BRADENTON, Fla. -- By 9:30 a.m. today, once the morning dew’s taken off and the modest chill’s abated, all 72 of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club’s spring training invitees will take to the sun-splashed, 72-degree setting here on Florida’s Gulf Coast, cracking bats, smacking gloves, laying down sac bunts for phantom baserunners, flipping down the shades to track popups, marveling at a Ke’Bryan Hayes barehand pickup, forming fresh bonds through natural conduits like Cole Tucker or Steven Brault ... and rest assured there won’t be the slightest sense to anyone involved that the 2021 season won’t matter.
My goodness, no. That’s just not how it works.
"Well," Ben Cherington replied with a slight laugh when I broached this semi-sensitive subject with him here yesterday, "it’s incredibly important to us."
It had better be. Because this very day marks a beginning, not just in conducting the first full-squad workout of the spring, not just in Derek Shelton offering his first en-masse message to the assembled group, but the beginning of ... well, everything this franchise hopes to be.
That's no lie.
Cherington, Shelton and most everyone else in baseball ops took the strange, truncated 2020 season to size up what was at hand, stumbled terribly to a 19-41 performance that was so much uglier than that figure, then decided -- correctly -- that this would be an excellent time to push the plunger. Which they did. And out went Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove, Jameson Taillon and probably a few others I'm forgetting, all in exchange for young, high-ceiling-type prospects. Some of them are teenagers. A couple could be called children.
In a typical setting, this would be a rebuild. One problem with that: It's impossible to rebuild what was never built, and Neal Huntington and Kyle Stark left behind next to nothing for Cherington at the foundational level. Not in talent. Definitely not in development practices.
No, this GM is building from scratch. Call it a build.
Also, call it unprecedented for this franchise.
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Sure, the payroll came crashing down to the current opening-day projection of $44 million, accompanied by all the expected complaints on that count alone. And those are fair. Bob Nutting will have to prove himself with payroll, and promises in the interim won't mean a whit. I've been writing that ever since the 98-win team in 2015 failed to add needed starting pitching, and I'll keep writing it until it changes.
But when those complaints cross over into accusing the Pirates of doing the same-old-same-old, they couldn't be more incorrect. No GM in my lifetime has adopted Cherington's approach in Pittsburgh. He isn't trading Gerrit Cole, Jason Bay or Xavier Nady for a handful of safe major-league-ready guys to provide himself cover. He's taking the gamble on talents that have a genuine chance to be elite, running the very real risk they could flame out but also setting a stage where, if even a few make it ... yeah.
That, my friends, is how it's done.
Finally.
If an enemy executive broke into 115 Federal Street back home and rifled through Cherington's desk, here's the three-step plan they could steal:
1. Find tons of legit, young talent.
2. Add water and sunlight.
3. Add money.
But there's no need for a break-in when he laid it all out yesterday beautifully, in a way I'd never heard from him. I can't recommend forcefully enough reading these remarks in their entirety.
"Every team’s path is going to be a little bit different," he began. "I’ve spent a lot of time looking at that and thinking about that, because -- I don’t know -- sometimes the best way to think about it is in a really simple way. And if you just look at the teams that have been in the playoffs for the last several years, the vast, vast majority of them -- I would say probably 80% -- you rewind from that point two, three years or so, and you see some common threads."
He cited the Padres, everyone's favorite example these days, but also the Rays. Even the billion-dollar Dodgers.
"One is that those teams have done a really good job just accumulating talent, whether through the draft or international or trades where they’re acquiring young players. Second is that players are getting better. They’re reaching another level of performance, whether that’s a major-league player or a minor-league player. They’re adding value, adding wins to the organization just by getting better. And then the third thing -- and often it happens as teams get closer, but still before they start winning -- is they start adding back to the team through trades and free agency."
He swung back to San Diego, which just signed the game's preeminent youngster, Fernando Tatis Jr. to a 14-year, $340 million contract at age 22 as part of a burgeoning roster that the baseball world's been watching get gradually built, beginning with a complete strip-down for parts.
"Certainly, we saw that with the Padres, not just this offseason but they started really over the last couple of years."
Cherington's not in that solar system yet, obviously. And he isn't shy about acknowledging it.
"As we look at this team today, our team, we’re thinking about those three things. To get to the playoffs, we have to accumulate talent. We’ve got to build a really, really deep base of talent. Obviously, we made some trades this offseason. But whatever improvement we’ve seen in our overall organizational talent -- and I think we have seen some in the last year -- it’s not enough. We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to be one of the stronger organizations just in terms of overall talent. Then, we also have to help that talent improve."
