Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Bold Predictions For 2021

Baseball is just around the corner, so I wanted to make a few bold predictions as to what happens to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2021.

As weird as the past year has been baseball is just around the corner. We’re in the final stretch of the offseason and we will start see baseball again later this month. This upcoming season for the Pittsburgh Pirates will be an interesting one to watch. While they’re not going to be contenders, we could see many of their young players eventually make it to the bigs.

However, like many fans, I want to make a few bold predictions as to what could happen throughout this next year. 2021 could be a big season for this rebuild and some weird stuff could happen. So let’s get into my first bold prediction for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2021.

Phillip Evans Becomes The Regular Second Baseman

Right now, Adam Frazier is on track to start at second base for the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, general manager Ben Cherington has heavily shopped him around all winter and even if he is still the Bucs’ primary second baseman to start the year, he likely will get traded at some point, especially if he gets off to a hot start.

If and/or when Frazier is traded, the Pittsburgh Pirates will likely turn to Kevin Newman to man second base. On the surface, Newman isn’t a bad candidate to take over regular duties at second. He hit pretty well during his rookie campaign posting a solid .308/.353/.446 line, .339 wOBA and 109 wRC+ in 531 plate appearances.

However, there’s a lot of concern with Newman’s bat once you look deeper into it. Newman’s career average exit velocity is just 85.1 MPH compared to the league average mark of 88.3 MPH. He also has posted a sub-25% hard hit rate in the past two seasons, including in 2019. The league average rate? 34.9%.

It also doesn’t help that he hits a ground ball nearly 50% of the time. He did have a workable .138 isolated slugging mark duing his rookie campaign, but his career minor league ISO was .100 showing that he was taking advantage of the juiced ball.

Newman heavily struggled in 2020 having just a .254 wOBA and 54 wRC+. He also isn’t a great defender at shortstop and struggled with the leather at the keystone as well in 2020. While he doesn’t strike out often, he barely walks either. Plus he only has an OPS of .734 at Triple-A.

On the other hand, you have utility man Phillip Evans. Evans was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates last offseason to a minor league deal and looked great in 2020. In 45 plate appearances, Evans collected 14 hits, three of which went for extra bases. He also had a strong 5/7 BB/K ratio. Evans has always had the talent to be a good hitter as he put up a .276/.356/.454 line at Triple-A in 1294 plate appearances.

Evans has plenty of experience at second base, having over 1300 professional innings logged at the position. Currently, Evans is set to open the year as the right-handed platoon partner for Colin Moran at first base while also serving as a utility man all around the field. However I think that he will continue hitting well in 2021 and with Newman’s struggles, he’ll overtake the primary role at second base.