Tim Benz: Moving Oneil Cruz to CF makes the Pirates look bad. How they announced the move makes them look even worse

The only things more inconsistent than Oneil Cruz’s throwing arm are the darts the Pittsburgh Pirates are blindly tossing at his future position.

Regarding Cruz and his 23 fielding errors at shortstop, on Sunday, Aug. 18, Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said on 93.7 The Fan, “All I can tell you right now is he is our shortstop.”

Since then, Cruz has only committed one error. Yet on Monday, Aug. 25, Cherington and manager Derek Shelton announced that the 25-year-old is moving to center field.

I guess Cherington was being very literal with the phrase “right now.”

For the time being, though, forget Cherington’s two-faced presentation of the team’s thought process surrounding Cruz’s position in the field a week ago. Let’s just focus on why they are doing what they are doing with Cruz.

“We just got to a point where we had enough information to be more clear and believe that it could be in his best interest and ours both to make the move,” Cherington said Monday.

Here is my theory. The team is giving up on its ability to make Cruz into a consistent shortstop. The franchise knows it has failed Cruz in that regard, and it doesn’t know what else can be done with him aside from making him a designated hitter.

The problem is, if the team brings back Andrew McCutchen again next year (because yinz know we love ‘Cutch n’at), Joey Bart supplants Henry Davis at catcher, Bryan Reynolds needs more days off the grass next year, and Bryan De La Cruz isn’t the greatest fielder, then that’s a problem.

I mean, the last time I checked, Major League Baseball doesn’t allow for multiple designated hitters per game.

So Cruz has to play somewhere in the field.

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My hunch is that the team knows putting Cruz in a corner outfield spot is a non-starter because it is a blow to his ego. So, if Cruz is not playing the premier position on the infield, the only way to make him happy is to give him the premium position in the outfield.

For now.

As TribLive’s Kevin Gorman told us on a recent “Breakfast with Benz” podcast, when the Pirates experimented with Cruz in the outfield during spring training a few years ago, he gave it “a Level 1 out of 10 effort.” But the majority of that wasn’t in center field.

“We want to give him a chance to capture as much upside as possible and us, as a team, the chance to capture as much upside as possible by keeping him at a premium position for as long as possible,” Cherington continued. “We just feel like now we have enough information to believe there is a better chance to see that happen in center field. But keeping him in a premium position was really important. We want to stay there.”

Oh, and it just so happens that the Pirates are bereft of pure center field prospects, so no one is being blocked by this decision. That’s why they were able to carry Michael A. Taylor and his .196 batting average for four months before putting him on waivers in advance of this move. He had a good glove in center.

Then again, if playing a good defensive center field is so important that it warrants keeping Taylor around, isn’t it scary to potentially have Cruz as your Opening Day center fielder next year?

Eh, never mind. We’ll revisit that contradiction before Opening Day.

Furthermore, I don’t think Cruz’s move from shortstop to center field is anything more than a momentary pacifier anyway.

This is the Pirates laying the foundation to eventually walk Cruz out to right field. They’ll slow-roll that move by fading him from the infield’s most glamorous position to the outfield’s highest-profile position.

Then, when it’s clear that’s not working out after a few bumpy weeks during meaningless September games this season and down in the wind and sun of Bradenton next spring, they’ll broach the topic of moving him over to right field early in spring training.

Because, c’mon, who are we kidding? The issues that are present with Cruz at shortstop will just manifest themselves in different ways in the outfield. Instead of loading up to break the Statcast numbers with a 100 mph throw from shortstop that sails wide of the first baseman, he’ll throw one 100 mph from the outfield that misses a cutoff man.

Instead of running out to left field and banging into Reynolds from the infield dirt, he’ll come screaming in from the outfield on a pop-up and crash into Nick Gonzales behind second base.

good to see the effort but sometimes restraint is needed pic.twitter.com/iLVLSbTV4y

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) August 1, 2024

Instead of rushing a double-play attempt at second base and having the ball go off his glove, he’ll boot a grounder rolling into the outfield as he is attempting to scoop and throw on the run.

If the Pirates could properly coach Cruz, they’d coach him to be better at his natural position. Now, we are supposed to expect that he is going to be morphed into a capable outfielder at the most difficult spot in the middle of his career?

“He’s got a lot of space out there to run around and show off all the things he has to show off,” Cherington said. “I think, in time, this can be fun for him because of that space. To some extent at shortstop, while there were certain things that he could do that were incredible, in center field, in theory, there’s even more space for him to just do things that the athleticism should allow him to do.”

Well, good. So long as Cruz has space to show off and have fun. That’s what’s important.

Phew! Yeah, he was probably going to be too gosh darn restricted and merely required to make fundamentally simple plays in right field. Feeding Cruz’s exuberant personality is probably what’s most important for everyone involved.

Wow.

I’d be alarmed if I actually thought for 30 seconds that Cherington meant any of that. But based on what he said just over a week ago, I know he’s shoveling horse manure now, just like everything he said during his radio show when he tried to sell us on Cruz’s future at shortstop.

And just like Cruz’s throws from short, whatever Cherington is tossing around publicly is well off-target.

Maybe just let Cruz pitch. That way, Rowdy Tellez won’t have to do it anymore. After Monday night’s appearance, poor Rowdy has to be getting close to his season pitch limit, right?