It’s easy for me to pick the Pirates’ best player. Francisco Cervelli is their All-Star, although some might argue for Corey Dickerson. Cervelli and Elias Diaz give the team the best offensive catching tandem in baseball, combining to hit .274 with 13 home runs and 49 RBIs.
It’s a lot harder to identify the Pirates’ most disappointing player. I count at least six candidates. It’s no wonder the team took a below-mediocre 32-33 record into its game Monday night at Arizona.
I’m discarding Sean Rodriguez from the conversation. You wish the Pirates would discard him, right? I didn’t have high expectations for him this season. Beyond that, he’s a utility player even though Clint Hurdle has started him 25 times in the first 65 games. It’s a shame that Rodriguez hasn’t been the same player since a serious automobile accident in January 2017. I love the passion he brings to the game. Still, he hit .167 in 132 at-bats last season after extensive shoulder surgery and sits at .162 in 105 at-bats this season.
I’m also eliminating Ivan Nova. He’s the Pirates’ highest-paid pitcher at nearly $9.2 million, but he is what he is: a player who appears to be on the decline. His start Sunday, a 7-1 win against the Cubs, was a good one, but those have been few and far between. He was 2-8 with a 5.83 earned-run average last season after the All-Star break and is 3-5 with a 4.68 ERA in 2018.
Tyler Glasnow once was considered a big part of the Pirates’ future, a can’t-miss prospect who was coveted by many teams. Now, he’s struggling in middle relief. He’s 24, and it’s too soon to write him off, but it’s fair to wonder if the future ever will arrive for him.
The same is true for Gregory Polanco. He will be 27 in September, no raw kid anymore. This is his fifth season in the big leagues. The Pirates thought enough of him in April 2016 to give him a five-year, $35 million contract with club options in 2022 and 2023, hoping he would give them the same bang for their buck as Andrew McCutchen. Instead, that contract looks like Jose Tabata’s deal, a waste of money. Polanco is hitting .206 and seems just as lost in the field as he is at the plate. Maybe his three-run triple Sunday against the Cubs will get him going. Or, more likely, not.
That leaves Jameson Taillon and Josh Bell in a tight race that neither wants to win.
Taillon, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2010 draft behind Bryce Harper and ahead of Manny Machado, was supposed to be the Pirates’ ace after Gerrit Cole was traded to Houston. He has been anything but an ace. He had strong starts against Cincinnati and St. Louis but enough bad ones to stand at 3-5 with a 4.08 ERA overall. He has just five quality starts among his 13 and gone beyond six innings three times. His worst might have been Thursday against the Dodgers. All was aligned for the Pirates to win, but the Dodgers used nine relief pitchers to take the game and the series, 8-7. Taillon lasted just five innings and gave up three runs and eight hits. That’s ace-like?
I had even greater expectations for Bell. He was really good last season — his first full one with the Pirates — when he hit 26 home runs with 90 RBIs and an .800 OPS. But he’s hitting .237 with a .686 OPS this season and is on pace for 10 home runs. He was dropped from cleanup to sixth in the lineup Saturday. Hurdle had to do something to try to get him going.
Bell gets the prize here, if that’s what you want to call it.
Bell also is the most likely of the six to turn around his season.
The Pirates really need that to happen.
Think back to the team’s tumultuous off-season, when they traded Cole and McCutchen. Remember Neal Huntington telling us over the screams of anger that we would like the acquisitions of Dickerson, Colin Moran, Joe Musgrove and Michael Feliz? Well, we do — all but Feliz, anyway. Huntington also told us the team would be good in 2018. We scoffed. Of course, we scoffed.
But you know what? Huntington would have been right if so many of his key players weren’t underachieving.
Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com and Twitter@RonCookPG. He can be heard on the “Cook and Poni” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.
First Published: June 11, 2018, 3:42 p.m.
