The Pirates’ winter-long quest to find a left-handed hitting first baseman finally came to an end yesterday evening, when the team announced that they’d signed John Jaso to a two-year deal. Jaso has spent most of his career catching and DHing with the Rays and A’s to this point, but he’s had enough serious concussion issues that it’s unlikely that he ever goes behind the plate again.
For all of his health issues, Jaso has always had a reputation as a very good hitter in the exact opposite way of Pedro Alvarez; he doesn’t have much power, but gets on base a ton and hardly ever strikes out. For his entire career, he’s drawn 234 walks against 272 strikeouts in 1858 plate appearances. That gives him a .361 OBP that goes up to .371 if you only count back to 2012 (which throws out his career low .298 OBP in 2011). He’s never been much of a power hitter, but he did slug over .450 in both 2012 and 2015 despite not hitting a ton of homers in either season (last year, for example, he had 17 doubles in just 216 PAs).
The Pirates’ calculation here seems pretty clear: they think that by putting him at first base, they can keep him on the field. They also obviously think he can learn first base, since he’s barely ever played there in his career. Most players can learn first base, of course, but the Pirates learned last year that not all of them can. Assuming that Jaso can stay healthy and play first base at a minimally acceptable level (neither of which is a given, to be clear), he’ll almost certainly contribute more to the Pirates than Pedro Alvarez has the last two years. Since 2012, he’s hitting at a .273/.373/.431 clip and his ZiPS forecast sees more of the same in his future. The Pirates have both Mike Morse and Jason Rogers to keep him away from lefties (he really cannot hit lefties at all), so this seems like a worthwhile risk in the pre-Josh Bell era and a worthwhile bench bat to keep around, should Bell start paying big dividends in the near future.
The off-season change in approach for the Pirates is pretty clear here: Pedro Alvarez struck out 131 times last year and Neil Walker struck out 110 times. The Pirates lose a bunch of home runs with them out of the lineup, but they’re trading it for contact and, at least at first base, more on base abilities. I’m not really sure that having Josh Harrison at second, Jaso/Morse/Rogers at first, and Rogers/Sean Rodriguez as utility men is worse than having Walker at second, Alvarez/Morse at first, and Harrison/Rodriguez as utility guys (you could make a pretty strong argument that it’s better, though a lot depends on the unknowns of Jaso’s health and defensive abilities), but it’s definitely a very different approach.
The Pirates also claimed Yoervis Medina from the Cubs off of waivers yesterday and he seems like a pretty perfect Pirate bullpen project; Medina had two really good years as a reliever for the Mariners where he threw hard, got a bunch of ground balls, walked a bunch of people, and struck out more. He was traded from the Mariners to the Cubs last year for Wellington Castillo, and he struggled with control all year, both in Triple-A and the big leagues. Given all of the indicators (velocity, ground balls, etc.) he seems like someone the Pirates will be able to straighten out.
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