In the aftermath of the news that Endy Rodríguez will miss all of 2024 after undergoing UCL surgery, many of the Pirates' moves this past week were for outfielders. That may not be entirely coincidental.
The Pirates were shopping for corner outfielders going into the Winter Meetings, so this is hardly a knee-jerk reaction, but with Rodríguez out for the year, all eyes turn toward Henry Davis. While Jason Delay handled a bulk of the catcher reps in 2022 and could probably serve decently well as an everyday player if necessary, even his great framing and game management skills doesn't give him the same ceiling as Davis. The Pirates went into this offseason wanting Davis to focus on being a catcher, a move that may have seen curious at the time but perhaps a lifesaver now.
"Henry's going to come into spring training as a catcher," Ben Cherington said at the Winter Meetings. "Still believe the best outcome for him, for the Pirates, is that that's what he's doing going forward. If at any point it makes sense for him and the Pirates to do something else, we trust he'll be able to do it. We'll get to that if and when we get to that, but we believe he can catch. That's where the focus is going to be. We owe it to him and to us to find that out."
This spring was supposed to feature a competition for the young catchers. Instead, Davis shifting behind the plate could open up a competition at his old position, right field.
On Wednesday, the team sent some international bonus pool money to the Yankees for Billy McKinney. They made a potentially more consequential move on Friday, picking up Edward Olivares, which could signal right field is primed for a platoon.
Over the past two seasons, the right-handed hitting Olivares has slashed .278/.339/.532 with seven home runs over 174 plate appearances against left-handers. While that isn't exactly the largest sample size, the batted ball data supports those results.
There is always some concern with a right-handed hitter whose power is solely on his pull side at PNC Park, though. In his career, Olivares has hit 24 home runs, and going by Baseball Savant's estimated home runs, he would have only hit 22 as a Pirate, tied for the fewest of any team and ballpark. His average exit velocity also dropped a couple ticks to 87.3 mph in 2023, which put him in the bottom 15% of the league. Those can be concerns, but are hardly dealbreakers.
If Olivares can be the right-handed side of a platoon, it does open things up for the Pirates' other outfielders. The question is who should his platoon partner be?
McKinney has bounced around the league plenty, playing for six different major-league teams since 2020, and for most of that time he struggled in the majors and posted strong results in the minors. Those types of hitters are a dime a dozen, but something interesting happened when McKinney went to the Yankees last year: He posted greatly improved offensive results and peripherals, slashing .227/.320/.406 with six home runs in the majors, and an .899 OPS in the minors.
It was only 147 plate appearances, so it could be just a blip on the radar, but the swing looked different. He had a shorter, straighter swing path through the zone, as Noah Garcia of the Yankees blog Pinstripe Alley wrote last year, and the batted ball results were much better (89.1 mph exit velocity, .322 batting average on contact).
Granted, a lot of that success was against the fastball, where he slugged .556 with five home runs against heat and just .262 against breaking and offspeed pitches, but as a wild card, non-roster addition, he is intriguing.
But the search for a left-handed corner outfielder doesn't end there. The Pirates have plenty of internal options, too.
Joshua Palacios was a great clubhouse guy and had a flair for the dynamic, playing the hero late plenty of times. His .239/.279/.413 slash line left a lot to be desired, but his batted ball data was much better when he got consistent playing time down the stretch, recording an expected batting average of .247 and an expected slugging percentage of .476 against right-handers the last two months of the season, according to Baseball Savant's data. If he could post those numbers, that is a fine half of a platoon.
I would point out that Palacios' whiff rate greatly spiked in those final months of the season, especially against breaking balls. Facing mostly right-handers will help him see more offspeed pitches and fastballs, but he made less consistent contact against those pitches, too:
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There's also Canaan Smith-Njigba, the belle of Bradenton last spring. He tore up the Grapefruit League in spring training, but couldn't make consistent contact whenever he moved to a bench role in the majors. He went on to have a fine season with Class AAA Indianapolis, including being named the International League player of the month in September, where he hit .417 with nine doubles in the final month of the season.
There was some good and bad in that season, and one of the most encouraging aspects was that he hit major-league quality fastballs. The Pirates pay close attention to how minor-leaguers perform against fastballs 95 mph and faster, and against those he had a 93.5 mph average exit velocity and 15.6 degree launch angle. That's quality contact, but it came with a 15% swinging strike rate.
Those whiff and chase rates were consistently high last year, which is problematic. Per source, here is often he chased out of the zone and what his swinging strike rate was per month:
It may be fine to assume the drop in swinging strike rate was because he got his timing back after adjusting to an everyday role again, but he chased more as the year progressed. He's got great raw power, but he's not going to maximize it if he doesn't swing at the right pitches.
Palacios, Smith-Njigba and Olivares all have one minor-league option year remaining, while McKinney is not on the roster currently. A spring training battle is not necessarily going to determine who gets the job for the whole year, but given the roster crunch and the expectation the team will add some prospects midseason, a hot start would go a long way.
There are other ways the Pirates could go in the outfield, like trotting Ji Hwan Bae in center field for their best defense (I wrote about his offensive concerns earlier this offseason) or seeing if minor-league Rule 5 pick Seth Beer can platoon with Rowdy Tellez, opening up Connor Joe for the outfield. The Pirates could also continue to add to that outfield mix, but I don't see there being a major addition outside of Andrew McCutchen (who is going to be more of a designated hitter again anyway).
If the Pirates don't add and have to stick with just their internal options, there should be a healthy competition for right field, and they could probably platoon their way to respectable results. But with Davis catching, there doesn't appear to be a clear third outfielder.
