Why Are the Astros Better Than The Pirates? It's Not Ownership; it's Player Development.
An experiment in studying another team for a week led to a clear conclusion. The Astros success is predicated on their ability to draft and develop players. As is the Pirates failure.
What’s wrong with the Pittsburgh Pirates? If you ask any baseball fan, they will give you a simple answer: it’s their owner, Bob Nutting.
The Pirates have not made the playoffs—no matter how expanded—since 2015 and have had only one winning record in that time; they went 82-79 in 2018, and still managed to finish fourth in the NL Central.
Nutting takes a ton of the blame for the Pirates wretched state. As evidence, here’s a screenshot of the first four entries in the news section of a Google search of “Bob Nutting.” It’s not very positive.
Nutting gets the blame because he seems to have no interest in whether his team wins or loses, but only in exploiting the fact that other people care about whether his team wins or loses to make more profits.
The Pirates are 26th in payroll this season, and that’s not a new position. The Pirates have only run a top 20 payroll once in Nutting’s near 20 years of ownership of the team. Many argue is a key reason why the team cannot get to the playoffs.
I’m not here to praise or absolve Nutting, who has well earned his reputation for caring only about profits and not about winning baseball games. But I am going to argue that Nutting’s preference for profits is not the major reason why the Pirates seem to be perpetually stuck below .500. Instead, I will argue it’s their inability to develop their own prospects, especially through the MLB draft.
Wait, isn’t this an Astros blog? It’s colors are still blue and orange and it’s still named after a lyric in “Go Go Astros,” so it sure seems like it’s still an Astros blog. So why are you talking about the Pirates?
I am writing this as part of the 2025 “Fangraphs Fan Exchange Program” created by Michael Baumann. Baumann wrote that he created this in an effort to give fans more perspective on their own team. “The more you watch just one team, the less perspective you have about what’s going on with the other 29 clubs. And without that comparison, ironically, you’re less able to judge your own club.”
Baumann matched up each of the 30 teams with another team, and assigned us Astros fans to watch the Pirates for the past week.
Now I have to admit I did not fulfill the full vision of what Baumann wanted in the exchange program. He asked that fans “do whatever you would ordinarily do in the course of following baseball, but do it for another team.”
I watch just about every Astros game, especially during the week. I did not watch every Pirates game, due to, among other reasons, their earlier start Eastern time zone starts, a rainout on Wednesday, and my focus last week on the College World Series, which were won by my LSU Tigers.1
I also did not follow Pirates reporters on Blue Sky, reply frequently to Pirates posters, or post my own detailed thoughts and analysis of the Pirates.
I did sign up for Bucs on Deck, a Substack focused on Pirates prospects. I did pay more attention to their games than I do on the average week.
Among the criteria Baumann used for matching fans to a different team is that the exchange team “would offer something different from what they’d ordinarily be watching.” And boy, did that happen.
Since 2015, the Astros have been the opposite of the Pirates. Our boys have had a winning record in every season but one. They’ve been to the playoffs in just about every season. They are likely to get the playoffs again in 2025, and they have had a strong performing front office.
I thought a lot about the question of why the Astros have done better than the Pirates over the past decade. And the answer became clear. It’s not having a better owner, though that helps. It’s being better at player development.
The best way to show the Astros superiority in player development is through the draft.
I went through the MLB drafts going back through 2016 and added up the cumulative bWAR achieved by each of the draft picks each team signed.
You can see the numbers in the graph below. It starts with the most recent draft to produce major leaguers, which is 2023. And I have good news for Pirates fans—they crushed that draft. They did so by being able to pick the best player, and then actually doing that when they selected Paul Skenes, fresh off his own victory in the College World Series for LSU.
As you know, Skenes is a star. He started the All-Star game last year, less than 3 months after his major league debut. He should do it again in 2025, as he leads all National League pitchers in bWAR, ERA, WHIP, and inning pitched. The Pirates have gotten 10.3 bWAR out of the 2023 draft and yep, that’s all from Paul Skenes.
But look at the 2016 total for the Pirates. Over their last 8 drafts, they have acquired 11.2 bWAR in the draft. Paul Skenes is responsible for 10.3 of that (and counting), and the rest of the Pirates draft picks have accumulated a total of 0.9 bWAR. Eight years of drafts and outside of one unicorn, the Pirates have developed not even 1 WAR worth of value.
