Since the Charlie Morton trade almost a week ago, we’ve all been wondering who the Pirates would sign/acquire to fill the hole that Morton’s exit created in the rotation. Today, we get our answer: they’ve re-signed Ryan Vogelsong. Yes, seriously.
Vogelsong, of course, has had quite the itinerant career; he was drafted by the Giants in 1998, then traded to the Pirates as part of the Jason Schmidt trade in 2001. He flashed good stuff with the Bucs, but was unable to harness it in any sort of effective fashion and so he headed to Japan after hitting free agency when the 2006 season ended. He spent 2007, 2008, and 2009 in Japan, where he didn’t pitch particularly well. In 2010, he pitched in the Phillies’ system. In 2011, he returned to the Giants, and was one of the most improbable All-Stars in recent memory. Since 2011, he’s been a relatively reliable back-of-the-rotation guy in San Francisco; he averages about 160 innings a year with a 3.89 ERA.
He doesn’t fit the Pirate profile of being a groundball guy so much, but his fastball did average its highest velocity since 2011 last year after a few years of decline. As usual, the caveat with the Pirates is that they tend to see things in pitchers that no one else sees, which is how they’ve built a useful rotation these last few seasons. That said, Vogelsong is not particularly durable and he hasn’t pitched well in last couple of years and he’ll be 39 before the 2016 season ends.
All of which is to say that while I give the Pirates the benefit of the doubt when it comes to pretty much any pitcher, it’s really hard to be excited about Ryan Vogelsong in any role other than “very short-term starter,” and if you assume that the rotation is set at Cole/Liriano/Niese/Vogelsong/Locke, well, that suddenly gives 60% of the starts to Niese/Vogelsong/Locke when their biggest issue last on the whole team was 30% of the starts going to Morton and Locke. It seems to me that that exacerbates the problem rather than solving it, at least until Tyler Glasnow and company are ready to go.
I don’t want to assume that the Pirates are done making moves this off-season, because there’s obviously time left before spring training and trades can be made at any point in the winter, even after the free agent pool dwindles. I haven’t seen a dollar figure associated with Vogelsong yet, but the Pirates’ payroll was estimated to be at about $90 million before they signed him (counting arbitration costs, which are obviously a bit uncertain). I’ve seen $105 million kicked around as the figure the Pirates wanted to spend in 2016 (I can’t find the source for that now, but it’d be about in line with what you’d expect given their payrolls in recent years and though obviously you could argue that they could be spending more, going over $105 million starts to get into theoretical arguments that go in circles), and obviously Vogelsong won’t cost them $15 million (I would guess he’ll be in the ~$5 million range), which means that there’s certainly room left for them to do something else.
There’s not a ton of room, though, and so we do have to start considering that there aren’t many major moves left for the Pirates to make this winter. I suspect that this Pirate team is already better than some people think, for reasons like I gave in the introduction to the Alen Hanson post from the other day, but I think that this roster as currently constructed counts a lot more on Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell to put them over the top than I’d like it to. Vogelsong is a perfectly fine acquisition for the Pirates if he starts until June or July and then goes into a Joe Blanton swingman role after that. For that to happen, though, Glasnow has to be ready at the earliest possible date, and then either Jeff Locke has to pitch well (to move Vogelsong out of the rotation) or Jameson Taillon has to also be ready after nearly two years off due to injuries. It also means that Francisco Liriano can’t have any Francisco Liriano funks that knock him out for a short stint, that Jon Niese has to live up to everyone’s assumption that Ray Searage can fix him, that Gerrit Cole has to continue to be a healthy ace, and so on and so forth. The same thing goes in the infield; Mike Morse at first base while Jung Ho Kang gets healthy is fine and Jason Rogers is worth an experimental run, but if Rogers struggles, that suddenly puts a ton of pressure on Bell to be a very good hitter very quickly.
He may well might be able to do that, just like Glasnow and Taillon very well may be ready and able to slot right into the rotation, but the Pirates as constructed seem to me like they’re leaning on those three quite a bit. Understaffed and leaning on rookies with money unspent would be a disappointing place for the Pirates to open 2016 to me. That doesn’t mean they’ll have a bad year or even that they can’t make the playoffs in 2016, but as I wrote earlier this winter, they only get so many seasons with McCutchen, Cole, and Marte together and they should value each one of them. Keeping that in mind, I hope there’s more in store for the Pirates this winter.
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