Pittsburgh Pirates: What To Be Thankful For This Year

The Front Office Has A Plan

Now, this may not sound like much. The Pirate front office has a plan? Well, great! Every front office in professional sports should have a plan. Well, the thing is, for the final few years of the Neal Huntington Era it did not appear that the Pittsburgh Pirates had a plan.

After Huntington traded away McCutchen and Gerrit Cole prior to the start of the 2018 season, the team should have committed to a full rebuild. Instead, they kept other trade chips such as Starling Marte and were stuck in the middle. This issue became worse when the Pirates sold the farm to acquire Chris Archer at the 2018 trade deadline.

From the time he arrived in Pittsburgh, general manager Ben Cherington has had a plan. That plan? Rebuilding the Pirates.

Cherington quickly traded Marte to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Liover Peguero and Brennan Malone. Both Peguero and Malone are now top 10 prospects in the Pirate farm system, and Peguero is a top 100 prospect in baseball.

This offseason, it appears that Cherington will be busy continuing his rebuild. While a rebuild is never fun in the moment, in the long run they tend to pay off for a ball club. With Cherington’s track record of acquiring/developing talent, Pirate fans should be confident in this rebuild. They should also be thankful to once again have a general manager with a clear, concise plan.