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In 2015, the Pittsburgh Pirates were stuck chasing the Saint Louis Cardinals, while being chased by the Chicago Cubs. The Pirates were stopped in the wild card game thanks to the pitching of Jake Arrieta. With the young Pirate pitchers getting better every year, the pitching gap is closing. The Pirates need their offense to keep pace with the young hitters of the Cubs and Cardinals to keep pace in the NL Central.
Last season Pedro Alvarez started 119 games at first for the Pirates committing 23 errors. The hope was that by moving Alvarez from third to first his errors would go down. Throughout 2015, the Pirates gave shots to Michael Morse, Corey Hart and Travis Ishikawa. With only Morse having made it through the first base purge this offseason, the Pirates are turning to John Jaso to stop the defensive bleeding while doing something to approximate Alvarez’s offense.
Jaso’s career OPS is .767. That compares favorably to the career OPS of .750 by Alvarez. To make this number even more impressive, Jaso beats Alvarez by over 50 points in OBP. OBP points are worth 2 to 3 times as much as SLG, so Jaso needs only maintain his career numbers to keep the offense flowing for the Pirates at first base. Besides Jaso, the Pirates also have Morse around to help support Jaso offensively and defensively.
Jaso also has to do better at first base than Alvarez did for the Pirates to be successful in 2016. Jaso has played a total of five MLB innings at first base having never started a game there. Because of concussions as a catcher, Jaso played exclusively OF and DH last season.
Jaso’s move to first base is somewhat reminiscent to that of Scott Hatteberg‘s move last decade. The main difference is that Jaso has been a valuable piece his entire career. If Jaso can maintain his offensive prowess while playing an average MLB first base, the Pirates should be playing far into the offseason in 2016.
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