March 23, 2015
Column: Best outfield? Pump the brakes, please 49
Gregory Polanco and Starling Marte have drawn plenty of attention even in spring training. — GETTY
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
BRADENTON, Fla. — “I don’t know. I hope so. We’ll see, right?”
This was Andrew McCutchen’s assessment of the Pirates’ outfield fortunes for 2015 and beyond, which, of course, will be centered on the MVP himself as well as youngsters Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco. And it was striking solely in that it offered level-headed context for the topic.
To wit …
‘Pirates could have baseball’s best outfield‘
‘Outfield could be best in majors‘
Those are only articles from outlets outside Pittsburgh, mind you, and I’m guessing a complete list would be a lot, lot longer than that.
Well, let’s go local — and I mean truly inside — for a far more rational outlook.
“You have to like the talent we’ve got, the athleticism, the hunger, the drive,” Cutch continued at his McKechnie Field stall. “But you’ve got to get out there and do it. You’ve got a job to do, you’ve got high expectations, and now you’ve got to get it done.”
Spot on, as ever. Because that, ultimately, is what must happen for this to become more than the stuff of fantasy. The other two outfielders have got to get it done.
They sure didn’t in 2014 …
Marte finished ablaze, no question. His .348 average after the All-Star break was second-best among all National League players, not just outfielders. His .975 on-base plus slugging percentage, which weighs total offense, ranked fourth among all players. He wasn’t just productive. He was prodigious.
That happened, I’m told, after Marte had been placed on the concussion disabled list in July, a month in which he batted .222 and was largely falling out of sight. It was then that he was called by Rene Gayo, the Latin American scout who’d signed him out of the Dominican and a man who speaks to his signees with the same authority whether they’re in the majors or on a dirty lot in Santo Domingo.
“I told him it was time to grow up, to be a man,” Gayo recalled. “This wasn’t about him or feeling sorry for his injury or anything like that. This was about the Pittsburgh Pirates. This was about our entire organization needing someone with all his God-given talent to carry us.”
Gayo remembered slamming the phone down on Marte after speaking his piece.
All Marte would say about that talk, when I brought it up here this spring: “Rene believes in me. He always believes in me. I appreciate that.”
I share this not to credit Gayo for what came next. That would be unfair. Rather, it’s to illustrate that Marte seized that challenge and, really, rose above it. So much more seems to be made of other Pirates’ contribution toward that second consecutive playoff berth, but no one on the roster did more when it counted most.
But a partial year or responding to an angry call won’t cut it in 2015. And he gets that.
“This has to be my year, the whole year,” Marte said. “I don’t want to put pressure on myself, don’t want to do too much. But I have to work hard and know and understand that my team needs me. I’m ready for that.”
He grinned.
“I’m a little smarter now, you know?”
Yeah, I know. I’ve known Marte since meeting him as a baby-faced 17-year-old while writing an investigative piece in the Dominican. He’s come a long way. Wonderful kid.
It’s entirely possible that he’ll be the Pirates’ best player this season. No one should rule that out. And if it happens, the franchise couldn’t be in better hands.
But again, he’s got to get it done.
So does Polanco, and he’ll start out, at 23 years old to Marte’s 26, a few strides behind.
He’s coming off a rookie year in which he tore up the Grapefruit League and had Pittsburgh fans pleading for him to come north, then tore up the International League and had Pittsburgh fans pretty much crestfallen with every day he wasn’t called up.
As Polanco recalled, “Baseball was very easy for me.”
It stayed that way after he arrived June 10, as he batted .288 with a .374 on-base percentage in his debut month. He came off like a young Dave Parker. Big, brash, powerful, unstoppable.
Until he wasn’t. A .214 July was followed by a 1-for-30 slump in August, and that was followed by a stunning return trip to Indianapolis, where his 4-for-26 showing hardly earned the promotion back to Pittsburgh when rosters expanded for September. Even once back, though, he’d lost his job to journeyman Travis Snider. He watched most of the stretch run from the dugout and never set foot on the field for the wild card loss to the Giants.
“That was not easy,” Polanco allowed with a small smile. “I never struggled before. It was hard. But I learned. I’m going to be better.”
I’ve no doubt he will. The talent at hand is colossal, maybe more than that of either Marte or McCutchen. Some of those reports up there glow about all three outfielders having five tools, though Marte’s power has yet to go full bore and Cutch has never had the arm tool. Polanco has them all. And now that he’s shown up 15 pounds thicker, he’s ripped like an outside linebacker — “I don’t know what that is,” he replied when I mentioned that — and reminds physically of not just Parker but Andre Dawson, Dave Winfield, you name your prototypical power-hitting outfielder.
But the consistency has to come. To this point in the spring, for what it’s worth, it hasn’t. He’s 6 for 33 with one extra-base hit. He isn’t striking out — only three — but he’s regularly rolling over the ball for 4-3 groundouts, similar to the second half of 2014.
And I haven’t even touched on his batting .171 vs. lefties for the full season. That’s scary.
Greatness in baseball is founded not in extraordinary gifts but in simple consistency.
Andrew McCutchen, Gregory Polanco and Starling Marte celebrate making the playoffs. — GETTY
The planning’s in place, and it’s justified. So don’t mistake this as criticism, please.
Clint Hurdle has every right to glow about the defensive upside: “If there’s some air underneath a fly ball, we have three men more than capable of running it down and getting it in leather. And all of them have strong, accurate arms. When they’re on the field, it lifts our entire defensive game.”
Rick Sofield, the outfield coach, has every right to instruct PNC Park’s groundskeepers, as he did this week, to keep the big grass cut short because, “We’ve got those three horses out there who can track down anything, and that’s a real advantage we want to use.”
Neal Huntington, the GM with the final call on baseball matters, had every right — and was completely right — to trade Snider and clear space for Polanco now rather than later: “We want Gregory to get every chance to succeed.”
If you want to get more excited than any of the above, the Pirates were 24-14 when all three manned the outfield in 2014. But the season happens to hold 124 additional games, and that’s where the non-fantasy difference can be found.
