Diary of a long-suffering Pirates Fan: If you cannot believe in your team during Spring, when can you?

It’s the most common article in all of baseball.  The obligatory MLB pre-season prediction think piece.  But nowadays with new-fangled statistics and on-line betting forums, these prediction pieces are more analytical, more numbers-focused, and ho-hum more predictable.  Is there any media outlet not predicting that either the Dodgers, Braves, or Astros will win the World Series?  And is there any media outlet not predicting that the A’s, Pirates, and Nationals to finish last?  If you want to read that kind of think piece, you’ve come to the wrong place.  For me, it’s March.  And hope springs eternal.  Last year’s numbers tell last year’s stories; not this year’s.  And experts can tell me until their blue in the face that the Pirates will finish last.  But, I’m here to tell you.  This year, they’re wrong.  This year the Pirates are going to the World Series.  You can count on it just like Charlie Brown can count on Lucy letting him kick the football this year.

I’m often asked how I manage to hang in there year after year with the Pirates, knowing in your heart of hearts, that the baseball season is not likely to turn out well.  And the answer to that is:  “It’s  complicated.”  It’s a combination of unjust optimism, my love of the sport, and an unnatural and unhealthy desire to slow down to see the car wreck on the side of the road that is the Pirates that keeps me watching.

But it is also a creative thinking exercise I do every Spring where I completely and utterly buy into what the Pirates are selling.  It’s an exercise where I carefully consider the additions and subtractions to the Pirates roster the likely call-ups from the minors during the course of the season, and where there will be improvements over last year, and then armed with that information and the pre-season propaganda that the Pirates try to feed us every off-season (which basically can be summed up as “wait till next year,”), I concoct in my mind the Pirates path to the world series. Mind you, since 1980 the path I dream about every year is a path that never gets taken. It is not only the path not taken, it is a path, that in most years, never even exists.  But every spring I will my way to believing that a mythical path does exist and all it takes is for the Pirates to find the path and then to follow it to championship glory.

This is that 2024 path to world series glory for the Pirates.

PART TWO:  Pirates starting pitching will be impoved...maybe

The 2023 Pirates were 19-9 last April and in first place.  The Pirates team E.R.A. was sixth in the MLB in April.   In reviewing what went right in April, one only needs to look at the starting pitching.  The starting rotation was Keller, Hill, Oviedo, Velasquez, and Contreras. Contreras won three games in April and looked as if he might emerge as an ace.  Velasquez was equally impressive in April.  Of course, Keller and Oviedo were also strong in April and continued that throughout the season.  But what went right in April is also what went wrong.  The starting pitching fell apart.

Velasquez got hurt.  Contreras and Ortiz lost their effectiveness with both pitchers afflicted with a loss of velocity syndrome.  Unfortunately, there was no help in AAA that could save the day.  Help was called up.  Bido, Priester, Wolf, and Falter all took turns in the rotation with less than stellar results.  But the promise of that April start for the Pirates quickly descended into losing with regularity and another losing season resulted. And most of those losses were due to poor starting pitching.

The loss of Oviedo from the starting rotation due to off season surgery is a major blow to the 2024 edition of the Pirates.  The off-season acquisitions of Marco Gonzalez and Martin Perez have the feel of being a band-aid.  Once again the fortunes of the Pirates seem to be riding on Priester, Ortiz, and/or Contreras recapturing what had made them seem to be top prospects.  Those prospects are what has the national media claiming the Pirates will once again finish in last.  No starting pitching.

And yet the early spring training games are encouraging.  Priester, Ortiz, and even Contreras are showing signs of progress.  If they prove to be the pitchers that the Pirates envisioned them to be in the minors, then the Pirates season will be special.  Did I just use the word “if?”  Let me correct that.  Contreras, Ortiz, and Priester are all going to have great seasons.  It will be night and day from last year.  Velocity will be re-found.  And the baseball world will wonder, “Where did this come from?”

But whether they succeed or not; it doesn’t even matter.  Because, unlike last year, there is a plethora of pitching in the minors waiting to be called up.  There is so much pitching that, come next year, the Pirates may not know what to do with it all.  I would argue that the collection of pitchers stashed in AA and AAA may be the greatest collection of pitchers in Pirates’s history:  Skenes, Chandler, Jones, Solometo, Harrington, Meuth, Ashcraft, Barco, and Burrows.  These are just some of the arms that will deliver victories to the major league clubs in years to come.  And the first of those arms will likely arrive in 2024.

PART THREE:  Relief pitching will be good and the division stinks

Last year the relief pitching was good.  The key players from the bullpen last year are all coming back.  Plus the Pirates have added Aroldis Chapman.  I don’t need to expand on this here.  If the Pirates can take leads into the 7th inning and beyond, the bullpen should be able to preserve those leads.  On paper this looks to be the strength of the Pirates team.

The path to the World Series typically begins with a path to the division crown.  And in years past, when envisioning scenarios that have the Pirates winning the division, one hopes for a down year for the rest of the division such that the Pirates are able to somehow sneak through. The Pirates have never won the National League Central.  While the Pirates' futility through the years is to blame for that, so too is the fact that in any given year one of the Cubs, Brewers, Reds or Cardinals typically has a strong season.  There have been a few years when the entire division is experiencing a so-called down year. 

But this year the entire baseball world is predicting that the NL Central is ripe for the picking. The so-called experts say there are no strong teams in the division. It’s anyone’s (except the Pirates it seems) division to win. I do not share that view.  I believe the Cubs and the Reds will be much improved.  Which will make the road to the Division championship much harder.

On Paper the Pirates arguably have the best bullpen.  The Reds have the best-starting pitching.  And the Cubs are the best hitters.  How it plays out, we will have to see.  But just a hunch here.  The Cub's pitching is going to falter as the season wears on; while the Pirates' pitching is just going to get stronger.  The Reds pitching last year faltered down the stretch.  As did their hitters.  The Reds are said to have a deep prospect pool too.  The division, in my opinion, is going to come down to whose mid-season replacements will be better.  In years past that ain’t been the Pirates.  But this year it will be. 

With increased run production from the starting 9 and an infusion of pitching talent from the minors, the Pirates are poised to win the NL Central for the first time in history.  And from there, they will surprise everyone in the playoffs and make it to the World Series for the first time since 1979.  It is going to be a historic season.

You heard it here first.