Post Bucs

Endy Rodriguez is due to breakout in 2025. E-Rod is a great teammate, full of energy, talks to everyone, is a great interview, and a very athletic ballplayer.

The Bucs won their first spring training game of 2025 beating the Baltimore Orioles in 10 to 5 at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Florida.

Yesterday we discussed who might make the Pirates regular lineup against LHP opening day. However, we didn't include what the order might be for said lineup.

The Pirates are almost finished adding this offseason. In fact Spring Training is here, so IMO the offseason is over. It seems like the Bucs lineup is complete against LHP unless they add an everyday player before Opening Day.

Dauri Moreta has been put on the 60 Day Injured List which was expected. Tommy Pham took the open spot on the 40-Man roster.

At the time of this writing the San Diego Padres are still above the 2025 MLB Luxury Tax Threshold of $241,000,000. The Friars Tax Payroll is estimated to be about $254,000,000 which is 14 million over.

The Red Sox just signed Alex Bregman to a three year 120 million dollar deal with half of that deferred. The signing has created a roster crunch for the Sox.

Erik Kratz, A.J. Perzynski, and Scott Braun from Foul Territory interviewed Pirates Beat Reporter Noah Hiles last week to preview the 2025 Pirates season.

The Bucs have a few players who are the best in the league at something. Paul Skenes had arguably the best SP rookie season in the modern area. Oneil Cruz is known for having some of the best bat speed. He actually had the highest average bat speed for a LHH. Ke'Bryan Hayes was on a run of his own, and hopefully he can get back on track this year.

Yesterday it was reported by DK that his sources inside the Pirates organization believe they have not made their main offseason move yet, and it will happen this spring likely by trade. It is fair to question what the Pirates consider a main move.

Termarr Johnson no doubt has a compact frame. Most listings I see have him at 5'7", but I've seen him listed as tall as 5'10"

Last week JJ Cooper and Mark Chiarelli on the Baseball America platform discussed the Pirates farm system. They started off mentioning the legit strength the Pirates have developing pitching, but also the lack of hitting development.

Former Pirates GM Neil Huntington was interviewed on the Foul Territory Podcast on back in January. Huntington was fired by Bob Nutting on October 28, 2019. Ben Cherington was hired as his replacement.

The Pirates lack power, and it doesn't seem like they are going to add externally to improve their power numbers. They are acquiring players who have low whiff rates and square up the ball like IKF, Spencer Horwitz, Tommy Pham, and Adam Frazier. I guess if you are not going to clear the bases you need to spray the ball often? I think the Bucs are hoping to Zag when most of the competitive teams are Zinging, but are they alone?

Nick Yorke was acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 29th last year from the Red Sox in exchange for Bucs SP Quinn Priester. Priester, a former top 100 prospect himself had trouble keeping the ball in the ballpark and surrendered too many hits. A change of scenery was needed.

The Bucs announced February 6th that they signed Tommy Pham to a 1-year $4.025MM deal with a chance for an additional $250K via incentives. I'm hearing Pham is expected to play the weakside platoon against LHPs. I still think they should consider carrying 14 position players on their 26-Man roster if they sign another LHH outfielder.

The Bucs recently inked a deal with Tommy Pham for $4.025 Million with incentives. Their 40-man roster is full so someone will need to be designated for assignment to make room for Pham.

The Bucs announced today that they have signed Tommy Pham to a 1-year $4.025MM deal with a chance for an additional $250K via incentives.

The Diamondbacks have re-signed Pirates free agent interest Randal Grichuk. The deal is reported with a base salary for 2025 of $2 million, with a mutual option for $5 million ($3 million buyout), making it a guaranteed $5 million plus $500K in incentives in 2025.

The Reds recently tried to acquire Luis Robert Jr. but did not meet the Chicago White Sox's demands. It is reported that the White Sox wanted two top 5 prospects from the Reds in exchange.

AI assisted articles is coming to postbucs. Most articles will be written only by humans, but we will incorporate articles with human ideas and partially AI explained hence AI assisted.

It has been reported that the Buccos have shown interest in free agent corner outfield Randal Grichuk. It is known the Pirates could use at least another platoon option in the outfield especially after letting Connor Joe and Bryan De La Cruz walk. Both of those players bat right-handed, and so does Randal.

If I give you a triple slash line .285/.312/.415 wRC+ 93 and .200/.319/.375 wRC+ 97 against LHP who do you think of? Maybe Oneil Cruz since he has a reputation of struggling against lefties? How about Ke'Bryan Hayes with his bad back? Maybe the Sophomore Nick Gonzalez is putting up barely lukewarm numbers against LHP? Maybe it is Connor Joe, and that is why the Pirates cut him? The first triple slash line against LHP in 2024 was Bryan Reynolds and the second one was Andrew McCutchen.

I'm in the same boat as seemingly everyone else when it comes to the Adam Frazier signing. It just doesn't seem to make sense. On Wednesday 1/29/25 the Pirates finalized their deal with the former Bucco Adam Frazier for $1.525 million.

ZIPs has released their WAR projections for all the NL Central teams. Let's create an all division team roster of 26 players with the highest ZIPs projected WAR, and see how many Pirates make the roster.

The Pirates 'Big Three' include Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Curz, and Spencer Horwitz. Just Kidding. The Big Three are of course Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, and Jared Jones. The eye tells us they are a great trio, but how do they stack up to the rest of the NL Central.

MLB Pipeline and Baseball America has released their top 100 prospect lists, and the Pirates are represented around middle of the pack with 3 prospects on Baseball America's ranking and 4 prospects on MLB Pipelines Ranking.

The offseason is fast approaching spring training. Pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton February 12. The rest of the team report February 17. The first spring training game is February 22. The Pirates still haven't signed an everyday or platoon worthy corner outfielder. Given the Pirates self-imposed budget constraints one of the best fits is still available.

Spanning the 2023 and 2024 seasons the Pirates saw the 18th highest number of Pitches which is just below average. They were about league average coming in at 16th in walks, so you would think they would be around league average in OBP. Well, think again!

In the Pirates UI Developer Application Details article I shared my application answers for the UI Developer job posting and why they created the position in 2024. In 2023, I applied to be a research apprentice and received a response to complete a coding challenge. Due to unforeseen circumstances I was not able to start on the coding challenge, and I thereafter never heard back.

In the Communication is Key article I mentioned that I applied to the Pirate's front-end/ui developer job posting and didn't hear back. I was hoping to add some details of the application to that article, but I wasn't able to find my notes I saved from the application. I have since found them.

Ben Cherington cannot make the analytics department big enough. Since he was hired as the new GM back in 2019 he has been adding to the analytics team in several positions including: devops, researchers, developers, analysts, machine learning engineers, and apprentices. However, during the 2024 season a new position opened in that department, a front end developer.

Matt Hague and Ben Cherington know there is a flaw with the communication between the back office researchers and the hitters in the batters box. They are trying to fix that by telling stories.

Matt Hague is telling stories. His stories are a common data science strategy used to explain the data to stakeholders. Stakeholders this case are the hitters. The Matt Hague hiring seems to be the next step in the process to develop hitting in the Pirates Organization.

Welcome to Post Bucs! This blog is primarily focused on analysis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, rather than on reaction, recap, or predictions. Most of our articles will follow a sequence and evolve our analysis in an agile fashion.