Useless but—to me—interesting question: If the Pirates held Keller, Santana, Bednar and only traded the expiring contracts and Ke' Hayes but *this offseason signed Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman (assuming he opts out)* are they NL Central frontrunners? Didn't I read that if we scored 4+ a game with this squad we'd win 90+? Would Tucker and Bregman get us to 4 runs a game?
Jon Mayo’s latest mock at MLB Pipeline has the Pirates taking Arquette over Carlson and Parker. (Hernandez and Willits are taken, to the Mariners and the Cardinals respectively).
Arquette had “minor wrist surgery” in the fall. Just sayin’.
I’m kind of liking this guy from the Tigers -Justyn-Henry Malloy. 25 yrs old . Mashes in AAA. Only got 200 at bats in the Bigs. Maybe for Hayes or a reliever.
He has a chance to be a platoon bat, he's hit lefties pretty good, lacking power this year. He does add versatility in all three outfield spots and 1st. So a defensive replacement and some platoon time at 1st and the outfield.
Was hoping he'd k the last guy but a lazy pop up to right field will do. I thought the second basemen had it but Bae is looking much better in the outfield and did a good job calling him off.
I haven't heard from the historians.......how many times has a team won 6 in a row and then proceeded to lose 6 in a row. That's what this season has come to.....getting into the record books for posterity.
I'm normally a pretty private man but have you seen how many oxford buttons I leave unbuttoned? Would a man who bears his chest so nobly stick anything up another's you know what?
That’s happened frequently, I’m sure. What they did, which may be unprecedented, is win three straight shutouts and then lose three straight shutouts. I’m sure that’s happened fewer than ten times in MLB history, if it’s ever happened.
So I read Hoptown post he wished Nutting would shove a Torpedo Bat up Cherrington's posterity, followed by JRC saying "That's happened frequently". I was confused for a bit because I thought Torpedo bats were new this year.
I find it interesting —- though admittedly it’s the definition of small sample size. Nothing in his DSL stat lines suggested that he was ready to make the jump to the States. I guess that’s why you have scouts, who can see beyond the numbers.
On the hitting side the Latin program hasn’t looked this promising in years, but these guys are all so far away …..
Amazing what happens when you reward success rather than failure. 3 years ago, the only International amateur free agents with any promise were from Asia: scouted and signed by Pham. I asked then, why is he not the director of the program? The next year, they made him the international scouting director and poof... competence begins to manifest. Very unPiratey. Meanwhile Dellicari is still employed by the organization. Why? Only a mystic could answer this question.
Orioles already shedding players and got a Comp A pick from the Rays. I think it said they now have 7 selections in the first 93 picks this year. (I might be off on that).
No. I've said this all season - with BC's track record, this trade deadline has the potential to be a disaster for any GM moving forward. There is much danger here.
The Pirates have several of the most highly sought assets in a year with few obvious sellers and a wide open playoff picture. Opportunities are assets that need to be expended productively, just like good players are. A competent GM would see this as a critical chance to start restructuring the hitting side of the roster. The return won’t be as good in the offseason.
Sadly, we’re stuck with Homer Simpson’s dumber brother. Nutwit has created a lose-lose.
They have the worst offense in major-league baseball. They have all of 1 position-player prospect in the upper minors. They need to upgrade at least 5 or 6 positions to be competitive or acquire 2 star players. They will have no money in the budget for free agents.
It will take some genuine wizardry to turn this team around for next year. Why in the name of all that is good and righteous in the world is Ben Cherington still allowed to fiddle around with the assets of this team? The only wizardry that he is capable of performing is the invention of magic-word potions filled with incomprehensible syllables.
That's why you trade for a draft pick, Horowitz would have more influence on the return. A waiver claim for a top 40 pick would be a pretty good start on a return.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but trading Keller, Bednar, and so forth for draft picks launches rebuild 6.0: bigger, better, new and improved from rebuilds 1.0-5.0.
It is the pinnacle of human apathy that Nutting is allowing Cherington to handle this trade deadline after he has failed to acquire talent time and again on the trade market.
I was going to sat BC has NEVER made an early July trade. But that is not true. He has made one. On 7/7/23 he traded Carlos Santana for RK SS Jhonny Severino (and shed $2,386,290 of salary).
Yep, I would like to get a compA pick for a reliever, Bednar a little more but it would be a good starting point. Baker is out of options and has been up and down for years. He's having a good year this year but not overwhelming. He'll probably be a shutdown reliever now the Rays have him.
Loftin is the quintessential Ben Cherington player, and be very careful. The trade deadline looms, and the Royals might be buyers. Loftin may become a Pirate yet.
That is probably the most likely trade hypothetical that I have heard so far from anyone. That is probably in the works as we speak. It would actually be a fair trade.
