When your job is to write about everybody, you’re allowed to have a favorite team. Still, you need to be objective, and it’s bad form to write about that team too often. So a workaround is writers will identify favorite players and favorite themes. A favorite FanGraphs player and theme is Mike Trout. You might’ve noticed. But I personally have my own assortment of favorites, and among them is the super-weird Vance Worley. I love any opportunity to write about him, and wouldn’t you know it? Worley’s back, and he’s thriving like he did when he was a rookie. Worley isn’t a guy who used to be fascinating. Worley is a guy who’s back to being fascinating.

And you’ll remember the Pittsburgh Pirates got him pretty much for free. There’s an argument to be made that Worley’s been the best starter on the team, and while he’s not the most talented starter on the team, the numbers are compelling. Worley’s certainly been good enough to have fit with the Minnesota Twins, which dealt him in March. Vance Worley now is doing what he used to do, only now he’s doing things even better. And now he’s in a perfect situation for success.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in early June, I wrote about Pittsburgh’s impending recall of Gregory Polanco, with the viewpoint that while he would be a welcome upgrade over Travis Snider and Jose Tabata in right field, he wasn’t going to single-handedly save the Pirates’ season, since he wasn’t a pitcher.

Or as I put it at the time:

They were the worst in April. They were the worst in May. If you prefer RA9-WAR rather than FIP-based WAR, it’s 27th. If you like FIP, they’re 29th. ERA has them at 15th, which is something. You’d have to do some serious contorting to make the argument that the Pirates have anything other than a considerably below-average pitching staff.

Which was true! Even taking into account a much better June, the first-half Pirates pitching situation wasn’t much to be proud of, ranking either last or in the bottom third, depending on whether you like your WAR based on FIP or RA9. Though the offense, even with Polanco’s fade and Andrew McCutchen’s absence, has generally been outstanding, the pitching wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain, especially compared to how good they had been last season.

It wasn’t hard to see why, really. Francisco Liriano had taken a step back, and Gerrit Cole hadn’t taken the expected step forward. A.J. Burnett was gone, and Edinson Volquez wasn’t exactly matching Burnett’s 2013. Wandy Rodriguez had been a disaster. So had Jason Grilli. Jameson Taillon blew out his arm, taking a possible reinforcement out. The Pirates haven’t been in first place since April 8, and with the Brewers surging, the season was quickly fading. At one point in late June, they were one game over .500 and eight games out.

GM Neil Huntington’s solution to the pitching crisis was, let’s say, muted. Rodriguez was released in May, and reliever Bryan Morris was sent to the Marlins for a competitive balance pick on June 1. Grilli went to the Angels on June 27 for Ernesto Frieri; Grilli has excelled in Anaheim, while Frieri contributed 14 awful outings and was released three weeks ago. John Axford, who had lost his closing job in Cleveland, arrived in an August waiver trade. That’s it. Really.

There was no David Price, or Jon Lester, or Jeff Samardzija, or Jason Hammel, though calls existed in certain areas — including here, probably — that said the Pirates would be the perfect home for any of them. If there was to be improvement, it was going to have to be with what they had laying around.

Now, there’s less than a week left in the season. The Pirates have allowed six runs in their last seven games, have had one of the best run prevention units in baseball in the second half, and are all but certain to play the Giants in the wild card game next week. They still have an outside shot at unseating the Cardinals for the NL Central division title. This is better. Read the rest of this entry »

Who is the best reliever in baseball over the last two years? If we made a list, the usual suspects would shoot straight to the top. Craig Kimbrel is a given, Koji Uehara was essentially unhittable for one calendar year, Kenley Jansen skews “untouchable” and Aroldis Chapman is in his own world. Greg Holland and Wade Davis surely jump to mind without much searching, Sean Doolittle and David Robertson deserve attention for their high-leverage work.

There is one reliever that is conspicuously absent from that list (because I excluded him!) but since the start of the 2013 season, this closer boasts some unbelievable numbers. Pitching to 41 ERA- (fifth best among qualified relievers) and a 51 FIP- (third) while posting roughly 5 RA9-WAR and 4 fWAR, both of which place him among the elite stoppers in baseball.

The reliever in question is Mark Melancon, the setup guy-come-closer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Melancon went from being well-traveled to a brief sting in AAA to become the very best of a stout group of relievers holding the Pirates in the playoff race for the second straight season.

Read the rest of this entry »

John Holdzkom made his major league debut a little over a week ago, in relief for the Pirates in a losing effort against the Cardinals. As he faced his first batter — a showdown he’ll either remember forever or forget in an instant — the St. Louis broadcast got to talking. Said Rick Horton:

I asked our friends in the broadcast team for the Pirates what they could tell me about Holdzkom, and their answer was, we’ve never heard of him. […] We understand he has a palmball.

