North Shore Tavern Mound Visit: Resolutions for the 2023 Pirates taken at PNC Park (Weekly Features)

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Oneil Cruz.

In the baseball world, teams begin to revamp and work to improve themselves well before Jan. 1. But that doesn't exactly lend itself to a great New Years analysis piece.

A new year is upon us, and with it comes our resolutions that we may or may not follow through on, despite our best intentions. The Pirates have spent this offseason targeting some key areas of need, including starting pitching and first base, as they hope to take a step in the right direction in 2023.

For the first Mound Visit of the new year, I took a look at three specific areas and stats that if they improved could greatly help the Pirates' chances of taking that step forward this season. And what better way to start than looking at who could finish games?

BULLPEN: CLOSE. OUT. THE GAME.

David Bednar emerged as an All-Star worthy closer, which was a much-needed win for a team desperate for impact players. For a young team looking to take a step forward in 2023, being able to confidently hand the ball to someone in the ninth inning is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

But getting that lead to the ninth inning was often an adventure last year. The Pirates blew 28 saves in 2022, tied for the seventh-most in baseball. But that only tells part of the story.

Going by Win Probability Added -- or the team's odds of winning the game when a pitcher enters versus when they exit -- the Pirates had a -3.80 WPA in 2022. That was 27th in baseball. FanGraphs' WPA records go back to 1974, and the only years where the Pirates' bullpen had a worse WPA were 1996 (-6.07), 2009 (-5.74) and 1985 (-4.80). 

Looking at some of the relievers that are slated to be part of next year's bullpen, the Pirates don't really have a proven leverage reliever outside of Bednar. Here are the WPA totals for some key Pirate pitchers:

David Bednar, 0.83
Colin Holderman, 0.47

Robert Stephenson, 0.06
Chase De Jong, -0.19
Yerry De Los Santos, -1.10
Jarlín García, -1.38
Wil Crowe, -2.18

Mix in Rule 5 pick Jose Hernandez and that could potentially be the Pirates' opening day bullpen. If it is, they don't have a lot of proven leverage relievers.

Talking with De Jong last month, he pointed out Holderman as someone the bullpen is going to rely on this year. De Jong himself could potentially be one of those guys after clicking as a middle reliever. Crowe did well in that middle relief role but struggled at the end of the season when asked to close. It's too early to say if that late-season drop was due to fatigue, adjusting to a closer role or something else. Same goes for De Los Santos, who wore a couple bad outings before hitting the injured list in August.

The point being there is usually a learning curve with pitching those leverage innings, and the Pirates do at least have some pitchers who could rise to the challenge in 2023. They need widespread growth next year though, because Bednar can't attempt those five or six out saves every week.

OFFENSE: SWING MORE TO STRIKE OUT LESS

The Pirates struck out a franchise record 1,497 times in 2022. More strikeouts are just a part of this new era of baseball, but they still finished with the third-most in the sport, and their 25.3% strikeout rate was the highest in the National League.

With that in mind, it will probably come as a bit of a surprise that the Pirates actually finished with the 10th-fewest whiffs of any team, going by Baseball Savant's data. They struck out often, but they were also the best in the National League at making contact on pitches in the strike zone (83%).

The catch is they also had the lowest swing rate on pitches in the zone of any team at 64.4%. Roughly speaking, for every three pitches in the zone a Pirate hitter saw last year, one was a called strike. It's one thing for a Daniel Vogelbach to take that patient, almost passive approach. It's another when Oneil Cruz does it.

"[To] give you a little glimpse of our process overall, we really want to match our swing rates with guys' damage zones and play to their strengths," Andy Haines told me towards the end of last season. "If you can match those two up, it's a simple math equation over a larger sample that's going to happen. If we can get them to swing more in areas where that's their strength and they can do damage. I think that's a pretty good formula for success over the larger sample of what a major-league season is. That's what we spend a lot of time on. We have a lot of people working really hard at it."

The strikeouts stung last year, and so much discussion this winter has been about trying to build a more athletic club and trying to put more balls in play to take advantage of the new shift rules. Speaking of which...

DEFENSE: CONVERT MORE GROUND BALLS INTO OUTS

One of the main storylines across the league going into 2023 is how the banning of aggressive shifts will impact offense. There are plenty of hitters -- like Carlos Santana -- who stand to benefit from teams having to keep two infielders on each side of second base, which should lead to more ground ball hits.

This rule change probably would have been more problematic for the Pirates a couple years ago. It will of course be an adjustment, but the Pirates cut down on their shifts in 2022, going from one of the most aggressive clubs a few years ago to just average (31.3% of PA, 17th in baseball). Those shifts were generally effective, though, as hitters were limited to a .222 batting average on ground balls in play when the Pirates were shifting.

The problem is errors don't help batting averages, but they can hurt as much as a hit.

Last year, the Pirates made 66 errors on ground balls. Not only was it the most in baseball last year, it was the most of any club since at least 2008, which is as far back as Baseball Savant's data tracks. No team is going to covert every ground ball, but 66 errors on ground balls that found an infielder means the Pirates threw away 22 innings worth of outs.

Cruz and Rodolfo Castro, the likely opening day double-play combo, made a combined 30 errors (17 for Cruz, 13 for Castro) this past season in a combined 146 games. For Cruz in particular, he has the tools to be a strong defensive shortstop, but the mechanics often get out of whack, especially with his footwork.

"We’re talking an NBA player who plays shortstop," Derek Shelton said at the Winter Meetings last month. "At times, even though the arm is extremely prolific, his feet wouldn’t get underneath him. He would have to maneuver the ball. We just need to make sure that he gets his feet underneath him a little bit better.

The Pirates added Mendy Lopez to the coaching staff this winter to help out with the infield defense. They'll be facing a challenge with the new shift rules, but cutting down on errors could by itself offset those extra hits.


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