These three players can make or break the Pirates' 2024 season

3. Oneil Cruz

You can probably count on one hand how many players have as much raw talent as the Pirates' shortstop. His immense talents are well-documented - in 2022, when he appeared in 87 of his 98 career games, he finished in the 90th percentile or higher in each of the following statistics: average exit velocity, barrel rate, arm strength, sprint speed, and baserunning Run Value.

It might not be fair to even try to put a ceiling on what Cruz could accomplish in a season. He has legitimate 40-40 potential, and even stated his desire to achieve that goal before the 2023 season.

A 40-homer season is definitely in play; he's Spring Training's current home run leader and the owner of the hardest-hit ball ever recorded, and his career MLB homer output (even while struggling to adjust to MLB pitching) prorates to 31 long balls in a 162-game season. His ankle injury likely will limit his aggressiveness on the basepaths, at least in the short term, but the skillset is still there, and he just recently described his ankle as being at "200 percent."

Cruz's struggles to this point in his career have come in two primary areas - plate discipline and throwing accuracy. His career strikeout rate against right-handed pitching is a touch high but still manageable at 26 percent. But against southpaws, it's a ghastly 51.6 percent. He destroys the ball when he makes contact, but needs to make significant improvements to his swing decisions.

And as for his arm, the strength is plus-plus, but the accuracy is an issue. Since 2021, 62 players have logged at least 500 innings at shortstop. Cruz's throwing error rate (throwing errors / throwing errors plus assists) is the sixth-highest at 4.49 percent, and everyone above him no longer plays shortstop. In 2022, The Fielding Bible registered Cruz's arm at minus-two runs saved despite his arm being (at the time) comfortably the strongest across the entire league at the position.

Between winter ball, Spring Training, and his nine games pre-ankle injury last season, Cruz appeared to show improvement in both of those areas, displaying a more disciplined eye at the plate as well as improved and smoother footwork at shortstop. Here's hoping a lost season of development doesn't completely negate the progress he made in those areas.

From April 10 (the day after Cruz's ankle injury) through the end of the season, Pittsburgh's shortstops slashed .239/.315/.390, good for a 90 wRC+ that topped only three teams in that span. Should Cruz miss significant time again, Liover Peguero, the current favorite to win the second base job and notable contributor to those aforementioned numbers, would likely slide over to take his place. Peguero has had a nice spring and should take a step forward in 2024, but the Pirates would once again sorely miss Cruz's bat.

2. Henry Davis

Davis is also off to a hot start at the plate this spring; he's tied for second in homers this spring with four. His first taste of MLB pitching last season was really the first time he's struggled offensively at any level, and he's worked tirelessly - both this spring and throughout the winter - to improve his craft behind the plate. But this has to work.

It's pretty set in stone at this point that Davis is going to catch, and he's probably going to catch quite a bit. But how we got to this point, quite frankly, is pretty unfortunate.

Despite being almost exclusively a catcher throughout his college and minor league careers, Davis spent all of two innings behind the dish in Pittsburgh last year. And just one of those innings came in the month and a half that he and catching guru Austin Hedges co-existed on the roster. The Pirates claimed that they intended to give Davis more looks behind the plate before a late-August thumb injury brought his rookie campaign to a halt.

The team's catching depth took a significant hit when fellow former top prospect Endy Rodriguez suffered an elbow injury in winter ball that required Tommy John surgery. The Bucs also came up short in their pursuit of free agent Gary Sanchez, who wound up with the divisional-rival Brewers. The resulting pivot netted the Pirates 35-year-old Yasmani Grandal, who has already contracted plantar fasciitis, hasn't played in over two weeks, and likely won't see game action for at least another.

With Grandal's status up in the air, the backup plan to Davis appears to be Jason Delay, who leads the team in games caught in each of the last two seasons. Delay hit a robust .390 in April 2023, but that figure was inflated by an unsustainable .417 BABIP. His .543 OPS after the month of April was 25 points lower than the career OPS of Austin Hedges, whose departure at the trade deadline was one of the highlights of the season in the eyes of many fans.

Davis' offensive ceiling puts him in pretty small company among his peers. Being a #1 overall draft pick just three years ago, he'll receive every opportunity to fulfill that potential. But if he can't stick behind the plate for whatever reason - and the concerns that he can't are valid - that puts this team in a really, really tough spot.

1. Mitch Keller

This was a no-brainer for me. But there are far fewer concerns about performance here than there are with Davis or Cruz. The Pirates' ace, who recently signed the largest contract the organization has ever given to a pitcher, has a 3.84 FIP in 353.1 innings spanning the past two seasons. But this isn't really about Mitch Keller.

Should he get hurt, this pitching staff would not represent that of a competitive ballclub. The Pirates have been ravaged by elbow injuries in the recent past (JT Brubaker, Vince Velasquez, and Mike Burrows last year, Johan Oviedo over the offseason, and Dauri Moreta this spring). None of that directly correlates to Keller, but pitcher injuries have been a common theme recently, and they're not currently built to withstand that if it were to happen to Keller.

The only other starting pitchers who are currently shoo-ins for the rotation are Martin Perez and Marco Gonzales. Perez lost his spot in the Rangers' rotation midseason last year after beginning his season with a 4.98 ERA in 20 starts. Gonzales pitched to a 5.22 ERA before suffering a season-ending nerve injury in his forearm that required surgery. Both have fine track records as MLB starters but neither should be anywhere near the top of a rotation.

Other rotation options include Roansy Contreras, Luis Ortiz, and Quinn Priester. All three entered 2023 as potential future top-of-the-rotation arms, yet all three struggled badly in Pittsburgh. That trio combined to post a 6.10 ERA in 205 innings in the majors in 2023. Not much confidence to be found here either.

Non-roster candidates include Chase Anderson, Wily Peralta, Eric Lauer, and the recently-signed Domingo German. Anderson started 17 games for the Rockies last year with an ERA of 5.75. He hasn't posted even league-average numbers since 2019. Peralta had a 6.31 ERA in 24 starts last season...for Triple-A Rochester. Lauer battled injuries all throughout 2023 but posted an ERA of 3.47 across the prior two seasons. Neither Lauer nor German are expected to be ready for Opening Day.

And who knows when the kids will be up? This question might be moot, given how the Pirates' young pitchers have developed in recent years. Still, the pitching prospects the Pirates currently possess in the upper levels is significant.

Paul Skenes is one of the best pitching prospects ever, and that being said, I don't think the Pirates can fumble the bag that badly with him. But he's not stretched out to start yet (he hasn't pitched longer than two innings in an outing since last year's College World Series in June) and likely won't see a major league mound until summer.

The other noteworthy prospect under consideration is Jared Jones. According to multiple reports, and despite not having any major league experience, he is a legitimate candidate for a spot in the Opening Day rotation. He dominated his first taste of Double-A last year before finishing the year at Triple-A Indianapolis, pitching to a 3.85 ERA and striking out 27.6 percent of opposing hitters between both levels. He's had an incredible spring, pitching 11.1 innings across five outings without surrendering a run. Jones is a consensus top-100 prospect with a 70-grade fastball and 60-grade slider, according to Baseball America.

The Pirates were in prime position to use some of their pitching prospects to trade for a bona fide major league pitcher this winter. They chose not to. With that being the case, they better hope they can develop some of these young pitchers, and they sure better hope Mitch Keller can stay on the mound and continue to grow as he has the past two seasons.