Pirates Rumors

Chris Archer Revamping Repertoire

By Connor Byrne | July 11, 2019 at 1:29am CDT

We’re nearing the one-year anniversary of Pittsburgh acquiring right-hander Chris Archer from Tampa Bay in a whopper of a trade. The Pirates, under the impression they were getting back a front-line starter, sent high-caliber prospects Tyler Glasnow and Austin Meadows to the Rays in exchange for Archer last July 31. Unfortunately for the Pirates, the deal has been a catastrophe to this point. Archer has flopped, while Glasnow and Meadows may be turning into core pieces for the Rays.

With two-plus months left in his first full season as a Pirate, Archer’s on pace for a career-worst campaign. The 30-year-old has offset an impressive strikeout rate (10.07 K/9) with control problems (4.69 BB/9) and home run issues (2.29 HR/9) en route to a 5.49 ERA/5.91 FIP in 78 2/3 innings. Stunningly, among 110 pitchers who have thrown at least 70 frames in 2019, the once-excellent Archer ranks sixth from the bottom in ERA and second last in FIP.

Now, Archer’s in the process of trying to turn around his fortunes, as he explained to Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archer will hope to do a 180 with a different repertoire. He dumped his two-seam fastball in a June 22 start against the Padres and plans to rely more heavily on his signature slider. Archer told Mackey batters’ “slugging percentage on my two-seamer was extremely high. One way to eliminate the damage is just to not throw the pitch that has the most damage. It’s not a complex thing. It was just getting banged. I got rid of it.”

Archer’s right. Hitters own a ludicrous .867 slugging percentage against the pitch – one Statcast classifies as a sinker and says he has turned to 15.8 percent of the time this season. Archer didn’t throw a sinker in any of the three full seasons before the Pirates acquired him, but it became a prominent part of the mix last year. While Archer told Mackey that “I probably tried to change too much” upon relocating to Pittsburgh, he and pitching coach Ray Searage insist the hurler – no one else – determines what he throws. Searage indicated he and Archer have a great relationship.

Whereas Archer’s two-seamer was a disaster before he scrapped it, his slider has been eminently effective throughout his career. That includes this season, during which hitters have mustered a toothless .290 weighted on-base average/.293 expected wOBA against it. Archer believes it’s “one of the best pitches in baseball.” And yet, he has leaned on it far less than usual this season, having tossed it at a 35.1 percent clip. That’s down 6.6 percent from last season and 9.5 percent compared to 2017.

Simply throwing more sliders and fewer sinkers won’t be the solution alone, according to Searage, who told Mackey that Archer also must improve his four-seam fastball command. In Searage’s estimation, that will lead to a decrease in homers against Archer, who had never allowed HRs on more than 16.2 percent of fly balls in a season until 2019. This year, he’s giving them up at a 23.8 percent rate. Only two starters have been worse in that department. Archer has had enough.

Dodgers Notes: Seager, Bullpen Trades, Ryu

By Steve Adams | July 10, 2019 at 6:18pm CDT

The Dodgers announced today that they’ve activated Corey Seager from the injured list and optioned first baseman/outfielder Matt Beaty to Triple-A Oklahoma City. Seager, 25, will ultimately miss just under a month due to a strained left hamstring. He’ll now rejoin a Dodgers roster that recently welcomed David Freese back from the injured list and is set to get A.J. Pollock back as well. Los Angeles still has a 13.5 game lead on the second-place Diamondbacks and will likely be in an all-the-more commanding position with several key players back to full strength. However, the L.A. front office still has some work to do in the three weeks leading up to the trade deadline. Here’s a look at the latest chatter on the Dodgers…

