Pirates begin 2016 grind with first spring workout
BRADENTON -- Ray Searage didn't mince words.
Addressing pitchers and catcher on the field at Pirate City ahead of Friday's first official workout, Pittsburgh's pitching coach expressed the championship goal in a team mindset.
"It's not my way or the highway," Searage said. "It's our way."
And that's something that hasn't deviated from manager Clint Hurdle or the organization's franchise, even in the face of a busy offseason for division rival Chicago and defending division champ St. Louis.
"We're not going to reset the bar based on coming up a game short in the wild card again," Hurdle said. "We won 98 games. I think if you look at the success we've had for the last three seasons, our process is in a pretty good place. We need to tweak it. We need to make some adjustments to get better collectively and individually. Every year, there's a team that wins the offseason that doesn't necessarily win the World Series. One thing we've gotten really good at here is taking care of what we need to take care of."
After producing the second-best National League regular-season record in 2015, the Pirates were unlucky to also play in the same division as the team with the top NL record. So the Bucs entered the NL Wild Card game for a third straight year and were eliminated for the second consecutive season without scoring a run.
One of the key pieces to this year's squad, right-handed pitcher Gerrit Cole, isn't 100 percent healthy. Pittsburgh head athletic trainer Todd Tomczyk said Cole suffered inflammation in his right rib cage during his offseason training program in mid-January. He's playing catch off flat ground without any restrictions, and is expected to begin throwing from the slope of the mound Monday.
Cole anchored the 2015 staff with a 19-8 record, 2.60 earned run average and 8.7 strikeout per nine innings.
To help bolster the losses of veteran A.J. Burnett, Charlie Morton and J.A. Happ, with the latter claiming seven wins in 11 starts after Pittsburgh picked him up at the trade deadline, the Pirates traded away second baseman Neil Walker for Jon Niese and signed Ryan Vogelsong in the offseason.
Meanwhile, the lineup saw tweaking with the aforementioned Walker trade and Pedro Alvarez, who was nontendered in December just a couple of seasons after producing a league-high 37 home runs.
Alvarez, though, proved a defensive liability at first base with 23 errors.
But without his pop, Pittsburgh's lineup takes on a new feel.
"We're comfortable with an offense that is going to generate base runners," Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said. "It's going to have some guys that can hit the ball into the gaps. It's going to have guys, multiple guys that should be able to run up double-digit home runs. The Cardinals have found a way to be the best team in baseball without hitting a lot of home runs. The Royals, obviously, won a World Series and lost a World Series without hitting a ton of home runs."
Hurdle said baseball is transitioning in various ways, including teams getting more on-base guys that allows the creation for more runs. A league-wide issue, though, Hurdle said is hitters striking out at a high frequency.
"When we strike out nine times in a game, we've watched the other team play catch for three innings," Hurdle said.
The goals, though, aren't changing with the changes. And the improvements needed for the long, six-month haul started with Friday's first workout.
In the past three seasons, the Pirates earned playoff berths. They won the NL Wild Card game in 2013, before running into buzzsaw pitchers like San Francisco's Madison Bumgardner and Chicago's Jake Arrieta in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Those exits, while tough, place an important emphasis on avoiding the one-game winner-take-all contest this campaign.
"It shows the importance of winning the division," Pirates relief pitcher Jared Hughes said. "That's what it does. Yeah, it's difficult at the time. But in hindsight, you look back at it and you're like, 'OK, well let's win the division then. We'll get more than one game if we win the division.' So that's the plan this year."
Jason Dill, sports reporter, can be reached at 745-7017 or via email at jdill@bradenton.com. Like his Facebook page at Jason Dill Bradenton Herald.
This story was originally published February 19, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Pirates begin 2016 grind with first spring workout ."