2021 Pittsburgh Pirates Rum Bunter Staff Prediction: Noah Wright

MVP and Rookie of the Year: Ke’Bryan Hayes

Last season Ke’Bryan Hayes set the league on fire when he got his call to the Majors in September. He only stepped to the plate 95 times, but he collected 32 hits and nearly half of which went for extra bases. 14 to be exact. He also had a 195 wRC+ and .464 wOBA.

Hayes is mostly known for his glove work at third base and where he had +5 DRS and an 8.9 UZR/150. Despite only playing 198.2 innings at the hot corner, he was third in National League DRS at the position. Only all-time great defender Nolan Arenado and third place NL MVP finisher Manny Machado surpassed him. Throughout a 162 game season, his overall contributions come out to nearly 11 fWAR.

Now granted, I doubt that Hayes can keep up an 11 fWAR pace. But that doesn’t mean he’ll be unproductive. Just for reference, Hayes’ expected slashline of .300/.375/.497 almost completely mirrors 2019 Ozzie Albies’ expected line of .295/.350/.497. They also had identical xwOBA’s of .356. Albies ended up hitting .295/.352/.500 with 43 doubles and 24 home runs.

Unlike Albies, however, Hayes ripped the cover off the ball when he made contact. Hayes’ average exit velocity was 92.8 MPH and his hard hit rate was above 50% at 51.4%. Hayes did hit a ground ball 47.7% of the time, but he started working on hitting more fly balls last spring and part of the issue may have just been a small sample size. While he was a solid hitter throughout the minors, it wasn’t his calling card.

Still, Hayes has improved his hit tool to a 60-future grade and 55-current grade on FanGraphs with at least average game and raw power. In comparison, he started out 2020 with a current hit grade of just 45 and 40-future game power grade. He’s also hitting a ton of hard hit baseballs and line drives in Spring Training so far. If Hayes can hit anywhere near where he’s expected to hit while becoming the one of, if not the best hot corner defender in all of baseball, he’ll easily win not just Pittsburgh Pirates Rookie of the Year, but National League Rookie of the Year. This would also easily make him the Pirates’ team MVP. He may even get some MVP votes as well (knock on wood).

Cy Young and Breakout Pitcher: Mitch Keller

This is going to be the year Mitch Keller finally gets a shot at somewhat of a normal season. There’s only one way to describe Keller’s career so far, and that would be weird.

Last season, Keller had a 2.91 ERA despite walking more batters than he struck out with a 16/18 K/BB ratio, surrendered 4 home runs in 21.1 innings, was below average in exit velocity and hard hit rate and none of his ERA estimators, that being FIP, xFIP, SIERA, DRA and xERA, had him as a pitcher with an ERA lower than 6.00. This was because of a .104 batting average on balls in play and 93.8% stranded rate.

Then you look at his 2019 season. Keller had a fantastic 28.6% strikeout rate, 7% walk rate, HR/9 of just 1.13 in the most homerun-laden season of all time, an above average exit velo and hard hit rate and all his ERA estimators pointing towards more of a 3.50-3.80 ERA pitcher. But a .475 BABip and 59.6% stranded rate led to an ERA of 7.13.

Keller is looking for normalcy in 2021 and I think he finally has it. Keller’s three primary pitches, a four-seam fastball, slider and curveball, are all above average pitches according to FanGraphs. Both his fastball and curveball are considered 55-grade offerings and his slider is seen as a 60-grade pitch. His change-up hasn’t looked great so far, but he has a 55-current/60-future command grade.

Plus, the last time Keller pitched at least 100 innings was at Triple-A in 2019. He tossed 103.2 innings while having a 3.56 ERA, 3.60 FIP, 1.24 WHIP, 28.2% strikeout rate, 8% walk rate, 0.78 HR/9 and 3.87 xFIP. Among all Triple-A pitches with at least 100 innings pitched, he was the league leader in FIP, xFIP, strikeout rate, was 5th in ERA, WHIP and the only stat he wasn’t among the top pitchers in was walk rate, but was still overall above average.

Breakout Position Player: Colin Moran

Colin Moran showed potential in each of his first two seasons as a Pittsburgh Pirates, but never did it consistently. In 2019, he had a .339 wOBA, 109 wRC+ and .189 isolated slugging percentage in the first half of the season. In the second half of 2018, he had a .327 wOBA and 103 wRC+.

However, last season, Moran put on his best display of power yet. Through 200 plate appearances, the corner infielder hit .247/.325/.472 with 10 home runs, a .340 wOBA and 113 wRC+. He put up his best ISO yet at .225. In comparison to 2018-2019, Moran only had a .142 ISO and 24 home runs through 968 plate appearances.

