We’re about to head into the after-dinner portion of the first day of the 2016 Winter Meetings, so I guess this is the latest possible moment to write a preview post about the Pirates at this year’s meeting. There have been plenty of rumors regarding the Pirates already — we know that they’re interested in Texas’s Mitch Moreland, and we know that they’re going to meet with Scott Kazmir’s party at some point this week. Both of these things roughly align with what know are the Pirates’ current needs: starting pitching, and a first baseman.
This part of the off-season is always a bit tricky for the Pirates, because costs tend to spiral out of control at the Winter Meetings (pitching is going to be particularly expensive this winter, if the contracts given to Price, Greinke, and Samardzija are any indicators) and while the Pirates certainly have needs, they don’t necessarily have holes, fifth starter aside. There is a perception that the Pirates need to open 2016 in a better place than they ended 2015, but this isn’t necessarily true: the Pirates need to end 2016 in a better position than they ended 2015, but the team will certainly evolve over the season. The last three Pirate Wild Card teams, and the last two in particular, have changed quite a bit over the course of the season. With Josh Bell and Tyler Glasnow in the minors and likely to earn chances at some point in 2016, the Pirates have to find a way this week to improve at their positions, but it’s unlikely that they’ll want to do it in a way that costs them a ton of money or prospects or has the potential to really block Bell or Glasnow next year. At the same time, they have to have some sort of contingency plan in place in case one or both players don’t pan out in the coming year.
This is not to say that I don’t think the Pirates should sit on their hands this week, of course, it’s just some table-setting. The reality is that the Pirates could change more this winter than they have since the beginning of their return to relevant baseball; Pedro Alvarez is already gone, and both Neil Walker and Mark Melancon could follow him out the door as soon as this week. I don’t think that a bit of re-focusing is bad, necessarily, and so I think this week will be an awfully instructive one.
The case of Walker, for instance, is interesting because the Pirates have had a ton of infield turnover the last few years. In 2013, Jordy Mercer took over from Clint Barmes at shortstop. In 2014, Josh Harrison unseated Pedro Alvarez at third. In 2015, Jung Ho Kang played his way into an every day position, depending on who was healthy. The Pirates have never had any stability at first base, shuffling from Garrett Jones to Gaby Sanchez and Ike Davis, to Alvarez and Sean Rodriguez and Mike Morse. Walker is pretty much the only constant and while I think the argument for trading him is strong (he’s in his walk year, his skillset doesn’t figure to age well, and he dropped off quite a bit at the plate from 2014 to 2015), it leaves an infield of Kang, Mercer, and Harrison, with Alen Hanson as the only alternative. I’d imagine that trading Walker, therefore, would be paired with the acquisition of another utility infielder. It would almost certainly have to be one with some upside, since there are plenty of questions about Harrison and Mercer, Kang’s recovery is still in-progress, and Hanson is quite an uncertain thing at this point.
Melancon’s case will be less interesting. We already know the Pirates are willing to trade a closer for just about any reason; they traded Joel Hanrahan before their 2013 Wild Card run, and they traded Jason Grilli in the middle of their 2014 run. In the case of Hanrahan, though, they were properly forecasting an incoming decline and in the case of Grilli, they were reacting to a dip in performance and guessing (rightly) that Grilli was likely not much of a long-term asset, even though he did right the ship after the 2014 trade. Melancon showed some red flags in 2015 (the early-season velocity dip, the low strikeout rate), but he’s probably a better bet in 2016 than Hanrahan was in 2014 or Grilli was in 2014/2015. What the Pirates do with him might depend on what the Dodgers send to the Reds in the reported Aroldis Chapman trade. Obviously Chapman’s more valuable than Melancon, but Melancon’s an excellent reliever in his walk year, just like Chapman, and the Pirates are constantly adding bullpen arms to absorb losing guys to trades or injuries.
All of this being said, I’ll reiterate what I said the other day: the only thing the Pirates have to do this winter is find more starting pitching. Obviously they could use help at first base, obviously they could trade Walker and/or Melancon, and they continue to have a deep enough minor league system to swing a BIG trade, should they be so inclined (they probably won’t be). They don’t need to do any of that, though. That’s not a bad place to be in; hopefully they can use it to their advantage.
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