Contrast that to the Astros. They have not gotten much value from recent drafts, but look at 2019. The Astros have gotten 5.2 Wins from that draft, thanks to choosing Hunter Brown that year. They have added 17.4 wins of value from the 2018 draft, thanks to choosing Jeremy Pena. They’ve added 14.1 wins from the 2017 draft, when the Astros selected Jake Meyers and Chas McCormick.
One may argue that cutting the chart off in 2016 hurts perceptions of the Pirates. Their best draft was 2015, when they selected Ke’Bryan Hayes, the Gold Glvoe winning third baseman. The Pirates added 16.7 wins in that year’s draft between Hayes and other players.
Fair enough. But that’s not going to help the comparison because in 2015, the Astros drafted Alex Bregman 2nd overall and Kyle Tucker 5th. They crushed that draft.2 Astros draft picks in 2015 have earned 83.6 bWAR.
Excellent drafting has produced 20 more wins worth of value for the Astros than the Pirates from 2016 to 2023. Skenes will likely shave down that margin over the next several seasons, as he will continue to be a star.
Of course, the Pirates were only able to draft Skenes in 2023 because they had the first pick. The Pirates tend have draft early and the Astros late, because of the Pirates worse record. But the Pirates have done little with their better draft position. Before Skenes, The last Pirates first round draft pick to earn more than 3 wins was in 2015, when they drafted shortstop Kevin Newman with the 19th pick, 13 before they selected Hayes.
In that, the Astros are not different. The Astros have not produced a first round pick worth 3 wins since Bregman and Tucker in 2015.
But the Astros are making up the difference with the Pirates by their success in later rounds. Pena was a 3rd round pick in 2018. Brown was nabbed in the 5th round in 2019. Meyers was taken in the 13th round, while McCormick went in the 21st, both in 2017. Each of those is the best major leaguer taken in that round of their draft, by far.3
And that speaks to what the real skill is for the Astros in getting the most out of their draft—their excellent player development. I’m going to guess that Travis Swaggerty was a better prospect in 2018 than Pena. It’s why the Pirates drafted him 10th. Quinn Priester was probably a better pitching prosect than Brown. The Pirates took him 18th.
Yet, those two players have earned -0.4 bWAR in the majors for the PIrates. They are not developing their players well and not turning them into quality big league ballplayers.
There are other ways to see the failure of the Pirates minor league development system in comparison to the Astros system. How many draftees have the Pirates turned into major leaguers with positive WAR since 2015? 16. That’s less than the 26 that the Astros have developed.
There’s a bunch of guys with a cup of coffee in that list. So how many players have had earned more than one win of value? It’s 7 draftees for the Pirates, and 13 for the Astros.
The Astros develop players better than do the Pirates.
Another sign of the Astros well-earned reputation for developing players: the interest other organizations have in Astros draftees. Going through the list of players the Astros have drafted and turned into major leaguers includes a wide variety of players who the Astros traded for major league value.
Jake Bloss, Joey Loperfido, and Will Wagner got us an effective two months from Yusei Kikuchi. Chayce McDermott was part of the package for Trey Mancini. Abraham Toro got us Kendall Graveman and the cheap version of Rafael Montero. JB Bukaukas, Seth Beer, Corbin Martin, and Josh Rojas were the 4 players dealt in 2019 for Zach Greinke. Heck, we got our last 2 utility men through trades for Astros draft picks. Trent Thornton was dealt to acquire Aledmys Diaz and Mike Papierski was dealt for Mauricio Dubon.
There are some useful players the Astros gave up and some who still may hit (McDermott seems promising) for their new teams. But overall, that’s a good trading record over three different GMs. Astros draftees are attractive to other GMs and the team was able to fill a number of needs through their reputation for player development.
The Pirates have traded fewer of their prospects because they are not adding players for a playoff push. But even with that, their trade record is terrible. They traded Quinn Priester in a prospect-for-prospect trade for Nick Yorke, whose cup of coffee in the majors last year earned him a full season in AAA this year.
