Things have been anything but easy for Ben Cherington in his first year as the Pirates General Manager. With just a week remaining in the short 2020 regular season, his club holds the worst record in baseball (15-37) due to a crowded injury list and more than a handful of key players under-performing.
It can be difficult to predict how a baseball season plays out. Those predictions become even harder when one starts a job during a world-wide health pandemic. Yet, when asked on his radio show on Sunday how he forecasted this season would go, the Pirates GM admitted that it has gone much worse than anticipated.
"I think we certainly thought we could win more games than this," Cherington said. "We went back, even in the shutdown period in April and May as we looked ahead we certainly hoped and expected that we'd win more games than we have."
Cherington said there were a number of reasons the Pirates have struggled in 2020, including the numerous injuries and disappointing performances mentioned above. While frustrating, he also acknowledges that those sorts of issues become magnified when only playing 60 games.
"It does happen in a short sample," Cherington said. "You can have a year like this and if we played 100 more games then we've got some guys whose numbers probably return to what they have been but we are just going to run out of time."
On the other side of things, Cherington also claims that many things did go as expected in 2020.
"We knew and still know that there are a lot of things that we need to do to get better," Cherington said. "A lot of parts of the roster that need to improve both through continued improvement from guys that are already here, that will always be most important. And us in baseball operations doing a great job of just continuing to add to the talent base."
Entering the final week of the regular season, Cherington says the front office is starting to shift its focus on the offseason. A short season with no fans resulted in a drop in revenue for MLB franchises. That drop in revenue hurts all teams, especially ones like the Pirates who had pre-existing spending limitations. Add in a collective bargaining agreement set to expire in 2021 and it looks as though Cherington is in for another challenging winter.
"I can't remember an offseason that was harder to predict than this one," Cherington said. "I think there's no secret that, you know, revenues have taken a major hit. If revenues take a major hit, it doesn't take either one of us to do a ton of math to serve direct that at some point it is going to impact how teams are going to spend and there will be some impact on salary.
"It's really hard to predict. We are going to have to get in to the offseason and see how the market is behaving and how that shakes out. I do know that in our situation with the Pirates, really what's going to continue to be most important for us is the development of our young players and that is probably less impacted by the free agent market."
The GM says the Pirates will look over the free agent market but expressed once again that the club's main way to improve is by continuing to develop the young talent they already have.