For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Batters

The Pirates’ offense wasn’t particularly good in 2023, but they’re at least interesting in some ways. For one, their best offensive players are either signed for a long time (Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes) or are very far from hitting free agency (Oneil Cruz, Jack Suwinski). Endy Rodriguez, one of the top catching prospects in ZiPS, is going to miss the season with UCL surgery, so it looks like the Pirates are making lemonades out of lemons and giving Henry Davis every chance to stick behind the plate before giving up and stuffing him in a corner somewhere. For a team that won’t spend significant amounts of money no matter what baseball’s economic system is, having that core already banked gives Pittsburgh lots of opportunities to play meaningful September baseball in a weak division.

The reason that the offense won’t be particularly good in 2024 either comes down to the secondary cast, which consists mainly of role players who are stretched as starters. While ZiPS is not especially keen on players like Nick Gonzales, Jared Triolo, or Liover Peguero, they’re young enough that it’s worth seeing what they can do. It’s certainly a far better idea than signing random veterans; Carlos Santana getting nearly 400 plate appearances wasn’t a terribly productive use of time. The best strategy for the Pirates would be to try to snag more players who are either overlooked by their organizations or without a clear path to playing time, like Jake Alu or Addison Barger, and seeing who sticks. At least Rowdy Tellez isn’t 37.

Pitchers

The big questions here in the short term involve Mitch Keller. Will the Pirates successfully sign him to a long-term extension? If not, will he start the 2024 season in Pittsburgh? Which pitcher is the real Mitch Keller? None of these questions are easy to answer, so all I can say for certain is that the rotation looks a lot less adequate-ish without him in it. Keller’s mystery second half does make evaluating him considerably trickier after he was dynamite in the early going. While home run stats are quite volatile for pitchers, the velocity data does back up the notion that he was far more crushable in the summer. Save crushable for a shandy on a 90-degree day.

The best thing you can say about the rest of the rotation is that ZiPS doesn’t see it as a disaster. There’s nobody that the computer actually hates — Marco Gonzales comes closest — but by the same token, it doesn’t see a lot of real upside from anyone outside of Johan Oviedo (who is out for the year anyway) and Paul Skenes. But mediocrity beats Götterdämmerung, and the rotation’s lumpenproletariat are competent enough and numbered enough to keep the team from the depressing depths of Oakland/Colorado dystopias.

In the bullpen, ZiPS remains skeptical about Colin Holderman; otherwise, it looks like one of those quietly decent relief corps that successful small market teams have a knack for putting together. David Bednar is the big name, but ZiPS also likes Dauri Moreta and Ryan Borucki. You can add Carmen Mlodzinski to that list (3.65 projected ERA as a reliever). The Pirates may not have that many leads to protect, but they ought to do a decent job at preserving those.

Right now, the Pirates look like a 75-win team or so, but one with some players worth watching. Even in a weak division, the Bucs would need a lot of luck to be relevant by the stretch drive. If they want to change that in 2024 without spending a lot of money, Ben Cherington is going to have to put on his clever cap for the rest of the winter.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

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