Over at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, it’s widely known that the standard is the standard, even if the Steelers have seemingly fallen short of that in recent years. It’s a little different at PNC Park. When talking about the Pirates, the perception will remain the perception until owner Bob Nutting does something substantive to change it.
That process seemingly started with the hiring of general manager Ben Cherington, as well as the long-overdue, full-scale rebuild that’s in full swing. After a year of observing — and likely cringing — Cherington has put the hammer down this offseason, acquiring prospects at a rapid rate.
Speaking Sunday after trading Jameson Taillon to the Yankees for four more youngsters, Cherington said he didn’t necessarily plan to send away three of the Pirates’ most popular players in 31 days. The biggest goal was to stay ready and pounce if opportunity arrived.
Cherington also spoke on how some of these moves have been received by the fan base, though he said that sort of thing is often tough for someone like him to judge.
“I don’t know any better than you how this is being perceived externally, but we do care,” Cherington said. “We want to be trusted to make decisions and lead and build a great team here. We have to sort of weigh that external input with what we feel is best for the Pirates in the long run and do the best we can.”
To his credit, Cherington has done well for himself (and the Pirates) when dealing Taillon, Joe Musgrove and Josh Bell, acquiring players with upside that professional evaluators really like.
The four he got for Taillon, who’s coming off a second Tommy John surgery and has pitched just 37⅓ innings over the past two seasons, all ranked within Baseball America’s top 32 for the Yankees, highlighted by right-hander Miguel Yajure (No. 8).
Zooming out a bit and changing scouting services, the Pirates’ top 30 list over at MLB Pipeline paints a better picture of Cherington’s work. Despite being on the job for roughly 15 months, he’s responsible for 16 of Pittsburgh’s top 30 prospects, including six of the top 10.
Whether it’s been via the MLB draft, trades or on the international market, Cherington’s credentials and comfort doing this sort of stuff have been extremely evident.
“We still need more players and opportunities,” Cherington said. “Not all the players in the minor-league system are going to pan out, so we need a lot of them and to pour into development.”
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin invoked the definition-of-insanity line during his season-ending news conference when talking about his team’s propensity for late-season collapses. For Cherington, the definition of insanity would’ve been keeping the same minor-league and developmental system in place and hoping for different results.
So he blew it up.
Out went former farm director Larry Broadway, shifted into a different role. In came John Baker from the Cubs, given the title of director of coaching and development as a way to meld his unique background as a former big-league player and trained mental-skills coach.
Cherington also has surrounded himself with a couple of bright, young minds who garner universal respect around the game.
There’s assistant GM Kevan Graves, who managed the store on an interim basis after Neal Huntington was fired. And Steve Sanders, who helped replenish Toronto’s farm system by acquiring and hoarding prospects much like the Pirates are trying to do.
To coordinate all of that, Cherington also made a sneaky-smart move last week by shifting assistant hitting coach Mike Rabelo into the role of field coordinator, where he’ll take a lead role with technology and innovation at the major-league level and also serve as the point person on player development to ensure consistency up and down the organization.
The position is largely new in Pittsburgh, though it exists in other organizations. It’s simply another way to ensure development flows smoothly between minor-league levels, the latter part of that plaguing the Pirates with Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and others.
“We have faith in our group and the way they’re thinking about [development],” Cherington said after the Musgrove trade. “We’re committed to figuring out how to get better at that all the time — being open-minded, searching for the answers and not pretending we have ’em.
“If we have the right people with that mindset and stay in that mindset, we’ll keep getting better at it. We won’t ever be perfect, but over time, it will help our players.”
Cherington isn’t wrong. He and his staff have shown this offseason that they know what they’re doing build-wise, and we haven’t even talked about signing prized Dominican outfielder Shalin Polanco or modernizing the Pirates’ entire pitching program.
But it’s also not enough to change the narrative around the Pirates. That will come only after Cherington (theoretically) fixes the farm system and puts a more competitive club on the field, a process that’s unlikely to happen before 2023.
Once that happens, we’ll see the watershed moment off in the horizon. That’s when either Nutting will open his wallet to support what his GM has done — via free agents or keeping the players the Pirates have — or he won’t. Pick the first option, the perception should change. The second? Nutting should be forced to sell.
While you sit and wonder which will happen — a fair concern given how they’ve operated — also ask yourself this: If Cherington (and his three World Series rings) has the vision and foresight for the rest of this, would he really be dumb and/or gullible enough to take this job and gamble with his professional future without believing he’d get the support required to do this right?
