GM Ben Cherington 'focused on making the Pirates better' this offseason

Contrary to popular belief, given the Pittsburgh Pirates are headed for a fourth consecutive last-place finish in the NL Central, Ben Cherington has been consumed with finding ways to turn them into a winner.

Even with the likelihood of another 100-loss season looming, the Pirates general manager isn’t about to panic over the pressure to win. Cherington said Sunday that he’s focused on two things: Where can the Pirates improve in player evaluation, and how can they acquire or develop better players?

“I don’t feel any more urgency than I have every day that I’ve been here,” said Cherington, who was hired in November 2019. “Our entire jobs, our entire lives, really, are focused on making the Pirates better. And everything we do is only about that. We know that we’re not going to get everything right over time as we try to do that. We have to keep learning and getting better and better and better at everything we do. As we do that, the results will get better on the field.”

That starts with adding quality depth to a young pitching staff that ranks 26th or worse (out of 30 MLB teams) in wins, losses, saves, batting average against, ERA and WHIP and finding ways to improve an offense that ranks 27th or worse (out of 30 MLB teams) in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, hits, doubles, runs and RBIs and has the third-most strikeouts.

“We have to get into the offseason and see what the opportunities are, but I think starting pitching and offense probably forever are things we’ll be focused on,” Cherington said. “Pitching in general, starting pitching in particular. As we’ve talked about before, we’d like to get on base more. Again, for our team, more of that is always going to come from internal improvement. But if we can help that outside the Pirates, then yeah, we’d like to do that.”

As Cherington searches every avenue for ways to improve the Pirates, this season has served as an open audition for many Pirates players, from returning veterans to those acquired through trades or waiver claims to rookies trying to prove they are major-league material.

The latter will continue with call-ups in September and early October, Cherington said, as the Pirates plan to take a look at prospects as they consider which ones to keep on the 40-man roster this offseason.

One of them is likely to be 23-year-old right-handed pitcher Luis Ortiz, who is expected to make his major-league debut in one of Tuesday’s doubleheader games at Cincinnati. The 6-foot-2, 240-pounder from the Dominican Republic is ranked the Pirates’ No. 30 prospect by MLB Pipeline.

He tossed six no-hit innings and had nine strikeouts but allowed two runs and three walks for Triple-A Indianapolis in a 5-4 loss to Omaha on Thursday.

Where that move is made out of necessity, Cherington said the rest will be determined on a “case-by-case” basis. Other candidates include infielder Ji-hwan Bae and outfielder Travis Swaggerty, although Cherington could reward a prospect having a strong season like Double-A catcher/outfielder Endy Rodriguez the way he did last October with the major-league debuts of Roansy Contreras and Oneil Cruz. Cherington and his baseball operations staff continue to evaluate which players the Pirates will protect from the Rule 5 Draft.

Meantime, Cherington is taking a wait-and-see approach to MLB rules changes, preferring to spend more time examining them before deciding how the Pirates want to proceed in free agency. Where Pirates manager Derek Shelton suggested that the restrictions on defensive shifts and the increased size of the bases could place a priority on hitters who make contact and can steal bases, Cherington needs more time to decide.

“The truth is, I don’t know what those are yet,” Cherington said. “We’re still digging into that and trying to predict what changes that will bring and from that how that would make a particular player or skill more valuable or less valuable. It may be that we have to get into it and see what the game is telling us before we know for sure. I think the answer is probably yes, that it will change something about how we select or train players. I can’t tell you today what that’s going to be, though.”