The Dodgers have “varying levels of interest in multiple Giants relievers,” writes MLB.com’s Jon Morosi. Unsurprisingly, Los Angeles harbor some degree of interest in each of Will Smith, Sam Dyson, Tony Watson and Reyes Moronta. That quartet likely appeals to the majority of contending clubs throughout the game, though, and there’s no indication within Morosi’s report that there are any substantive talks between the two sides. The Dodgers are loath to part with any of their top four prospects for a rental reliever, making Gavin Lux, Dustin May, Keibert Ruiz and their own Will Smith unlikely to change hands in any type of deal for one of San Francisco’s short-term assets.
If the recent comments from Pirates GM Neal Huntington didn’t sufficiently quash the Dodgers/Felipe Vazquez connection, Morosi writes that Pittsburgh would require “at least two” of the four aforementioned top prospects (Lux, May, Smith, Ruiz) to headline a Vazquez deal. Between that and Huntington’s declaration that the team’s “expectation and anticipation is that Felipe will be closing out playoff games, be it this year or in the future with us,” it doesn’t seem wise to bank on Vazquez landing in Los Angeles (or anywhere else, for that matter).
In a more high-level look at the Dodgers’ trade needs, Ken Gurnick of MLB.com points out that the Andrew Friedman-led Dodgers have not been a team that has been willing to deal away its very best prospects, making a high-profile acquisition of Smith, Brad Hand, Vazquez, etc. less likely than some trades to more affordably acquire some second-tier relievers on the market. He suggests that a reunion with Watson or Blue Jays righty Daniel Hudson is more plausible than a marquee splash. (To be clear, those are speculative examples listed by Gurnick rather than specific trades that the Dodgers are actively pursuing.)
Hyun-Jin Ryu’s gamble on accepting the qualifying offer made by the Dodgers could prove one of the wisest decisions of the offseason, writes Jorge Castillo of the L.A. Times, who notes that Ryu is now positioned to cash in on a major contract (without the burden of draft compensation, as players can only receive one qualifying offer in their careers). Indeed, over his past 191 1/3 regular-season innings, Ryu has a 1.83 ERA with 8.8 K/9, 1.2 BB/9, 0.89 HR/9 and a 48.6 percent ground-ball rate. More broadly, Castillo’s column is a terrific look at the long road that Ryu took from intriguing high-school prospect coveted by the Dodgers and Twins to 2019 All-Star Game starter. Dodgers fans who have not previously familiarized themselves with Ryu’s path to stardom in the United States will want to be sure to give the story a read-through.

Scott Boras On Potential Josh Bell Extension

By Connor Byrne | July 8, 2019 at 11:48pm CDT

All-Star first baseman Josh Bell has broken through as the Pirates’ franchise player this season, his last pre-arbitration campaign. Considering the 26-year-old’s days of making league-minimum money are on the verge of ending, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked agent Scott Boras on Monday if Bell would have interest in signing a contract extension with the Pirates. Unless the Pirates are willing to make an expensive long-term commitment, it doesn’t seem as if it’s going to happen.

“Pittsburgh really doesn’t have a history of giving star player contracts yet,” Boras told Mackey. “Maybe they will someday. They’ve had a history of signing players before they’ve evolved into stars.”

In Boras’ estimation, the Pirates haven’t shown a willingness “to go out and invest in a great young player for a long time,” though he didn’t rule out an eventual change in policy on the franchise’s end.

Pittsburgh has still never doled out a guaranteed contract greater than the $60MM it handed catcher Jason Kendall on an extension in 2000. The team has since extended several other players it viewed as cornerstones – including Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco and Felipe Vazquez in recent years – to deals geared toward cancelling out the arbitration process and as many free-agent seasons as possible.

The Pirates haven’t gotten hurt on any of the McCutchen, Marte, Polanco and Vazquez deals, and they especially struck gold in signing McCutchen. The club inked McCutchen, then 25, to a six-year, $51MM guarantee entering the 2012 season, at which point he was coming off his first of five straight All-Star campaigns. McCutchen’s pact bought out his final pre-arbitration season, all three of his arbitration years, two free-agent years and included a $14.5MM club option for 2018. The Pirates ultimately exercised that option, though McCutchen spent the final year of his contract with the Giants and Yankees after a trade out of Pittsburgh. Still, he was among the majors’ top players on his ultra-affordable contract – including during an MVP-winning season in 2013 – and wound up as one of the best, most revered players in the history of the Pirates.

While Bell has taken the torch from McCutchen as the face of the franchise, the Pirates would be hard-pressed to lock up the former to such a team-friendly deal. The Pirates would likely love to do that, but their low-budget ways don’t sit well with Boras, who told Mackey: “The Pirates are making a lot of money. The revenue structure of this game, you can go back and look at 2003 or ‘04, they’re probably making $100 million more than they did back then. Yet their payroll is within $20 million of where it was back then. The ability to do it is not the question. It’s the model, the choice of what they want.”

Boras isn’t wrong, as Mackey points out. The Pirates’ Opening Day payroll has climbed by just $20MM (from $54.8MM to $74.8MM) dating back to 2003. Over the same span, though, their listed revenue has skyrocketed from $109MM to $254MM. That increase didn’t lead to the Pirates keeping one of their prior high-profile Boras clients, right-hander Gerrit Cole, whom they traded to the Astros before the 2018 season. Cole was going into his second-last year of arbitration eligibility at the time.

