PITTSBURGH _ As Pirates leadership held its season-ending Zoom call on Wednesday, with general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton taking questions for the final time until potentially December, the dichotomy was striking.
While Pirates players and coaches are now busy reflecting on the 2020 season and the front office continues to talk about ways to improve, there are at least three playoff teams around Major League Baseball that Pirates fans should watch.
In 2017, the Toronto Blue Jays, San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox were all in a similar situation to the Pirates, but Pittsburgh has taken a decidedly different path _ one Cherington and Shelton have been tasked with trying to correct.
And as the two men discussed a variety of topics on this call, it was impossible not to think about three of the most exciting teams in the sport, ones who've gradually increased payroll and steadily injected young talent into their respective pipelines, and how similar they were to the Pirates a short time ago.
"I certainly respect the jobs that those teams have done," Cherington said. "I wouldn't identify one single team we're trying to model after. We're trying to learn from everybody."
The Pirates are trying to do that, Cherington pointed out, while also adhering to the four principles he and president Travis Williams have emphasized a lot since the time changes were made last fall _ the identification, acquisition, development and deployment of talent.
Cherington isn't wrong, mind you, and it should be seen as encouraging that this season already included some important developmental marking posts, occurrences such as the impressive debut of Ke'Bryan Hayes, drafting Nick Gonzales and securing the No. 1 overall pick in 2021.
If you look at what the White Sox, Padres and Blue Jays have done, that's it. They've been able to accumulate a bunch of young talent, and they've spent more when it made sense, with the White Sox before this season and the Padres pushing their chips to the middle of the table at the trade deadline.
Can the Pirates do this? Objectively, it's tough to see why not. Consider that in 2017, the Pirates won 75 games and spent $98.2 million, which was 24th in baseball. Both San Diego (71 wins, $77.9 million, 27th) and Chicago (67 wins, $86.4 million, 26th) won and spent less.
The difference became talent. Among the top 60 prospects in 2017 according to MLB Pipeline, the White Sox, Padres and Blue Jays accounted for 11 of them, including six of the top 26, plus MVP candidate Fernando Tatis Jr., who was actually 52nd. The Pirates, meanwhile, countered with Austin Meadows and Mitch Keller, and we all know what has happened there.
"When teams are able to (develop a winning model), it is almost always through a combination of really good identification of young players, whether that's in the draft, international or trading for minor league players," Cherington said. "Then it's the development of those young players and into the team, and sometimes that transition takes some time. Sometimes guys perform right away. It's not linear. But you need a combination of those things happening."
It's either encouraging or depressing to see how these paths splintered in the past few years, the three playoff teams continuing to build while the Pirates went the other direction.
In 2018, the Pirates (82-79) actually won 20 more games than the White Sox (62-100) and spent $20.8 million on major league players; however, by nailing those four pillars, the White Sox were able to take a couple of sizable steps forward this offseason by adding about $35 million in payroll when they felt like they were in a position to compete.
Suddenly, homegrown talents such as Eloy Jimenez, Luis Robert and Dylan Cease had help in the form of Yasmani Grandal, Dallas Keuchel, Edwin Encarnacion and others, and the White Sox had a team that turned out to be really, really good.
The Blue Jays enjoyed a couple of terrific drafts, something Cherington and assistant Steve Sanders helped with during their time in Toronto, and the Padres more than doubled their payroll from 2017 until their full-season mark for 2020 ($157.9 million) before becoming MLB's most aggressive team at the deadline.
What those teams did shows that it can be done, but it will also take a combination of Cherington spearheading an increased focus on drafting and development, as well as financial assistance from owner Bob Nutting whenever the talent accumulated becomes major league ready.
Cherington said in spring training, and reiterated Wednesday, that he really does believe he'll get that support from ownership when the time comes.
"I'm just not worried about that," Cherington said. "We've got to do our job to get to that point where that's going to make a lot of sense to do that and then figure out what is the best way to complement (the young talent). It's not a straight line. I don't want to talk about it as if it's black and white. It's not that we won't add players this offseason or at any point along the journey, different moves that make sense at different times.
"I know I've said before that I'm confident that we have the resources to build a winning team."
