I’m not sure any player validates the whole Neal Huntington front office approach quite as much as Jordy Mercer. That seems like a crazy place to start, so bear with me. Mercer was a third-round pick in 2008, drafted one round after Chase d’Arnaud (correction: Mercer was drafted one round before d’Arnaud, but I’ll hold to the statement that d’Arnaud was better-regarded, as their trips through the minors show) and generally slightly less-well regarded than d’Arnaud in the early part of his career. Mercer didn’t do much of anything in the low-minors besides build a reputation for a slick glove. In 2010, I was at spring training and saw him as one of the young guys in a nameless jersey at McKechnie Field. He looked about as graceful as a baby giraffe and I assumed that he’d never be a big leaguer of consequence. Five years later, he’s a starting shortstop. I think it says a lot about the organization that their starting shortstop was a mid-range draft pick that was never at any point a very highly regarded prospect. Talent can come from anywhere, if you look hard enough.
The larger question, of course, is just how functional of a Major League shortstop Mercer is. There’s some speculation that Jung-ho Kang has been signed as a potential long-term shortstop (my suspicion is that if he’s an every day player it’ll be as Neil Walker’s replacement, but that’s down the road), but Mercer’s performance the last two years has been good enough to make the job his to lose.
In 2013 and 2014 combined, Mercer has hit .267/.318/.406, which gives him a slightly above-average OPS. It comes out to a 100 wRC+, which means that once we involve the linear weights it’s dead average. In the last two seasons, there are only five shortstops in baseball with 900 plate appearances and an OPS+ of 100 or higher: Jhonny Peralta, Ian Desmond, Jed Lowrie, Jose Reyes, and Mercer. That’s it. You could probably argue for Mercer in either direction based on his performance the last two years: his 2014 numbers were dragged down by his awful season-opening slump (he had a .400 OPS on May 7th and hit .274/.326/.427 after), and his line and he’d probably be in line with Desmond without that slump, but he’s got a lot tied up in his batting average and the difference between 2013 and 2014 was mostly in BABIP (.330 in 2013 vs. a more average-looking .285 in 2014, which was in line with his .281 xBABIP), so there’s a decent chance that he’s a slightly below-average hitter instead of a slightly-above average one.
The larger point, though, is that if you have an average-hitting (relatively to the league) shortstop with an average or above-average glove (relative to the position), you’ve got yourself a good baseball player. Mercer’s defense is a little tough to sort out, both because of sample size and because of the Pirates’ shifts (he generally rated poorly in 2013 and well in 2014), but he seems solid enough there. In short, if Mercer can keep hitting like has for most of the last two years, there’s no reason to think of him as a guy that needs to be replaced.
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