In fact, as ridiculous as it sounds, as a fan of both teams, I would be in favor of it as it has longshot potential to help both teams and doesn't cost either of them anything.
Jeff Passan has an article up this morning on ESPN with plausible trades for contenders. (And, no, he does not mention anyone acquiring Skenes). He has Bednar making sense for the Tigers and Keller for the Blue Jays. The huge problem with the latter, which he acknowledges, is that the Blue Jays are weak on position player prospects. Their best prospect, which the Bucs would have to insist on for Keller, is Arjun Nimmala, a 19-year-old shortstop in A+. The problem is that the Pirates already have a 19-year-old shortstop in A+ who is performing much better than Nimmala.
Anyway, my question is: if the Pirates trade Bednar (only Bednar) to the Tigers, what is a realistic and fair return from their loaded farm system?
Issue isn't that Nimmala is a shortstop, issue is the Pirates need players closer to the majors. Fans should be over "But we already have a SS prospect" by now, as it should be about acquiring talented players, and worry about position later. And the position later thing becomes less an issue when talking about a talented shortstop, as opposed to an already defensively challenged corner outfielder or catcher, whose only fallback would be 1B/DH.
The problem I see in insisting on close to the majors talent only is that we potentially get the next Colin Moran. I agree, they need top shelf talent, plain and simple!
And you could also end up with Peguero or Escotto with further away guys. In retrospect, Joe ended up being a pretty good pitcher, but otherwise I'd hope they wouldn't go quantity over quality, and just get like an actual good upper level guy, then a lower ticket
They did the "closer to the majors" thing last year and got Billy Cook and Nick Yorke who, combined, have done diddly to help them this year.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but Cherington and his analytics people have been entirely incompetent when it comes to identifying major-league talent or close-to-major-league talent. They keep getting the next version of Tucupita Marcano: over and over again.
I mean, who did they trade for Cook and Yorke? Priester and Patrick Reilly? Wasn't expecting much out of those trades. Marlins got Stowers and Norby for Trevor Rogers. But I agree, the larger issue would be Ben's identifying of proper talented return. That said, doesn't mean they shouldn't try, as that's going to be the one avenue to potentially making something happen, if the window hasn't begun shifting to Griffin's window. If that were the case, then trade everyone. Everyone. Full rebuild down to the bones.
The Red Sox turned around that Priester deal and got a solid A-ball lottery ticket and a compA pick? Seems better than a slower, less defensively capable version of Tucupita Marcano.
For the most part, the time to reconfigure the roster for next year is the off-season, not the trade deadline. Unless someone obviously overpays for any player with year(s) of control, I am fully in favor of letting a new GM make moves in the off-season for players with control remaining. Other than Bednar and Santana, the value is not going to be much different than now.
Mus ended up far and away the best player of all those various trade scenarios and i mostly remember this because i was so critical of it and wrong, lol.
Alan Roden has struggled in his first cup of coffee but there are some things to like about his AA/AAA numbers and he and Nimmala would start to look like a good blend of help now/help later. Nimmila's first taste of A+ however, doesn't look great.
Useless but—to me—interesting question: If the Pirates held Keller, Santana, Bednar and only traded the expiring contracts and Ke' Hayes but *this offseason signed Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman (assuming he opts out)* are they NL Central frontrunners? Didn't I read that if we scored 4+ a game with this squad we'd win 90+? Would Tucker and Bregman get us to 4 runs a game?
Yep.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha haaa haha ha [cough] hahaha hehehehehe [hack] haha ha ha um. Tucker and Bregman? Holding Keller?
Jon Mayo’s latest mock at MLB Pipeline has the Pirates taking Arquette over Carlson and Parker. (Hernandez and Willits are taken, to the Mariners and the Cardinals respectively).
Arquette had “minor wrist surgery” in the fall. Just sayin’.
Sounds up dipshit Cherington's alley
Nicolas gets a save, hitting 99mph on a several fastballs.
Unreal catch by White Jr. in center for the Grasshoppers. Man, I wish he could hit.
Would imagine Ronny Simon gets an opportunity soon.
i hope so
I’m kind of liking this guy from the Tigers -Justyn-Henry Malloy. 25 yrs old . Mashes in AAA. Only got 200 at bats in the Bigs. Maybe for Hayes or a reliever.
Cook just made a nice throw to get a runner at 3rd.
Man, if he could just hit consistently. The rest of his game is a joy.
He has a chance to be a platoon bat, he's hit lefties pretty good, lacking power this year. He does add versatility in all three outfield spots and 1st. So a defensive replacement and some platoon time at 1st and the outfield.
I thought when the Pirates had him up briefly, he might be a good platoon with Hortwitz. And like you said, he could also help elsewhere.
