If there is any good thing about finishing with the worst record in baseball, it's that there is nowhere to go but up.
That is even more true for the Pirates' shortstops.
Last year, they combined for -0.3 fWAR, tied with the Rangers for the worst in the majors. Their collective .588 OPS was the lowest among their position in baseball and they had -4 defensive runs saved in the field.
There’s plenty of room for improvement, but it’s going to have to be internal improvement. With limited money available for free agents, they're going to roll into 2021 with what they already have.
That doesn't mean they are just going to give the spot to one of Kevin Newman, Erik Gonzalez or Cole Tucker. Ben Cherington and Derek Shelton have talked about establishing a meritocracy and that there will be competitions for playing time in 2021. When talking about that competition, they both made sure to emphasize shortstop.
“We’ve got three guys that we think are all capable of earning a lot of playing time there next year,” Cherington said recently. “We also don’t feel like any of them just have a right to it, necessarily, so there’s an opportunity. We’re going to push all of them to win that or win as much of it as they can. We’ll see where we go.”
Shelton added that “we feel really good about all three of those guys," and each has a good pedigree. Tucker and Newman were taken in the first round of the 2014 and 2015 drafts. Former general manager Neal Huntington said his scouts "pounded the table" to acquire Gonzalez, and gave up promising young outfielder Jordan Luplow as part of a five-player trade.
After getting pretty solid shortstop play in 2019, refer back to the third paragraph to see how they followed up in 2020.
All three can play multiple positions, which could result in more playing time if Adam Frazier is dealt this winter. For now, though, there are three players and only spot available. How does that competition look, and what held these players back in 2020?
KEVIN NEWMAN
A year ago, Newman seemed to have the shortstop position locked down. He initially lost the job out of spring training to Gonzalez and Tucker got the bulk of the starts while he was on the injured list early in the year, but once he became a regular in the lineup, he turned in one of the best rookie seasons in 2019. His defensive metrics were poor, but he hit over .300 with an .800 OPS. The last two Pirates shortstops to do that were Jay Bell (1993) and Arky Vaughn (1940). That counts for a lot when preparing for the start of next season.
His batted ball data wasn’t exactly great in, but it improved as the year went along, signaling that he was getting more comfortable against major league pitching and driving the ball more. It looked like the Pirates had their leadoff man of the future.
Then, like many of the Pirates’ other notable hitters, Newman struggled in 2020, slashing .224/.281/.276 over 172 plate appearances. With the exception of his 2018 late-season call-up, it was the worst stretch of his career.
The question with Newman -- and many other Pirates -- will be was this season a product of the shorter schedule or underlying problems in his swing that will carry over. To answer that, let’s take a look at how he performed against different pitches.
In 2019, Newman feasted against fastballs, hitting .314 with a .442 slugging percentage. In 2020, he hit just .227 against fastballs and slugged .299. However, his batted ball data was quite similar, and his average exit velocity against heaters even went up, from an 87.1 mph average in 2019 to 88.8 mph. This suggest that if Newman had a full season, he would have much better results against fastballs, which would have boosted his end of season slashline.
It was a different story against breaking pitches. Again, he did well against sliders and curves in 2019, batting .292 with a .441 slugging percentage, but greatly dropped off in 2020, batting .200 with no extra-base hits. When you dive into the batted ball data, things get even uglier. Per Baseball Savant, he had a .274 expected batting average and .376 expected slugging against breaking pitches in 2019. In 2020, those expected stats were a .179 average and .217 slugging. He may have outpaced those projections in 2019, but the underlying data was still respectable. That wasn’t the case in 2020.
His glove needs addressed, too. Last year, Newman had -3 defensive runs saved, 97th out of the 103 players who played shortstop. His .930 fielding percentage was the second worst among shortstops with at least 100 innings in the field. Scouts have suspected he would be better profiled at second base, and if Frazier is traded, that might be the right move. For now, though, that isn’t really an option.
Newman had a sharp decline in 2020, but is one year removed from a very solid campaign. He has the best track record out of the three, and if he can time up breaking balls again, he would be in good position for a bounce back campaign.
ERIK GONZALEZ
For the second straight year, Gonzalez was a non-tender candidate, and again for a second straight year, he signed ahead of the deadline to save his spot.
There were a couple weeks last year where Gonzalez was, to the surprise of everyone, one of the best hitters on the team. He opened up his batting stance and used his back leg a bit more during his swing, which resulted in him making consistently hard contact for most of August. He played himself into the everyday lineup, and even became the leadoff hitter for a time.
“When I’m getting [my] timing [down] and seeing pitches every day, I can compete at home plate,” Gonzalez said in August. In his two years with the Pirates, he has consistently said that he needed that opportunity to prove himself.
Through Sept. 8, Gonzalez was slashing .288/.315/.466 with three home runs and 19 RBIs. Factoring in his defense, it finally started to make sense why there was so much table pounding.
He hit a wall there, going just 7-for-63 down the homestretch. Despite his hot start, he actually finished with a slightly worse OPS than he did in 2019 (.614) and the third lowest on-base percentages of qualified hitters (.255).
While it likely wasn’t the only reason for his September struggles, teams did change how they pitched to him down the stretch. Early in the year, he faced a lot of four-seamers and sliders, two pitches he hits pretty well. Since Gonzalez had mostly been a backup for most of his career, teams didn’t have a clear attack plan for him, and decided to challenge him early on with a tried-and-true pitch combo. Gonzalez manage to hit that.
As the year went on, Gonzalez saw more curveballs and changeups, and he couldn’t adjust. On the year he went 3-for-18 against changeups and 0-for-19 against curves. The change in pitch mix also threw off his timing against sliders, whiffing nearly half the time he swung at one in September.
