The Pirates have outrighted outfielder Travis Snider and first baseman Travis Ishikawa, according to the team’s official transactions page, and both have elected free agency. Also outrighted was righty Deolis Guerra.
As MLBTR’s Charlie Wilmoth wrote recently in his offseason outlook piece on the Bucs, both Snider and Ishikawa profiled as non-tender candidates. Both returned to the Pirates in the middle of the 2015 season after starting the year elsewhere, playing minor roles down the stretch.
Snider, 27, had a nice campaign for Pittsburgh in 2014, when he slashed .264/.338/.438 over 359 plate appearances. But he didn’t match that production after an offseason trade to the Orioles, and he ended the 2015 campaign with a .232/.313/.350 batting line in 265 turns at bat.
Likewise, the 32-year-old Ishikawa had a nice late-season run with the Giants, leading that club to retain him via arbitration. But he never really got going with San Francisco after dealing with injury issues early in the year and ended up with less than a hundred trips to the plate on the year.
As for Guerra, 26, last season represented his first taste of big league action. He provided 16 2/3 innings of relief work for Pittsburgh, but surrendered 12 earned runs and 26 hits (including five long balls) in that span. He did fare better in terms of strikeouts and walks (17:3), though, and posted a 1.23 ERA over 36 2/3 Triple-A frames (with 9.1 K/9 against 2.0 BB/9).
A pair of absolute Travis-ties !