It’s obviously too soon to write off Bell as a soon-to-be ex-Pirate. However, if the Pirates don’t present the slugger a long-term offer that at least surpasses (perhaps obliterates) the Kendall contract, keeping him in Pittsburgh for the foreseeable future may not be in the cards. For now, Bell’s on track to head to arbitration on the heels of what will go down as a career year. Having slashed .302/.376/.648 (152 wRC+) with 27 home runs in 388 plate appearances this season, Boras believes Bell “has identified himself” as one of the game’s elite players and someone “every franchise would like to have.”

Injury Notes: Dodgers, Red Sox, Pirates, Mariners

By Connor Byrne | July 6, 2019 at 11:41pm CDT

Dodgers left-hander Rich Hill is making progress in his effort to overcome a flexor tendon strain, Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register reports. A platelet-rich plasma injection “has promoted some healing in the tissue,” writes Plunkett, who adds “everything looked good” for Hill after an ultrasound on Friday. He’s on track to start playing catch next weekend, though a potential return is still a ways off. The 39-year-old landed on the 10-day injured list June 20, but the Dodgers transferred him to the 60-day version earlier this week. Consequently, Hill won’t factor back into the Dodgers’ pitching staff until at least August. He had been enjoying another fine season – the last of his three-year, $48MM contract – with a 2.55 ERA/4.15 FIP, 10.36 K/9, 2.04 BB/9 and a 48.9 percent groundball rate over 53 innings.

Sticking with the Dodgers, corner infielder David Freese is a good bet to return from the IL on Friday, Ken Gurnick of MLB.com tweets. Freese went down June 23 with a left hamstring strain, temporarily halting a rousing start for the long-productive 36-year-old. He came out flying this season with a .308/.407/.592 line (162 wRC+) and eight home runs in 140 plate appearances.
Red Sox first baseman Mitch Moreland could start a rehab assignment next week, according to Bill Koch of the Providence Journal. Moreland has already been on the IL twice dating back to late May, including since June 8. He first succumbed to a lower back strain and then suffered a right quad strain upon his return. A healthy Moreland has been among many major leaguers to demonstrate an increase in power this season. The 33-year-old boasts 13 HRs, a sky-high .318 ISO and a .225/.316/.543 line (116 wRC+) in 174 trips to the plate.
Left-hander Steven Brault became the most recent Pittsburgh starter to head to the IL on Saturday. Brault will sit out with a left shoulder strain, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes. That sounds like a concerning ailment on paper, though Brault and the Pirates are optimistic he won’t miss more than one or two starts, according to Mackey. Brault exited his start against the Brewers on Friday after four innings of one-run ball because of the injury. He has now pitched to a 4.15 ERA/4.53 FIP with 7.86 K/9 and 4.75 BB/9 in 60 2/3 innings (15 appearances, nine starts) this year. Several injuries to starters, including to Pirates No. 1 Jameson Taillon, have opened the door for Brault to work from their rotation. Taillon has been out since May 4 with a right flexor strain, though in a long-awaited sign of progress, he’ll play catch Sunday, Mackey relays. Meanwhile, reliever Keone Kela threw a simulated game Saturday. Kela, also down since May 4, has been battling right shoulder troubles.
Greg Johns of MLB.com and Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times share the latest on a trio of righty Mariners relievers. Offseason signing Hunter Strickland, out since March 30 with a right lat strain, felt “awesome” after throwing a 20-pitch bullpen Saturday. His return still appears to be a good distance away, though. Austin Adams (Grade 1 lat strain) and Dan Altavilla (ulnar collateral ligament) just joined Strickland on the IL. Between Adams and Altavilla, the former has been the better reliever this year, but the latter’s injury looks more severe. The Mariners will know more after Altavilla undergoes an MRI.