That’s two things. That’s a quote that says a little about John Holdzkom. It’s also a quote that says everything about John Holdzkom. Holdzkom has followed an impossible path, and now he stands as the only known pitcher throwing a palmball in the bigs.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2013, Andrew McCutchen was the best player in the National League, and he was rewarded with the NL Most Valuable Player award. In 2014, he and a few others are essentially even for the title of “best NL player,” non-pitcher division, at least among those who were healthy and not on awful teams. (Caveats included because Troy Tulowitzki has been outstanding, but doesn’t have much impact on the pennant race, is on the disabled list and has almost no chance of winning the MVP.) Combine the two years, and he’s easily been the best that the National League has to offer, and although the defensive metrics don’t seem to like him as much this year, he’s out-performing his 2013 on offense, thanks to some additional power.

On Sunday, he injured his left side, with scary statements like “he needed help from someone else to just zip up the travel bag at his feet” tossed around; he’s likely to be placed on the 15-day disabled list, and could miss several weeks in total. At the time this was all coming out before Tuesday’s loss to Miami (note: this was mostly written before the loss and not updated since the idea is to include McCutchen’s full absence, not one game into it), the Pirates were 1.5 games out of first place in the NL Central, but still only in third, since the Cardinals are in second ahead of them. They were a half-game behind the Giants for the second wild card spot, and just 1.5 games ahead of Atlanta in that chase.

Wins could not be more valuable to the Pirates than they are right now, and they just lost one of the five best players in the game. This is really, really bad. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pittsburgh Pirates don’t have much of a recent history of buying. This is because the Pirates don’t have much of a recent history of winning. But the team was somewhat active during each of the past two seasons. In the middle of 2012, the Pirates added guys like Wandy Rodriguez, Gaby Sanchez and Travis Snider. In the middle of 2013, they added guys like Marlon Byrd, Justin Morneau, John Buck and… Robert Andino? The Pirates were happy to make some tweaks, but they didn’t want to do anything too big, because they’ve been thinking longer-term. They haven’t been positioned to give up prospect talent.

Well, it’s 2014. And the Pirates are good again. They’ve been rumored to be in the mix for some smaller bits, but Tuesday brought word of a potential blockbuster:

The Pittsburgh Pirates are a fast-emerging dark horse in the Jon Lester sweepstakes, joining the Los Angeles Dodgers in pursuit of the Boston ace as the Red Sox decide whether to trade him before Thursday’s deadline, major league sources told Yahoo Sports.

Lester’s a big fish. Arguably the biggest fish out there. He’s also a rental fish, in whatever kind of market it is where you rent fish. The Pirates haven’t previously targeted moves like this, but this season not only are they in the mix — they seem like a perfect match. The Pirates check off all the boxes on the Jon Lester trade-partner checklist.

Read the rest of this entry »

At some point in the near future — perhaps even within the next 48 hours or so, if you believe Ken Rosenthal, which you probably should — the Pirates are going to finally make the move that their fans have been desperately waiting for and promote outfielder Gregory Polanco. If you’ve been following this situation at all, you know most of the background there. Polanco is 22, he’s tearing up Triple-A (.353/.412/.552), he’s reportedly a plus defensive outfielder, and when he teams with Andrew McCutchen & Starling Marte in Pittsburgh, it might just be the best defensive outfield in the game on day one. Considering that the primary Pirates right fielders have been Travis Snider (56 wRC+ when playing right), Jose Tabata (76) and Josh Harrison (a shocking 139 that belies his 78 career mark entering the year), Polanco’s presence will be a welcome reinforcement to a disappointing Pirates club — even if he isn’t likely to go all Yasiel Puig on the league immediately.

When he does, we’ll all marvel at his talent and laugh at the lip service the Pirates paid to him “not being ready” and complain that the silly “Super Two” rules provide incentives for teams to keep their best players in the minors, and we’ll all miss the greater point about the Pirates: other than a bit of better defense, Polanco isn’t going to change the fact that the pitching staff is really, really disappointing.

Like, this disappointing, not including last night:
Read the rest of this entry »

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
While he’s not remotely physically imposing, this little lefthander knows what he’s doing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
Black might have the most velocity of any minor leaguer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gregory Polanco is one of the very best prospects still in the minor leagues. He’s currently hitting .395/.444/.613 as a 22-year-old in Triple-A, and he was a consensus top prospect before he lit up the highest level of minor league pitching. The Pirates have a hole in right field, and Polanco could easily fill it, but he remains in the minor leagues instead.

GM Neal Huntington told Jon Heyman last week that the Pirates will call Polanco up when they deem that he’s ready for the big leagues, and are determined not to rush him too quickly.

Read the rest of this entry »