.

Responsibilities:

  1. Lead the development and evolution of our internal baseball systems, ensuring they are intuitive, reliable, and impactful.
  2. Lead a cloud data migration effort to build robust, reliable, and responsive data platforms.
  3. Build and maintain an effective product development process that fosters innovation, agility, and user-centered design.
  4. Manage and grow a team of software and data engineers with diverse expertise in front-end and back-end development, database management, cloud architecture, and system design.
  5. Collaborate closely with key stakeholders, including data scientists, analysts, coaches, and front-office personnel, to understand needs and align technological solutions with organizational goals.
  6. Drive technical strategy, ensuring the architecture and design decisions support scalability, performance, and future growth.
  7. Act as a champion for effective communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing within the team and across departments.
  8. Maintain a focus on delivering features and improvements that directly support the team’s competitive edge.

Key Traits We’re Looking For:

  1. Baseball Curiosity and Knowledge: You have a deep interest in baseball and understand how data and technology can influence strategy, player performance, and game outcomes.
  2. Technical Mastery: You have demonstrated experience in more than one of the following:
    • Front-end technologies (React, Angular, or similar frameworks).
    • Back-end development (Node.js, Python, etc.).
    • Database design and management (SQL, NoSQL, etc.).
    • Cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud).
    • System design, UX/UI principles, and software lifecycle management.
  3. Leadership & Management: You have a proven track record of mentoring, inspiring, and empowering teams to do their best work.
  4. Process Management: You have established and maintained a robust, repeatable product development process that balances innovation with efficiency.
  5. Communication & Collaboration: You have translated complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences and foster strong relationships across departments.
  6. Vision & Strategic Planning: You have a demonstrated knack for thinking ahead and aligning short-term projects with long-term goals, driving forward-looking innovation.

Requirements:

  1. Authorized to work lawfully in the United States.
  2. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
  3. Demonstrated experience building and supporting full-stack web applications, ideally in a sports or data-driven environment.
  4. A demonstrated passion for problem-solving, with a user-centered approach to product design.
  5. Demonstrated familiarity with Agile or similar development methodologies.

Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Pittsburgh Pirates.


Oneil Cruz Is Starting To Damage Low Pitches

Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

When I first started writing this piece, it began something like this: The results had yet to come for Oneil Cruz. But after a week of hitting lasers all over the park, Cruz’s wRC+ is up to 126, the highest mark of his career outside of his brief 2021 call-up. The 6-foot-7 outfielder’s titanic bat speed and explosiveness ignite stretches of truly incredible performance. His current hot streak and season-long numbers are a glimpse into what he can do with his talent, and they stand in contract with last season, when he had a 110 wRC+ and posted underwhelming numbers in the lower third of the strike zone for such a long limbed and powerful guy.

Back in January, I examined Cruz’s greatest strength: his ability to pound pitches at the top of the zone. Players with such long levers aren’t normally as productive at the top of the zone as Cruz was last season. His .496 xwOBA ranked third in all of baseball! If you left a pitch up there against him, you were vulnerable to some real pain. But being locked in in one part of the zone often means making sacrifices in another. It’s difficult to be versatile enough to command both the upper and lower thirds, and Cruz only ran a measly league average xwOBA in the bottom third (.319). That’s odd, though, because these are the types of pitches you’d expect somebody with his stature to drop their barrel under the ball with ease. When I wrote my January piece, one obvious conclusion was that if Cruz could preserve his upper-third excellence while doing more damage in a part of the zone that should mesh well with his physical abilities, then his batted ball profile would be fully unlocked. It’s still early, but Cruz’s .367 xwOBA in the lower third so far this season is a big improvement. Read the rest of this entry »