NL Injury Notes: Rendon, Dodgers, Pirates

By Connor Byrne and Jeff Todd | July 6, 2019 at 12:17am CDT

Checking in on the latest notable injury news from the National League…

Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon finally earned his first All-Star nod this season, but the 29-year-old is going to miss the game, as Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com was among those to tweet. Rendon will instead rest his ailing hamstring and quad, two areas that have nagged him since the Nationals’ series against the Reds from May 31 to June 2. Despite having to play through pain over the past month-plus, Rendon’s performance has remained stellar for the surging Nats. He’s hitting .304/.389/.615 (152 wRC+) with 20 home runs through 316 plate appearances.
The Dodgers offered updates on a slew of injured players today, with Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register among those covering the news (all links to Twitter). Backstop Will Smith and righty Tony Gonsolin, present depth pieces with bright long-term outlooks, are each headed to the injured list. The former has a strained right oblique and will be placed on the MLB IL, having not played since being sent down. The latter is dealing with a left hamstring issue and will go on ice for a stretch to avoid any complications. Meanwhile, the club is awaiting the returns of infielders David Freese and Corey Seager. The former is just waiting for his hamstring to heal up; he’ll seemingly remain out through the All-Star break. The latter is also not a candidate for activation before the mid-summer festivities but could rejoin the club immediately thereafter.
Pirates southpaw Steven Brault exited his start against the Brewers on Friday with an ominous-sounding issue – left shoulder discomfort – per Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The severity of Brault’s injury isn’t known yet, but he’s not feeling great at the moment, Will Graves of The Associated Press tweets. Should Brault require a stint on the IL, he’d become the fifth notable Pittsburgh starter to go on the shelf this season. Jameson Taillon, Chris Archer, Trevor Williams and Jordan Lyles have all missed various amounts of time. The onslaught of starter injuries is a key reason the Pirates have turned to the swingman Brault, who has done a decent job over 60 2/3 innings. Across 15 appearances and nine starts, he owns a 4.15 ERA/4.53 FIP with 7.86 K/9, though he has walked a hefty 4.75 per nine.

Cool Papa Bell

By Connor Byrne | July 4, 2019 at 7:37pm CDT

No, this isn’t a piece about baseball legend Cool Papa Bell. Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a catchier title in regards to Pirates first baseman Josh Bell, who has evolved into one of baseball’s premier offensive players in 2019. It’s been something of an unexpected development considering the unspectacular start Bell’s career got off to during his first couple years in the majors.

A second-round pick in 2011, Bell soared up prospect lists in his days in the Pirates’ farm system, ranking as Baseball America’s 38th-best farmhand when the club promoted him to the bigs. Bell first got the call on July 8, 2016, almost exactly three years ago, and has been a mainstay in Pittsburgh since then. Through 2018, though, Bell looked like somewhat of a light hitter relative to his position, not the franchise-caliber masher he has become. While Bell did smack 26 home runs in 2017, he nonetheless entered this year a career .260/.348/.436 batter over 1,355 plate appearances, giving him a 110 wRC+ and a 1.4 fWAR which made him more closely resemble, say, James Loney than Freddie Freeman.

This season has been a completely different story for Bell, who, with 26 homers across 374 PA, has already tied his career high en route to his first All-Star nod. With a .306/.377/.654 line, Bell ranks fourth in the game in wRC+ (158), trailing a decent trio of Cody Bellinger, Mike Trout and Christian Yelich. The 26-year-old Bell has already racked up 2.7 fWAR, almost doubling the mark he posted during his entire career before 2019. Plus, while Bell recorded a mediocre .177 ISO from 2016-18, that number has soared to .349 this year, putting him fourth in the league.

So why the sudden epiphany? For starters, Bell’s pulling the ball more than ever and going opposite field less than at any previous point, all while hitting more fly balls and fewer grounders. That’s an easy recipe for more pop, as is his decrease in infield fly balls. Bell’s pop-up rate stood at upward of 9 percent in each of his prior seasons, but it has plummeted to just over 2 percent this season.

Unsurprisingly, Bell has hit the ball much harder in general. His hard-contact rate has risen by an eye-popping 15 percent since last season, while his soft-hit rate has fallen by almost 10 percent, according to FanGraphs. Only 11 players have outdone Bell in hard-hit percentage. With that in mind, it’s not exactly stunning he ranks near the top of the majors in weighted-on base average (.421) and expected wOBA (.404), per Statcast, which places the switch hitter in elite company in most of its offensive metrics. Bell’s expected batting average (91st percentile), barrel percentage (95th), xwOBA (96th), expected slugging percentage (96th), hard-contact rate (97th) and exit velocity (98th) are all magnificent.

Unlike 2018, when Bell logged a .284 wOBA/.257 xwOBA against breaking pitches, those offerings haven’t fooled him this year. If you’re going to throw a breaking pitch to Bell nowadays, there’s a good chance you’re going to pay. He has hit a ridiculous .455/.460 off them this season, having shown power against them in several quadrants of the strike zone, which the drastic change in FanGraphs’ heatmaps shows between 2018 and ’19.

