What are the Pirates doing? How could they trade these guys?
These are the two most common questions I have gotten asked this offseason and I fully understand these sentiments.
Let me first answer both of these questions simply.
First, what are they doing? Exactly what they should be doing!
Second, how could they trade these guys? Let me channel my inner Ralph Kiner: "We finished last with you. We can finish last without you."
That may sound harsh, but it's the reality of the situation, and if all things go according to plan, the Pirates will finish last again in 2021 and get the number one overall pick for the second year in a row. That would be a good thing.
Now, with that out of the way, let's take at what Ben Cherington has been up to since he took over for former GM Neal Huntington.
The cupboards were absolutely empty for Cherington when he took the reins. From the major league level all the way down to the lowest team in the minors, the Pirates were lacking talent, and Cherington knew it.
So what did he do? He got to work in turning over the 25-man roster, the 40-man roster and the Pirates list of top prospects.
So far, Cherington has turned over a huge part of the 40-man roster and that trickles down to every aspect of the organization. The Major League team will look very different than it did even just last year. And the Pirates top prospects? Very few of them, relatively speaking to the amount of time Cherington has been here compared to Huntington, are holdovers from the Huntington-era.
But what about trading the "big name" players that fans have grown attached to? The likes of Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon? Well, that's the cost of doing business in small markets.
Let me put it this way: Do you think Tampa Bay Rays fans were happy when their team traded former Cy Young award winner Blake Snell? Snell had 3-years and just $39 million remaining on his current contract, a ridiculously affordable number, but the Rays traded him anyways. And is anyone going to argue with the Rays results compared to the Pirates? I didn't think so.
So this is how it's going to be, and this is exactly how Cherington should go about his business if he wants to build a winner here. Will he be popular with fans during the process? Absolutely not. Should that stop him from making these moves? Absolutely not.
As for those trades, lets take a look at the return and how Cherington is doing in replenishing the Pirates list of top prospects.
Josh Bell traded to the Washington Nationals for right-handed pitchers Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean.
My thoughts on the trade? I long said they should have traded Bell before the 2020 season, but the new regime didn't have a chance to get their hands on Bell and work with him to see if they could correct the issues we saw after a second half collapse in 2019. My guess is after a year working with him, they figured they couldn't get him back to that version of himself from the beginning of the 2019 season and deemed now the best time to trade him.
The Pirates got one project pitcher in Crowe and one very young prospect with a ton of upside in Yean. Would I want a bigger return on Bell? Absolutely, but that goes back to why I think they should have traded him before the 2020 season. Cherington has been fielding calls on Bell since the day he took over. If this is what he took in exchange for the former All-Star, then that tells me the market for Bell wasn't very strong, and while they could have held on to him and hoped he bounced back, that's less time a team would be guaranteed to have Bell during his arbitration years and would have probably brought about the same return anyways, so why take the chance?
Joe Musgrove traded to the San Diego Padres for OF Hudson Head, RHP David Bednar, RHP Drake Fellow, LHP Omar Cruz and Joey Lucchesi (flipped Lucchesi to the Mets for catcher/outfielder Endy Rodriguez)
There's a lot to unpack here, so let me simplify it. This was a good trade for the Pirates. Head is already the Pirates 7th ranked prospect according to MLB.com. Musgrove only had this year next before hitting free agency. He fit the bill of the exact kind of player the Pirates should be looking to move for the future. Musgrove was a great teammate and leader in the clubhouse and one of the most popular players among the fan base, but the move needed to be made and it showed that Cherington was very serious about moving everything he could to close the gap between where the Pirates are now and when they could contend again.
James Taillon traded to the New York Yankees for RHP Miguel Yajure, RHP Roansy Contreras, OF Canaan Smith and IF Maikol Escotto
This is the most interesting move Cherington has made so far. Taillon still has potential to be a good major league pitcher, but the odds are absolutely stacked against him.
Have you ever looked at the list of pitchers who have had Tommy John surgery twice and what they did after? It's not pretty. Most who have the surgery a second time never pitch in the majors again. Although some do, it's mostly as a reliever. It's very difficult to build up a twice repaired arm to handle the workload of a starter.
Some argued Cherington should have held onto Taillon to see if he could reach that potential given that he was only going to cost the team $2.25 million this year. I'd argue that it's impressive they were able to trade a pitcher coming off his second TJ surgery, especially for as many prospects at they did.
None of those prospects made it into the Pirates top 10, but there is plenty of upside among that group and if even one of them becomes a major leaguer, then this is a major win for the Pirates.
Now, let's all take a collective breath and take it all in. Is this how a fan of baseball wants to see their team operate? Probably not. We'd all love to see our team have bottomless pockets and spend money like the Dodgers and Yankees do, but that's not the reality of the situation.
What Cherington is doing is going to upset some fans, but you know what will fix that? Winning games again. That's not going to happen this year or probably even next, but that's not Cherington's fault. He has mostly cleaned up the mess Huntington left him and is finally getting the arrow pointing up for this franchise.
The biggest task ahead of him and his staff is now developing all the players they've brought in over the last year. Let's hope they're better at that than the old regime. I'm betting they will be.
Kraig Riley is the pre and post-game host for Pirates games on 93.7 The Fan.