Which leads to maybe the most common question asked not just by casual followers of the Pirates but by diehards: When?
Cherington almost had an answer for that, too, yet again wording it in a way I'd never heard from him.
"The better we do those two things, the faster we do those two things, then the faster we’ll be able to start adding players back in a way where we say, ‘Hey, it’s time.’ "
His voice rose here a bit.
"I want to get to that as soon as we possibly can. We’d rather get there much sooner than later. And to some extent, we do control a piece of that. If we do a good job on those first two activities, which is what we’re pouring into right now, it’ll make it quicker, where it starts to make sense to invest more meaningful resources into bringing players back at the major-league level or in free agency."
Anyone still wondering why I'm supporting this GM and this approach as I have?
Anyone still have questions?
I can pine for a salary cap, and the public can pine for a new owner, and everyone else can just concoct another punchline at the mere mention of the Pirates. Whatever. Free country 'n' at.
But this is a bona fide plan, being applied with a real resolve, put into motion by a bona fide GM with championship pedigree, and I'm on board.
Anyone else?
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At the same time, let’s be real: 2021 doesn’t matter. At least not in the way that a more casual follower of the Pirates would hope.
I’m not prepared to put forth a record prediction until Cherington’s finished with his veteran patchup work — he acknowledged yesterday he's still open to a move or two, with a target on pitching — but I’m seeing barely 70-plus wins. And that might be on the upbeat side. It’s a $44 million roster with Gregory Polanco consuming a quarter of that, it’s being built on the charred remains of the Huntington/Stark minor-league system, and almost all of Cherington’s acquisitions since taking over are far too young to make an impact at the top level for years.
The everyday eight project to be, 2-9 on the diamond: Jacob Stallings, Colin Moran, Adam Frazier, Hayes, Kevin Newman, Bryan Reynolds, Anthony Alford and Polanco.
The rotation: Mitch Keller, Chad Kuhl, JT Brubaker, Tyler Anderson and Brault.
The pen: Richard Rodriguez, Kyle Crick, Geoff Hartlieb, Chris Stratton and I don’t even know who else.
Again, doesn’t matter.
On the surface. From the singular standpoint of outcomes.
But from another standpoint, to Cherington's elaboration above, it's a necessary, vital first step. He's already added enough pieces, via trade and other means, that the Pirates' top-30 prospects list has gone from laughingstock to one of the industry's hottest. Those kids have to get better, wherever they are, from the Dominican on up. But it's got to happen in Pittsburgh, too. Hayes and Keller will enter their first full seasons in the majors. Reynolds and Newman have to rebound. Tucker has to eventually start hitting. And if a somewhat older guy or two carves out a name for himself -- Alford stands out in this regard -- that's OK, too.
Dropping a rough one on some random Monday night in Milwaukee won't mean much. Polanco being grossly overpaid won't mean anything. But those players I just listed ... if they don't progress, that does damage. That slows the wait between Cherington's steps 2 and 3.
That's in 2021, by the way, and that matters.
"We know that, in order to win in Pittsburgh, there are a lot of things that we need to keep working on really hard to get us closer to that," Cherington replied when I asked him what matters most about the year. "We think we’ve done some work in the last year that puts us in a stronger position to win long-term in terms of adding more talent. We’ve worked really hard in a lot of different areas of baseball operations, in terms of how we evaluate players, how we think about players, how we’re trying to help players improve. We’ve got to continue that."
That's not corporate-speak. Cherington's a smart guy, and he'll use the occasional big word, but he's telling it like it is.
Good luck convincing the masses, though.
I brought that up with him, too: How to sell a fan base on this plan when, in fairness, that fan base has already been through so, so much for so, so long?
"I think it’s up to us," he replied. "I think it's up to us to try and explain our work and show that work over time to our fans, so they get just as excited about it as we are and can come along with us on this ride."
He paused a moment.
"Look, we know there’s a lot of work to do. It’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be hard. We ought to embrace that hard. We shouldn’t run from the hard. Because nothing that’s worth pursuing is ever easy. This isn’t going to be easy, but it’s definitely worth pursuing."
That pursuit begins today. And it'll matter to some.
I'll be describing the scenes down here at Pirate City all week, but here's a video montage from yesterday's activities that paints a more powerful picture than any words:
Those players, those coaches, aren't focused on any of the Pirates-related fodder that you or I fuss over. They're focused on getting better at baseball.
Almost looks like it's fun, huh?