And that’s their good trade. In 2018, they added Shane Baz as a player to be named later in a deal to get Chris Archer. Archer delivered 1.2 bWAR over a season and a half in Pittsburgh. Baz, despite many injuries, have already beaten that in Tampa Bay. And that’s not all. The Pirates also sent Tyler Glasnow and Austin Meadows to the Rays in that deal. Ouch.
I will also note that the development differences between the two teams is not just limited to players acquired in the draft. That leaves out international amateur signings. I focused on the draft because the information on who is taken in what round is easy to find at Baseball Reference, while there is no single repository of these Interational signings.
But the Astros have done well there too. As evidence, look at the 2022 World Series, where 3 of the 4 pitching wins for the Astros came from quality starts delivered by Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier. Both were international amateurs signed by the Astros and developed into World Series heroes.4
I started this essay talking about the Pirates owner Bob Nutting, who has taken the lion’s share of the blame for the Pirates continual losing ways. Most of that attention has focused on his desire to spend as little as possible on the roster of his ballclub. That criticism of Nutting is absolutely accurate.
While Nutting’s focus on profits over pennants has been evident for a while, it came into sharper focus over the last calendar year. The emergence of Skenes as a star led to calls for Nutting to add payroll to take advantage of having the best pitcher on the planet just drop on his doorstep. The Pirates responded by signing Andrew Heaney to a 1 year/$5.25 million contract. Skenes can confidently make plans to see some LSU football games this October.
Yet, it is not the most important criticism one can offer of Nutting’s Pirates. They are terrible at developing players, particularly the ones that they draft. Nutting hired Ben Cherington as General Manager in November 2019. Nearly six years later, Cherington’s biggest accomplishment is choosing Skenes over Dylan Crews and Wyatt Langford, the two other candidates to go first in that draft. That’s a useful accomplishment.
It’s just that it is paired with basically nothing else. The 2025 Pirates have one other player with a bWAR above 1.5.
They do have some promise in their farm system, as Bubba Chandler is MLB Pipeline’s current #2 prospect. He, combined with other top 100 pitching prospects Thomas Harrington and Hunter Barco could soon join Skenes to form a very effective starting rotation at PNC Park.
But based on the Pirates record of developing players they drafted, that is not likely to happen.
As Astros fans, we should use this examination of the Pirates inability to develop their own prospects as a reason to appreciate the fact that our team is successful at developing its own prospects. It’s why the Astros won the World Series in 2017. Why they won it again in 2022, and why they are once again have a comfortable lead in the AL West at the halfway mark of the 2025 season.
Baumann is a huge college baseball follower and fan, so I think he’ll forgive me for spending much of my focus last week on Omaha. Whether he, as a South Carolina alum, will appreciate that I spent so much time cheering on one of the Gamecock’s rivals, is an open question. Geaux Tigers.
Picking Dansby Swanson first ahead of Bregman isn’t a terrible consolation prize for the Diamondbacks for 2015. But having traded Swanson a year later for Shelby Miller is terrible. Two awful mistakes within 12 months. The Rockies took Brendan Rodgers 3rd and the Rangers took Dillon Tate 4th. And on behalf of all of us who have enjoyed Kyle Tucker’s star turn in an Astros uniform and the contributions Isaac Paredes and Cam Smith have made to the 2025 team, I’d like to offer both franchises my thanks for their choices.
For the sake of completeness, the next best major leaguer taken in the 5th round of 2019 Brown earned has earned 3.1 WAR (Hunter Gaddis); the next best taken with Meyers in the 13th round in 2017 has earned 0.4 WAR (Ricky Karcher) the next best major leaguer taken in the 21st round in 2017 with McCormick earned 0.1 bWAR (Daniel Robert). And despite what I said in the text, it’s actually close between Pena and the next best player taken in the 3rd round of 2018. Cal Raleigh has earned 15.7 WAR. Which is impressive, but less than Pena.
I should also mention that the Astros biggest regrets in trading prospects comes from international amateur signings. In 2017, the Astros traded Teoscar Hernandez for Fransico Liriano. In 2022, they traded Wilyer Abreu for Christian Vazquez. Both Hernandez and Abreu developed into big league regulars in the outfield.
So player development it seems justifies Cranes stance on no longer than 5 year player contracts for FA’s as he believes they just develop more players?