Chandler looking better as the game has went on.
He's daring them to trade Mitch.
6 IP, exactly 100 P. Got the last out on a 100 mph FB.
Oh, we're trading Mitch. Have you seen his Cots?
Was hoping he'd k the last guy but a lazy pop up to right field will do. I thought the second basemen had it but Bae is looking much better in the outfield and did a good job calling him off.
That was an absolute bomb from YDLS
https://x.com/The_Marauders/status/1943463145819058551
Yep
https://x.com/The_Marauders/status/1943463951515144500
Severino shortly thereafter
Kelly with another good outing, 9 k's in 4.2 innings 1 run allowed.
PITCHING FACTORY
He REALLY wanted to face that last batter to try and finish the fifth
I think Indy is on Sportsnet Pittsburgh and I think Chandler is pitching. It might be the milb free game of the day as well.
I haven't heard from the historians.......how many times has a team won 6 in a row and then proceeded to lose 6 in a row. That's what this season has come to.....getting into the record books for posterity.
I wish Nutting would shove a Torpedo bat up Cherrington’s posterity.
I'm normally a pretty private man but have you seen how many oxford buttons I leave unbuttoned? Would a man who bears his chest so nobly stick anything up another's you know what?
That’s happened frequently, I’m sure. What they did, which may be unprecedented, is win three straight shutouts and then lose three straight shutouts. I’m sure that’s happened fewer than ten times in MLB history, if it’s ever happened.
So I read Hoptown post he wished Nutting would shove a Torpedo Bat up Cherrington's posterity, followed by JRC saying "That's happened frequently". I was confused for a bit because I thought Torpedo bats were new this year.
Infrequently, infrequently.
A torpedo would be fine.
It's been reported that was indeed a first! "We accomplished a first, we got a first"!
Watching FCL Bucs now. Brazoban and Mola have each hit the ball hard in each AB (2 so far).
Brazoban seems to like being off the island.
I was expecting a guy who looked a bit lost or something, but no, nothing like that.
I find it interesting —- though admittedly it’s the definition of small sample size. Nothing in his DSL stat lines suggested that he was ready to make the jump to the States. I guess that’s why you have scouts, who can see beyond the numbers.
On the hitting side the Latin program hasn’t looked this promising in years, but these guys are all so far away …..
Amazing what happens when you reward success rather than failure. 3 years ago, the only International amateur free agents with any promise were from Asia: scouted and signed by Pham. I asked then, why is he not the director of the program? The next year, they made him the international scouting director and poof... competence begins to manifest. Very unPiratey. Meanwhile Dellicari is still employed by the organization. Why? Only a mystic could answer this question.
Pictures of Nickles & his sheep?
You guys don't talk like the Williams College set.
Orioles already shedding players and got a Comp A pick from the Rays. I think it said they now have 7 selections in the first 93 picks this year. (I might be off on that).
Santana is likely worth as much or more than Bryan Baker. Opportunity lost.
I wonder if Bedard could have gotten that pick?
Erik? ;)
Woops ,Bednar.i wonder if spell check got me or I had a brain fart.
No, the AI literally thought Cherington brought back Erik Bedard. Which shows how quickly AI learns.
Or Santana
If dimwit does anything, he’ll wait until the last minute. I think he’s terrified of making moves.
Does anyone really want this guy trading anyone except the rentals? This is the guy who traded for BDLC and Billy Cooke last year.
Pirates have done two things I've wanted them to do in 6 years. Fire Shelton and draft Skenes. Not sure what we want matters.
No. I've said this all season - with BC's track record, this trade deadline has the potential to be a disaster for any GM moving forward. There is much danger here.
The Pirates have several of the most highly sought assets in a year with few obvious sellers and a wide open playoff picture. Opportunities are assets that need to be expended productively, just like good players are. A competent GM would see this as a critical chance to start restructuring the hitting side of the roster. The return won’t be as good in the offseason.
Sadly, we’re stuck with Homer Simpson’s dumber brother. Nutwit has created a lose-lose.
They have the worst offense in major-league baseball. They have all of 1 position-player prospect in the upper minors. They need to upgrade at least 5 or 6 positions to be competitive or acquire 2 star players. They will have no money in the budget for free agents.
It will take some genuine wizardry to turn this team around for next year. Why in the name of all that is good and righteous in the world is Ben Cherington still allowed to fiddle around with the assets of this team? The only wizardry that he is capable of performing is the invention of magic-word potions filled with incomprehensible syllables.
That's why you trade for a draft pick, Horowitz would have more influence on the return. A waiver claim for a top 40 pick would be a pretty good start on a return.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but trading Keller, Bednar, and so forth for draft picks launches rebuild 6.0: bigger, better, new and improved from rebuilds 1.0-5.0.
