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

With the start of the regular season just two weeks away, we have a pretty good idea of who will make up the majority of the Opening Day roster. This Pirates team possesses a plethora of both veterans and exciting young talent.

But recently, I found myself pondering this question: If [X player] were to either get hurt for an extended period of time or struggle badly, how screwed would the Pirates be? I kept filling in the blank with different players to determine whose prolonged absence or struggles would have the greatest negative impact on the Pirates' 2024 season, as well as the likelihood that said player might scuffle throughout the upcoming campaign.

This is what I came up with:

Honorable mentions: Bryan Reynolds, Ke'Bryan Hayes, David Bednar

I know, I know. Three pretty big names right off the bat that didn't make my list. I felt compelled to mention all three players based on their obvious talent and importance to the organization. But part of the logic of not including them in the top three is that I don't have as many concerns about the performance of any of those players.

Giving Reynolds a mulligan for the COVID season, he has a career .846 OPS, and has never posted a full-season mark worse than last year's .790. Despite no longer being a regular center fielder (and a now-diminished likelihood of him needing to slide over there this year), his floor is still very high.

The same applies for Ke'Bryan Hayes. Even if he can't quite duplicate his offensive improvements from a season ago - he ended play on May 30 with a .621 OPS but posted an .868 mark the rest of the way - his elite defense makes him a valuable player regardless. He still accumulated 6.6 WAR from 2021-2022 despite being a below-average hitter both seasons.

Bednar is also pretty safe. His 39 saves led the NL last year, and his ERA since joining the Pirates in 2021 (2.25) is bested only by Emmanuel Clase, Devin Williams, and Jacob deGrom in that span (minimum 150 innings pitched). Bednar also comes with the benefit of heading the Pirates' strongest unit, a bullpen that added Aroldis Chapman and his career 321 saves and 40.3 percent strikeout rate.

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.