One thing I've noticed is that the expectations for this year's Pirates team are extremely high. I've seen a bunch of predictions for how many games the Pirates will win this year, and I don't think I've seen any that have the win total at below 85. I'm not sure exactly how that's being justified. Last year at this time not a lot of people were predicting win totals above 82. My question now is - what has changed from then?
The Pirates got a full season from Starling Marte in 2013 and they'll get another one in 2014, and he should be improving at the age he's at, so that's a step up from last year. The Pirates lost Garrett Jones, who hardly did anything last year so you can't call that too much of a downgrade, even though I think a lot of people would feel better with Jones there then what we have with Gaby Sanchez and Travis Ishikawa/Andrew Lambo now. The Pirates have done away with trying to convince anybody that Clint Barmes can be a big league starter, so they'll be going with Jordy Mercer, who could be an above average hitter from the position despite not being stellar defensively. Pedro Alvarez seems to have figured out how to be a very valuable hitter despite not hitting for average. You feel more confident in him this year than you did last year, sure. Andrew McCutchen actually had a worse year in 2013 than he did in 2012, which was still good enough to be the best player in the league. Russell Martin played better than we thought he would, so if you can expect him to repeat that, then sure, there's an upgrade there. We have a full year of Gerrit Cole, but no A.J. Burnett. Francisco Liriano is in that same boat with Martin, as we got an all-star level starter when we thought we could be getting someone who would be off the team by the all-star break.
That's a lot of words, but what I'm trying to say is that I just don't see how this team looks all that much better than it did last year when everyone was predicting win totals in the 70's. The Pirates seemingly played well over their heads in 2013. Maybe they were better than we thought, but I just can't feel confident that the Pirates are going to be a playoff team again this year.
From a numbers standpoint, Fangraphs has the Pirates winning 84 games this year, which would give them a wild card spot again.
Anything can happen, the Pirates could win 100 games or they could win 60 games. Who knows. Logic says they'll be somewhere in the 78-88 win range. For me, I'm going on the lower half of it, just because I think what the Pirates did last year was a bit fluky. The chances of Liriano and Martin doing what they did last year are low, the chances of Edinson Volquez doing anything positive are also low. The Pirates are really leaning heavily on McCutchen, Marte, and Alvarez to produce offensively. The pitching staff has question marks from top to bottom. As I said, everything could click again and the Pirates could be right near the top of the league again, but I don't think it's as likely as everyone thinks it is.
My prediction for the Pirates is 80 wins. People will hate me for that, but that's what I'm going with.