On its face, the Pirates’ signing of Corey Hart this winter was a pretty uninspiring move for all the obvious reasons: Hart missed all of 2013 with knee problems and was awful with the Mariners in 2014. He probably can’t play the outfield anymore, which limits him to first base, which makes him substantially less interesting than he otherwise might be. If you had asked me about him on December 18th, I would’ve had to take a minute to remember that he was still in baseball, then told you he probably would get a non-roster invite to someone’s spring training. On December 19th, the Pirates gave him a $2.5 million big league deal.
There are a lot of places where this seems like it could go wrong for the Pirates. The Pirates might need a right fielder at some point this year, because Gregory Polanco isn’t quite a sure thing and his immediate and most logical backup, Andrew Lambo, is even further from a sure thing than Polanco is. By most indications, though, Hart’s knees probably won’t let him play the outfield anymore. That means that Hart’s primary job is to back up Pedro Alvarez at first base. Hart is a year further removed from his most recent productive season than Alvarez is.
As far as I can tell, there’s one reason that the Pirates are rolling the dice with Hart: even though he’s got a bit of a platoon split, he hits right-handed pitching well. I wrote about this a couple of times over the winter, but Gaby Sanchez is sort of a baseball unicorn: a right-handed hitter that can only play first base and can only hit left-handed pitching is contextually useful, but that particular context is awfully small. Hart obviously isn’t a sure thing with all of his health problems and struggles of late, but there is a possibility that if Pedro Alvarez stumbles at first base or ends up on the disabled list, Hart could be a capable every day first baseman. That was never really true of Sanchez, even in his best years with the Pirates.
This is, of course, all predicated on Hart being able to produce at the plate this year. Thanks to a weird spring training injury (he cut his foot in a hot tub), he’s only got four Grapefruit League plate appearances, but the Pirates have certainly constructed themselves in a way that would lead you to conclude that they think Hart is fine. Hart is really the only right-handed first base option and besides Jung-Ho Kang, he’s likely to be the only right-handed pinch-hitting option that isn’t a light-hitting utility infielder. A healthy Corey Hart will give the Pirates a pretty deep bench; an unhealthy one will create a hole that will likely be obvious right out of the gate.
<500 is an ongoing series previewing 2015 for each key Pirate in fewer than 500 words
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