It is the pinnacle of human apathy that Nutting is allowing Cherington to handle this trade deadline after he has failed to acquire talent time and again on the trade market.
I was going to sat BC has NEVER made an early July trade. But that is not true. He has made one. On 7/7/23 he traded Carlos Santana for RK SS Jhonny Severino (and shed $2,386,290 of salary).
Yep, I would like to get a compA pick for a reliever, Bednar a little more but it would be a good starting point. Baker is out of options and has been up and down for years. He's having a good year this year but not overwhelming. He'll probably be a shutdown reliever now the Rays have him.
Sal Perez look about as old as Manny slinging bbq outside CF and the Pirates somehow turned him into barry bonds that series.
That series may have saved Nick Loftin's career and kept Jac Cag in the majors.
It might have also save Nick Loftin from getting released and picked up by the Pirates. He can play second base you know.
Loftin is the quintessential Ben Cherington player, and be very careful. The trade deadline looms, and the Royals might be buyers. Loftin may become a Pirate yet.
The ultimate Royals - Pirates trade is Pham for Loftin.
That is probably the most likely trade hypothetical that I have heard so far from anyone. That is probably in the works as we speak. It would actually be a fair trade.
In fact, as ridiculous as it sounds, as a fan of both teams, I would be in favor of it as it has longshot potential to help both teams and doesn't cost either of them anything.
Jeff Passan has an article up this morning on ESPN with plausible trades for contenders. (And, no, he does not mention anyone acquiring Skenes). He has Bednar making sense for the Tigers and Keller for the Blue Jays. The huge problem with the latter, which he acknowledges, is that the Blue Jays are weak on position player prospects. Their best prospect, which the Bucs would have to insist on for Keller, is Arjun Nimmala, a 19-year-old shortstop in A+. The problem is that the Pirates already have a 19-year-old shortstop in A+ who is performing much better than Nimmala.
Anyway, my question is: if the Pirates trade Bednar (only Bednar) to the Tigers, what is a realistic and fair return from their loaded farm system?
Issue isn't that Nimmala is a shortstop, issue is the Pirates need players closer to the majors. Fans should be over "But we already have a SS prospect" by now, as it should be about acquiring talented players, and worry about position later. And the position later thing becomes less an issue when talking about a talented shortstop, as opposed to an already defensively challenged corner outfielder or catcher, whose only fallback would be 1B/DH.
The problem I see in insisting on close to the majors talent only is that we potentially get the next Colin Moran. I agree, they need top shelf talent, plain and simple!
And you could also end up with Peguero or Escotto with further away guys. In retrospect, Joe ended up being a pretty good pitcher, but otherwise I'd hope they wouldn't go quantity over quality, and just get like an actual good upper level guy, then a lower ticket
They did the "closer to the majors" thing last year and got Billy Cook and Nick Yorke who, combined, have done diddly to help them this year.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but Cherington and his analytics people have been entirely incompetent when it comes to identifying major-league talent or close-to-major-league talent. They keep getting the next version of Tucupita Marcano: over and over again.
I mean, who did they trade for Cook and Yorke? Priester and Patrick Reilly? Wasn't expecting much out of those trades. Marlins got Stowers and Norby for Trevor Rogers. But I agree, the larger issue would be Ben's identifying of proper talented return. That said, doesn't mean they shouldn't try, as that's going to be the one avenue to potentially making something happen, if the window hasn't begun shifting to Griffin's window. If that were the case, then trade everyone. Everyone. Full rebuild down to the bones.
The Red Sox turned around that Priester deal and got a solid A-ball lottery ticket and a compA pick? Seems better than a slower, less defensively capable version of Tucupita Marcano.
For the most part, the time to reconfigure the roster for next year is the off-season, not the trade deadline. Unless someone obviously overpays for any player with year(s) of control, I am fully in favor of letting a new GM make moves in the off-season for players with control remaining. Other than Bednar and Santana, the value is not going to be much different than now.
Mus ended up far and away the best player of all those various trade scenarios and i mostly remember this because i was so critical of it and wrong, lol.
Didn't help he spent some time injured. We didn't appreciate, or get to enjoy, him as much as we probably should have.
Neither have the Padres. He's like Glasnow in that regard. Health is an asset - that is part of the value and attraction of Keller.
amen.
Moran was way too good for a Cherington pickup.
Alan Roden has struggled in his first cup of coffee but there are some things to like about his AA/AAA numbers and he and Nimmala would start to look like a good blend of help now/help later. Nimmila's first taste of A+ however, doesn't look great.
Jace Jung or compA and a lower ranked prospect
I long for the days of Tiger mgmt that would've done Colt Keith and said f it flags fly forever.