ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Reason for optimism: Fresh off two straight playoff appearances and an average of 91 wins each season, the Pirates still have the youngest lineup of any playoff team.
Reason for pessimism: Replacing Russell Martin is a challenge on both sides of the runs scored/runs allowed ledger.
The Pirates may have won only 88 games last season, but they played to a 91-win level, primarily due to their offense. Stripped of cluster luck (the Pirates were quite unlucky at turning their production into runs) and park effects, the Pirates had the second-best offense in the National League, just a hair behind the Dodgers. That's a far cry from the 2010-11 squads anchored by youngsters Andrew McCutchen, Jose Tabata, Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker that struggled to scored 600 runs.
The emergence of Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco have reduced Tabata to a fourth outfielder role, and as a result the unit can challenge the Dodgers for title of the best outfield in the league. On top of that, Josh Harrison made "the leap" in 2015 and the Pirates are banking on his stellar 2014 campaign being for real. Alvarez will move to first base, freeing up third base for Harrison. The odd men out, veteran first basemen Ike Davis and Gaby Sanchez, are no longer on the team, and their 2014 production was minimal anyway.
That leaves the Pirates with only one hole to fill from 2014, but it's a big one at catcher. Martin not only turned back the clock to 2007 in matching his career year at the plate, his pitch framing added nearly two wins' worth of value as well. Per Baseball Prospectus, the extra strikes Martin gets his staff saved Pittsburgh 13 and 17 runs in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The 2015 starter, Francisco Cervelli (and his backup Chris Stewart), came from the same Yankees-to-Pirates pipeline, but best-case scenario he's going to "Russell Martin Lite" and will more likely cost the Pirates a couple of wins.
Freed from the 40-plus innings of 5.00 ERA relief washed-up closers Jason Grilli, Ernesto Frieri and John Axford provided, and bolstered by the addition of left-hander Antonio Bastardo, the Pirates' bullpen should be terrific in 2015. There's one change of note in the rotation, with A.J. Burnett returning to Pittsburgh for a second stint, where he'll take the place of Edinson Volquez.
Burnett has been a better pitcher than Volquez, as evidenced by a lower career walk rate and higher strikeout and ground ball rates. But even if he's still better than Volquez, which is not a given, it's highly unlikely he'll come anywhere close to duplicating Volquez's results last season, as Volquez anchored the Pirates' staff with 193 innings' worth of 3.04 ERA pitching. He may have been a poor choice to start the wild-card playoff game against the Giants, but replacing his regular-season results won't be easy.
So, there are three areas of regression the Pirates are fighting this year: Pitching staff success in 2013 and 2014 apparently aided materially by the catching prowess of Martin (plus his bat), a fairly out-of-nowhere career year from Harrison, and the loss of Volquez's production. That's pretty manageable when you've got considerable upside and bounce-back potential from Polanco and Alvarez, respectively, as well as the sublime McCutchen in center. On top of that, the Pirates got only 22 starts from their ace-in-waiting, Gerrit Cole, in 2014.
When the Westgate released the first win totals last month, listing the Pirates at 83.5 wins, it looked like the most suspect line. I wondered if there was an injury I'd forgotten about. Now sitting at 85 wins, it's a lot more reasonable, but this team is most assuredly a potential 90-win team. You can't really call the Pirates mispriced at 85 wins, but they're getting surprisingly little respect from oddsmakers.
2015 projection: 86-76 (second, NL Central)
Bet recommendation: Over