Moran’s big power spike was because of a spike in hard it rate and exit velocity. Last year, he was in the top 89th percentile in exit velo with a 91.9 MPH mark and in the top 86th percentile of hard hit rate with a 47.2% mark.

Now Moran’s power output came at the cost of his ability to make contact with his batting average dropping from .277 to .247. This also caused a rise in his strikeout rate going from 20.6% between his first two seasons as a Pirate to 26% in 2020. But he did start walking more with a 9.5% walk rate compared to just 7.1% in the two years prior.

I believe that Moran will finally put it all together next year as the Pirates’ primary first baseman, hitting somewhere in the realm of .260/.340/.480 with 20-25 home runs. That would be similar production to the 2019 performances of Paul Goldschmidt and Christian Walker for a comparison.

Strongest Position: Bullpen

The Pittsburgh Pirates had one of baseball’s best bullpens between 2013 and 2015 and I think this will be their biggest strength by the end of 2021. The Pirates have many different notable relievers coming up through the system.

Nick Mears is ranked as the Pirates’ best relief prospect with David Bednar coming in behind him, the ladder of whom has looked out of this world great in Spring Training. Then there’s flame throwing right-handed reliever Blake Cederlind. Luis Oviedo retains his Rule 5 Draft status after the trade to the Pirates and will look to secure a high leverage role. All four are within the Pirates’ top 35 prospects on FanGraphs.

The Pittsburgh Pirates also have some notable young relievers outside of their top prospect lists. Lefties Blake Weiman and Braeden Ogle could be in the majors before the end of the season. Another young reliever we could see before the end of 2021 is Yerry De Los Santos, one of the Pirates’ top 50 prospects on FanGraphs.

The Pirates have a large option of potential long relief/swingman type pitchers like Cody Ponce, Wil Crowe and JT Brubaker who may see some time out of the bullpen. They have a ton of bounce back or breakout candidates too in Edgar Santana, Clay Holmes, Michael Feliz and Geoff Hartlieb.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have a ton of potential coming up through the system for the bullpen and we’ll likely see a good portion of it make an impact in 2021. This, to me, makes it their biggest strength going into the season.

Weakest Position: Second Base

One of the Pirates’ best prospects is a second baseman, that being the 7th overall selection in 2020’s draft, Nick Gonzales. But for now, I think it will be the weakest position for the Pittsburgh Pirates throughout most of the 2021 season.

Adam Frazier will likely start out the year at second base. Frazier is a plus defender. The two time Gold Glove finalist has +3 DRS, 2.1 range runs above average and 5.1 UZR/150 in the past two seasons. Plus he’s been among the league’s best in outs above average. However, he can be inconsistent with the bat at times.

Frazier only had an 80 wRC+ and .291 wOBA throughout 2020, but got off to a cold start (.245 wOBA, 50 wRC+) to finish on a high note throughout the rest of the second half (111 wRC+, .338 wOBA). Even then, the chances that Frazier is traded are high.

If that happens, then Kevin Newman likely takes over at the keystone. Newman looked good on the surface in 2019 with a .308/.353/.446 line and 109 wRC+, but he rarely made hard contact with a 24.8% hard hit rate (bottom 6% in the league) and had an average exit velocity of 85.3 MPH (bottom 5% of the league). Things weren’t much better in 2020 with an 85.5 MPH exit velo and 28.3% hard hit rate. Plus he’s never been that big of a hitter in the minors. His career minor league numbers include a .730 OPS, .100 isolated slugging percentage and .325 wOBA.

Newman is a negative defender at shortstop, but looked decent at second base in 2019. Through 157.2 innings, the infielder had +2 DRS, 1.9 UZR and .8 range runs above average. But in 2020, those fell to -1 DRS, -.8 UZR/150 and 0 range runs above average through a very similar amount of innings, 159 to be exact.

I do believe that Phillip Evans will eventually become the regular secondbaseman, but overall, the position has the shallowest depth. Frazier isn’t going to be around very much longer and the Pirates can’t rely on Kevin Newman to rebound.

My Final Thoughts

The 2021 Pittsburgh Pirates aren’t going to be a good team, but that’s to be expected for an organization in the middle of a rebuild. However, how the major league team performs overall isn’t nearly as important as how their top prospects and other young players develop and perform.

The Pirates have many top prospects coming up through the system. Aside from Hayes, the development of Oneil Cruz, Quinn Priester, Liover Peguero, Travis Swaggerty, Tahnaj Thomas, Hudson Head, 2020 first round pick Nick Gonzales and many more are going to be the main focus of this upcoming season.

This will also be a season for the Pittsburgh Pirates to determine who is part of the long term future and who isn’t. Fringe players like Newman, Cole Tucker, Anthony Alford and a handful of relief pitchers will likely get a shot at the major league level to prove themselves.