Fair or not, much of the dialogue around the Pirates, especially during the offseason, is always going to center around how much money is being spent on payroll.
There is hardly an expectation for the Pirates to be near the top of the league in spending, but for a rebuilding club, there are clear areas where more investment could help in the short term, long term or both. The Pirates are beginning of the process of mapping out who their offseason targets could be, which will influence the 2023 payroll.
But during his end of season media availability Friday, Ben Cherington made clear that he'd rather have the focus on the former.
“I don’t believe focusing on payroll is the right thing to focus on in a town like Pittsburgh, in a place where a winning team is not going to be built in a way that is in other places,” Cherington said. “... The way we wake up every day and do our work, [payroll is] just not the thing that we think about.”
"We want to look at how to improve the team in a way that makes sense for us and fits into our longer-term team-building strategy," Cherington continued. "Gets us closer to that winning that we all want to get to as fast as we possibly can. It's not specific to payroll or dollars, but simply where are the opportunities to add to the team where what we're getting back helps the team and is the right investment, whether we're talking about players or money or anything. That's what good teams that are in situations like ours are doing all the time, and they're even doing it after they start winning all the time."
So what could the Pirates be looking at specifically?
Cherington brought up pitching, specifically those who can get swing and miss. That could be either for the rotation or the bullpen, though Derek Shelton addressed the latter late in the season as an area where they need to improve. On offense, he mentioned a desire to raise the team's on-base percentage.
Cherington also said the team isn't opposed to signing a player for more than one year, something he has yet to do with a free agent in his time with the Pirates, but "it’ll really depend on where the fit it, where the matchup is."
Adding a couple veterans could make a noticable impact. In the clubhouse at the end of the season, several player opined that they thought they were closer to competing, and that bringing in some veterans could help them make the leap.
"I love that the players are saying that," Cherington said. "I think it speaks to what they're seeing themselves around them, and players often see stuff quicker than any of us do. So I love that we're seeing that. I don't know if it's veteran or younger or anywhere in between. We want to find players that will strengthen our roster both on the pitching and position player side."
One such veteran could be Roberto Pérez. The veteran catcher was brought in to replace Jacob Stallings this winter, but suffered a season-ending hamstring injury in May. He made sure to stay around the team and was a positive influence for the young pitching staff, and he has said that he wants to return to Pittsburgh in 2023.
Cherington seemed open to it, but it most likely won't be explored quite yet.
"Obviously he got back into baseball activity by the end of the year but wasn’t running yet," Cherington said. "I just think we need a little more information there to see where he’s at [with his rehab]. Even if he’s not playing, he’ll be doing his training. We’ll be able to get that information and be able to talk to him. But certainly the door would be open."
Regardless of whether or not Pérez returns, there is a goal for next season: Use fewer players. This year, the Pirates used 68 different players, a franchise-record and just one shy of the major-league record set by the 2021 Cubs.
Ideally, that number will be lower in 2023. That can partially be because of the state of the farm system, where there is a larger pool of players in the upper-levels of the system they can now pull from. Part of it is because they think the roster is improving.
"The team we envision having is not breaking records for how many players we use," Cherington said. "That’s aspirational."
Improving needs to be paramount for the Pirates in 2023. After back-to-back 100-loss seasons and finishing with the worst record in baseball in the shortened 2020 season, the general manager is remaining optimistic towards the future.
"That we are getting closer to improvement," Cherington said when asked what his takeaways from this year were, "and that we have, if you think about the talent level, it's not just that we think it's getting stronger but also where it's situated, that more and more of that young-player talent is either starting to show up in the big leagues or at the upper levels and closer. That doesn't mean it's all ready to help us win right now, but the fact that it's closer gives us confidence that some of those players are going to start to emerge, and as we look toward spring training, I get really excited, because I think there's going to be a ton of talent on the field that is closer to being a contributor at the major-league level and helping us win more games. So we're really excited about that, and then obviously incredibly motivated to make it better, because losing makes us all miserable, and we're doing too much of that. We knew this was going to be a difficult time in our process, and sure enough it is. So that gets us up every day, working harder than ever as fast as we possibly can."
And when it comes to payroll and what resources they will have at their disposal, Cherington is confident that Bob Nutting will support them. However, reading between the lines, it sounds like the team may need to start winning first before heavier investments are made.
“I really believe that we have the resources to win and that, once we start winning, we’ll be able to sustain that,” Cherington said. “It’s up to us to execute that.”
