Deadline passes
Looking at the Pirates farm system after the trades made this week.
Ben Cherington has said multiple times that the Pirates need to add talent to their system.
When he has discussed this, he’s mentioned the MLB draft, trades, international signings ... and the number of acquisitions seemed limitless. As it turns out, that may be true.
The Pirates have added so many prospects since Cherington took charge that it’s tough to keep track. Much of the high-end work, securing top prospects like Nick Gonzales, Roansy Contreras, Liover Peguero, Miguel Yajure, Brennan Malone and others, took place over the past couple of years. This month, though, Cherington had an opportunity to add volume to the Pirates’ farm system, and he did so.
So far, the Pirates have signed 16 of their 21 picks in the 2021 MLB draft. The top pick, Louisville catcher Henry Davis, slotted in as the team’s best prospect immediately on Fangraphs. The team has until Sunday to secure the signatures of their five unsigned selections.
Then the trade deadline came and went, and the Pirates sent second baseman Adam Frazier to the San Diego Padres, right-handed reliever Clay Holmes to the New York Yankees, lefthander Tyler Anderson to the Seattle Mariners, Class AAA Indianapolis reliever Braeden Ogle to the Philadelphia Phillies, closer Richard Rodriguez to the Atlanta Braves and lefty reliever Austin Davis to the Boston Red Sox. That netted the Pirates 11 more prospects. By pure volume, that’s a lot.
“Our pro evaluation group did a ton of work on guys that are coming in, in terms of character and work ethic,” Cherington said Friday. “Feel really good about the people we’re bringing in to the Pirates, so we’re excited to add 11 more young players to the organization. And then added to our draft picks, we’ll have added well over 30 new, young players to the Pirates during the course of July, which is really exciting for us given where we are and knowing how important it is that we continue to be aggressive to add to our young talent base.”
While volume can improve a farm system’s standings in various rankings on websites, there is also a pretty clear strategy developing for Cherington and the Pirates.
Fangraphs uses a 20-80 grading scale to assign a future value to prospects. Fifty is a projected league average, everyday player. Every grade above or below is a standard deviation away, so a 45 FV grade would be a “low end regular/platoon” player, 40 FV would be a bench player and so on. Fangraphs also adds a “+” to some grades to distinguish them from others (i.e. 40+ FV).
The Pirates have nine prospects with a 50 FV and none higher. That’s a solid number, and players certainly have the opportunity to improve their grades or simply outperform them once they reach the majors.
More interestingly, the Pirates have absolutely loaded up on players in the 35+/45 range. Twelve of the 27 players the Pirates have acquired this month fit into that group. Only one, Davis, is higher. The rest are lower. That would seem to mean that the Pirates are banking on their developmental abilities to turn those fringe, lottery-ticket type of guys into actual big-league players.
Contreras is a good, early example of quick improvement. He began the season at 40+ and has since improved
to a 50 in just half of a dominant season.
If the Pirates can replicate that sort of thing with another handful of players, they will have a truly topheavy, promising system.
“Critically important that we continue to focus and pour all of our energy now back into coaching and player development and helping guys get better,” Cherington said. “We know we’re getting guys into the organization. It’s just one half of it. We have to help them get better, so continue to put our energy into that.”
It is valid to wonder if the Pirates could have done better for what they traded away. The deal for Holmes, which netted them infielders Diego Castillo and Hoy Jun Park (graded 40+ and 40, respectively) might be the best one of the deadline. Holmes has great stuff but is certainly flawed, and he wasn’t expected to have a huge trade market. The same could be said for Ogle, who has not pitched in the majors this season but got the Pirates a 35+ FV catcher in Abrahan Gutierrez.
Anderson was traded for 22-year-old catcher Carter Bins and 18-year-old righthander Joaquin Tejada, both 40-grades. In Frazier’s deal the Pirates landed infielder Tucupita Marcano, the Padres’ No. 5 prospect on MLB Pipeline, along with outfielder Jack Suwinski and right-handed pitcher Michell Miliano.
That is fine, and those prospects could turn out to be great, but it’s OK to wonder what the Pirates could have done had they waited. The trade market seemed to heat up in a big way as the deadline approached. The Minnesota Twins got two top-100 prospects for pitcher Jose Berrios. The Chicago Cubs sent infielder Javier Baez and former Pirate Trevor Williams to the Mets for a top prospect in outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. The Washington Nationals sent right-hander Max Scherzer and All-Star shortstop Trea Turner to the Los Angeles Dodgers for two top-50 prospects and two other farmhands.
Even the Pirates took advantage
of that to an extent. Rodriguez netted them two top-25 prospects in the Braves’ system in righthanders Bryse Wilson and Ricky DeVito.
Davis, who also wasn’t heavily rumored as a trade candidate, netted them Michael Chavis from Boston, a former first-round pick and the Red Sox’s No. 2-ranked prospect as recently as 2019.
You could make the argument that a package of Frazier and Anderson would be a better one than Baez and Williams — or that even if they aren’t, the Pirates could have done better in these deals had they waited a little while for teams to get desperate, then pounced on a knock-you-dead trade offer for their All-Star second baseman and veteran lefthanded starter.
Of course, that can’t be said definitely without knowing what kinds of talks the Pirates were having.
“Obviously we were able to do a handful of deals earlier in the week, then got a couple done [Friday],” Cherington said. “Lots and lots of other things we talked about. Teams came at us in a number of different ways on different things. Other things we could have done, but nothing else that crossed that threshold of what we’re comfortable with. Feel good about the work we did and honestly haven’t had a chance to really sit back and evaluateeverythingthathappened in the industry. You try and track it in real time as best you can. I’m sure we’ll get more of a chance to do that over the weekend.”
What is certain is that the Pirates got 11 players who are promising in one respect or another. The next test is to mold them into big leaguers. Step 1 in a rebuild — the easiest one — is acquiring talent that can potentially help a team down the road. Step 2 is much tougher: It’s developing that talent and turning potential talent into actual, substantive big-league numbers and wins.
During all of that — and even after the talent starts to rise to the majors — the Pirates also have to make consistently good decisions about which players are truly going to be producers, how to supplement that home-grown talent once they arrive, which prospects are expendable for potential trades to add to the MLB team when that talent arrives, and so on.
And that is truly how this rebuild will be judged. The Pirates needed to load up their farm system. They’ve at least done that, and their system is stronger for it. That is laudable. At the same time, how they do from here, and how the previously acquired prospects continue to develop, will shape the team’s future.