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.

Luis Oviedo Becomes A Long Term Building Block For The Bullpen

Rarely do Rule 5 Draft picks work out. Most of the time, it’s a low risk chance a team takes on a player who they eventually release or return sometime throughout the next season. It is not often a team will find a long term, highly reliable player, but I do think the Pittsburgh Pirates may have found one with right-handed pitcher Luis Oviedo.

Oviedo was picked by the New York Mets from the Cleveland Indians 9th pick in the draft, but was quickly shipped off to Pittsburgh. Despite being traded, Oviedo still retains Rule 5 draft status. During his 2019 season, the right-hander pitched with the Indians’ Single-A team putting up a 5.38 ERA, 4.41 FIP and 1.379 WHIP in 87 innings. While the right-hander did struggle, it was only a year ago he put up much better numbers and even reached some top 100 prospect lists.

In the season prior, Oviedo had a 2.05 ERA, 2.44 FIP and 0.98 WHIP in 57 innings at Low-A and High-A. To go with his good bottom line numbers, he also had a 29.9% strikeout rate, 7.6% walk rate and 0.5 HR/9. This earned him the 93rd spot on Baseball America’s top 100 prospects lists to start 2020.

Ovideo’s fastball works in the 90-94 MPH range, but he has been clocked in the upper-90’s, peaking at 98 MPH. It’s a pitch that could be a 60-grade pitch according to FanGraphs. His secondary pitch is a curveball. This is a 55-grade offering according to Pipeline. His curveball saw major improvements in 2019 and his change-up showed a decent amount of potential before that. He’ll also throw a slider, which is another pitch that is seen as an average to above average pitch.

A move to the bullpen would help Oviedo’s stuff play up. He may see a small uptick in velcoity while a potential improvement to his breaking pitches. He’s going into his age-22 season and I think he could eventually find himself in talks to be one of the Pirates’ late inning arms by the end of 2021.