When it comes to winning, fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates do not have a lot to look forward to this season. The good news is they at least have a glimmer of hope in Oneil Cruz, one of the game’s best young players, and he has set an extremely high bar for himself this season.
When asked about his statistical goals for the 2023 season, Cruz set the bar at either joining the 30/30 or 40/40 club for home runs and stolen bases.
Those are lofty numbers for any player, let alone somebody that has fewer than 90 games of big league experience.
But they might not be out of reach for Cruz, who already dazzled baseball fans a year ago with some of the best raw tools in the sport.
He hit 17 home runs and stole 10 bases in 87 games after getting the call-up from Triple-A year ago. Project those numbers out to a 162 game season and you have 31 home runs and 18 steals. Keep in mind, he produced those numbers while still adjusting to big league pitching for the first time and going through some very obvious growing pains when he first got called up. Despite that, he still hit for enormous power and stole a respectable number of bases.
It’s also worth noting that 2023 rule changes could help to bring base-stealing back in vogue.
It was around the beginning of August that his performance really started to take off.
He consistently produced exit velocities over 110 MPH on batted balls, is one of the fastest runners in the league and possess a cannon of a throwing arm at shortstop. He is a one-man highlight reel on any given night.
Still, those are extremely high goals he set for himself when you consider how rare both 30/30 and 40/40 are.
Since 2010 only 11 players have reached the 30/30 mark, while only five have done it since the start of the 2013 season.
The 40/40 mark is even rarer as only only four players (Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Alfonso Soriano) have ever done it. Soriano was the most recent player to do it during the 2006 season.
Whether the Pirates are any good this season or not will not take away from the fact that Cruz will be one of the most electric players in baseball and worth watching every night. And if any young player in the league has the skillset to reach those marks, it might be him.