At 29 years old, it seems unlikely that Gonzalez has another gear. He had a hot start, but really fell apart when teams actually got some film on him. Perhaps he would have adjusted if he had a full season, but at this point, Gonzalez is what he is: A near replacement level utility infielder who gets most of his value from his defense. That’s fine for a bench player or middle infield depth, especially if Frazier is on the trade block, but what is to be gained by him starting? The Pirates have high level prospects rising in the farm system and a pair of first-round picks trying to establish themselves in the majors. Even if Gonzalez breaks out and has a terrific campaign, he is a free agent after 2022, so he would probably find himself right on the trade block.
Gonzalez isn’t part of the Pirates’ long-term plans. He’s fine as depth, but it doesn’t really make sense to play him and bench Newman or Tucker.
COLE TUCKER
When looking at Tucker, you almost have to throw his 2019 season away. He was called up to the majors after just a few weeks in class AAA and bounced between the minors and the majors all season long. While he struggled at the plate, his defense and base running elevated him to a little better than replacement level. All told, he was thrown into the fire and didn’t embarrass himself.
During the offseason he tweaked his swing to make sure it finishes in a better spot to get more line drives and fly balls. He did just that during spring training, going deep four times. Despite the strong showing, it looked like he would still go to AAA to start the season so he could play every day to start the year, with a promotion coming later.
Then the pandemic happened, and with the roster expanded and no minor-league season, the Pirates had no choice but to keep Tucker in the majors. He learned to play the outfield on the fly, again out of necessity, but also to increase his potential playing time. Tucker didn’t make an appearance at shortstop last year, but he took drills there are the Pirates insist he is still an infielder.
Considering the Pirates have only four outfielders on the roster, Tucker can technically be in the mix for a starting job there, too.
He would end up appearing in 37 games and getting 116 plate appearances. While it was a small sample, he actually did worse than he did in 2019, slashing .220/.252/.275 with one home run and eight RBIs. He struck out in over one-fourth of his plate appearances and had an exit velocity of 83.1 mph, which ranked in the bottom three percent of hitters.
Like Newman, most of Tucker’s problems stemmed from his inability to hit breaking pitches. (Are you noticing a theme here?)
In 2019, he hit .286 against sliders and curves with a .400 slugging percentage. He had had a hard time catching up with high velocity pitches, but was able to stay back on the slower stuff.
This year, Tucker still struggled against high velocity pitches, going 2-for-16 with seven strikeouts on pitches that were 95 mph or faster, but he couldn’t boost his stats by hitting the slower stuff. In his 30 plate appearances against breaking pitches, he had three singles, no extra-base hits and 13 strikeouts. As a switch-hitter, he is going to see a lot of offspeed and breaking stuff. If he can’t hit velocity, he needs to crush those pitches.
At some point Tucker is going to need another chance to play every day, an opportunity he really hasn’t had for an extended period of time since his initial promotion in 2019. He needs to do that in 2021, and if that opportunity isn’t in the majors, then he has to do it in the minors. This is too vital a year for his development for him to bounce between the infield and outfield and only start three or four times a week. It’s time for the Pirates to commit to a plan for him.
ON THE 40 MAN
What about outside those three? There’s always a chance the Pirates could acquire another depth infielder, like they did last year with Phillip Evans, and Kevin Kramer is still in the mix. But right now, there are only two other shortstops on the roster: Oneil Cruz and Rodolfo Castro.
Cruz may be a shortstop in name only. He is a consensus top-100 prospect and one of the best pure power hitters in the minors, but there have always been concerns about his ability to play shortstop long-term now that he is filling out his 6-foot-seven frame.
The problem isn’t just him being able to get down and field the ball, but his throwing, too. FanGraphs gives him 80-grade arm strength, which is elite, but he doesn’t always know where it’s going, like when he threw this potential final out away in what would be an extra-innings loss:
That was Cruz’s fifth error in just his seventh game in the Dominican Winter League this year. He's up to six errors in 13 games. Back in spring training, I was told that Cruz was going to stay at shortstop until he proved he could not handle the position. Yes, we’re talking about a handful of games, but he hasn’t shown he can do that.
After reaching class AA in 2019 and spending the season in the Altoona, Pa. satellite camp, it seems reasonable to assume Cruz is going to be in Indianapolis early in 2021. As a hitter, he will probably be ready to take on the majors midseason, but if the Pirates change his position (most likely to right field), he could need more time in the minors.
That leaves Castro. He was protected from the Rule 5 draft in November after spending the regular season in the satellite training camp and being invited to the taxi squad for the final series of the year.
It isn’t clear exactly where he will start next season, though. In 2019 he split time between Greensboro and Bradenton, so he has yet to eclipse class A ball. Cherington previously told me that we could see players skip levels in 2021, and one would have to imagine Castro is a candidate to make such a leap because of his time in Altoona.
But what would that leap look like? Would he spend half a year in Altoona, like he spent half a year before moving up a level in 2019? Is it just a stop in Altoona and then a quick promotion to Indianapolis? Could he actually start in class AAA?
The answer to that question will probably determine when Castro could get his call to the majors. If he starts in Indianapolis, then he could be a call away if someone gets hurt, or possibly force the club’s hand midseason. If he’s in Altoona to start, then he might not be on the radar until later in the year, or maybe 2022.
When factoring in Peguero, Gonzales and Ji-Hwan Bae, the Pirates have infield options down the road, but as far as the 2021 shortstop goes, it seems to be mostly limited to Newman, Tucker and Gonzalez. Of those three, Newman seems positioned to enter camp the frontrunner. Gonzalez and Tucker’s chances improve greatly if Frazier is traded, but there is a fresh batch of infielders coming in 2022. The competition is only going to become stiffer from here.