WASHINGTON -- Josh Bell described his time with the Pirates as a memory.
“Not too distant of a memory, but definitely a memory,” Bell said on the field at Nationals Park Monday.
That’s all it is anymore. A memory of what was.
“I’ve got a good stretch of games with a different jersey now, so it’s definitely different seeing the black and gold on the other side of the field,” Bell said.
Monday was the first time Bell faced the only other organization he has ever known in his decade in professional baseball.
For five years, Bell was the Pirates’ power bat, though there were plenty of peaks and valleys. The highs of the first few months of 2019, one of the best stretches for any hitter in Pirates history. The lows of 2020, where he could not get his timing down and he struggled throughout the year.
That inconsistency raised some questions of if the Pirates would opt to trade him this winter or hang onto him and hope he plays well and raises his value. There were similar discussions around Jameson Taillon and Joe Musgrove.
“I feel like there’s always trade rumors and there’s a couple things thrown back and forth,” Bell said. “We were wondering who was going to go, if anybody was going to go. If we were maybe going to sign some guys in the offseason.”
While the Pirates finished with the worst record in baseball last year at 19-41, there was a belief among the team’s more veteran players that they weren’t too far away from competing.
“[We were] a couple of injuries, a couple players away from being a really good team,” Musgrove said before his return to PNC Park in April. “Before any of the trade stuff happened, we [told] the front office in Pittsburgh that we liked the group we had and we were confident in our ability to compete.”
That obviously didn’t happen.
“Jamo gets traded, I get traded, Musgrove gets traded, and now it’s like ‘OK, on to the next chapter,’ ” Bell said.
It’s not the first time that chapter had been written for the Pirates. Just ask Bell’s new teammates with the Nationals. They used to be old teammates, too: Josh Harrison and Jordy Mercer. They were three-fourths of the Pirates’ 2016-2018 infield.
“Good little reunion here,” Bell said with a smile.
But reunions have a bit of a different feel when you know things aren’t going to stick together.
“We all knew it was a matter of time before it was our time to go,” Mercer said.
His longtime double-play partner agreed.
“My last couple of years there, you could feel it,” Harrison said. “Pieces slowly started moving. You start hearing talk. You don't think it'll happen, but at the same time, that's not our job to worry about what happens.”
Bell vs. Harrison and Mercer is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. While Bell was a rookie of the year finalist in 2017 and an All-Star in 2019, he never appeared in a playoff game. In his five years with the Pirates, they maxed out at 82 wins and finished in last twice. He was supposed to be one of the key players after the bridge year, and was ultimately traded on Christmas Eve for pitching prospects Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean.
Harrison and Mercer, while perhaps not as high-profile as Bell, were starters for playoff teams, and were let go in free agency after 2018. After three straight October appearances, the Pirates looked to be in position to continue to compete. They didn’t.
“I signed there wanting to be there and win and continue to go to the playoffs,” Harrison said, referring to his contract extension in 2015. “Things didn't work out that way. But you can't control that.”
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Josh Harrison.
What can be controlled is trying to recreate how that team was built.
The core of those playoff teams -- Andrew McCutchen, Gerrit Cole, Neil Walker, Starling Marte, Harrison, Mercer, etc. -- came through the farm system. That built not only the foundation for a competitive club, but also comradery between the players.
“I think at one time we had 10 or 11 guys that played in the minor leagues together that were in the big leagues at the same time,” Mercer said. “That was huge.”
That goes extra for Harrison and Mercer. When the Pirates traded for Harrison while he was still in Class A in 2009, he didn’t have a place to stay. Mercer was the one to reach out and offer to let him crash on his couch.
The two developed their bond there. Now, even after being away for a year in 2020, they and their families have picked up where they left off.
“If I had never opened my door to him, I don’t know if we would have been this close,” Mercer said.
For the Pirates, that type of player driven and development environment is what they are searching for, though obviously at a much larger and long-term scale than last time.
While trading Musgrove, Taillon and Bell obviously hurts in the short term, it does position themselves better in the long run. Perhaps in a position where they can leave their own mark and create some memories of their own.