It’s clear Bell has benefited from a more aggressive approach. He’s swinging at way more pitches, including out of the zone, which has led to less contact, an all-time worst swinging-strike percentage and more strikeouts. But when you’re producing like this, it doesn’t matter. He’s still walking and striking out at better clips than most hitters, evidenced by a K/BB ratio which ranks 50th among 158 qualified batters.

The Pirates have been waiting for a new face of the franchise to rise up since they traded away organizational icon Andrew McCutchen prior to the 2018 campaign. It appears they’ve found his successor in Bell, though the newly established slugger’s days of playing for a relative pittance are nearing an end. Now in his last season on a league-minimum salary, Bell’s on the verge of cashing in during the arbitration process. Considering his 2019 breakout, though, that’s a high-class problem for Pittsburgh.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Pirates GM Downplays Possibility Of Felipe Vazquez Trade

By Steve Adams | July 1, 2019 at 7:40am CDT

Rumors of trading their star players are commonplace for the payroll-conscious Pirates, whose front office has been forced into tough decisions for budgetary reasons on numerous occasions in the past. This year, there have already been rumors of teams with interest in standout closer Felipe Vazquez — understandably so, given his excellence — but general manager Neal Huntington strongly downplayed the possibility of moving Vazquez in a radio appearance with Greg Brown on 93.7 FM The Fan this weekend.

“We will continue to look for ways to improve this organization,” said Huntington. “Felipe Vazquez is, in our minds, one of the best, if not the best young left-handed reliever in the game. He has the potential to contribute to us for this and four more years. Our expectation and anticipation is that Felipe will be closing out playoff games, be it this year or in the future with us.”

That’s the second time in the past month that Huntington has expressed a focus on adding to the club rather than trading contributors for longer-term assets. Huntington also points out within the interview that the Bucs are facing a critical stretch wherein they’ll play 20 of 23 games against divisional foes. The other three in that span are against the Phillies, whom Pittsburgh is chasing in the NL Wild Card race. Certainly, one can imagine that in the event of a nosedive in those 23 games, the Pirates could adopt a longer-term approach to this year’s trade deadline. That said, Huntington’s comments regarding Vazquez seem to indicate that even if the team were to sell off some pieces this summer, the lefty wouldn’t be among them.

Vazquez, 28 on Friday, signed an extremely club-friendly contract extension in January 2018, agreeing to a four-year deal worth a guaranteed $22MM plus a pair of $10MM club options for a fifth and potentially sixth season. He’s earning just $4MM in 2019 (with about $1.98MM of that still to be paid out) and will earn guaranteed salaries of $5.25MM and $7.25MM in 2020-21. There’s no looming free agency or imminent hike in salary that would serve as motivation for the Pirates to deal the lefty even if they fall further back than their current five-game deficit in the NL Central.

Vazquez himself is the product of a trade that was made under more conventional conditions. Back in 2016, with Mark Melancon just months from free agency, the Pirates shipped him to the Nationals in exchange for Vazquez and Taylor Hearn (later traded to the Rangers in the Keone Kela deal). Since being acquired by Pittsburgh, Vazquez has pitched to a 2.25 ERA with 80 saves and 11.7 K/9 against 3.1 BB/9 in 207 2/3 innings of work. He’s saved 19 games so far in 2019 while recording a minuscule 1.80 ERA and notching a career-best 14.1 K/9.

Pitcher Notes: Scherzer, Tigers, Archer, Angels, D-backs

By Connor Byrne | June 29, 2019 at 11:19pm CDT

Washington is visiting Detroit, where current Nationals ace Max Scherzer will start against his former team Sunday. Scherzer blossomed into a star as a member of the Tigers, with whom he won his first Cy Young Award in 2013. At the conclusion of the next season, though, Scherzer signed a seven-year, $210MM contract with the Nationals after rejecting a $144MM extension from the Tigers. Scherzer, now a three-time Cy Young winner and a potential Hall of Famer, reflected on his Detroit departure Saturday, saying (via Chris McCosky of the Detroit News): “That’s just the business side. I didn’t feel slighted. That stuff just all takes care of itself. I don’t hold any grudges or anything like. When I look back on my time in Detroit, I have great memories here and great friends.” Scherzer also noted he and fellow righty Anibal Sanchez, teammates in Detroit and again in D.C., still lament they were never able to win a World Series with the Tigers. The club clinched playoff spots from 2011-14, each of the four seasons Scherzer and Sanchez were part of its rotation. Those teams earned one World Series berth, falling to the Giants in a 2012 sweep.

Minor MLB Transactions: 6/29/19

By Ty Bradley | June 29, 2019 at 4:24pm CDT

The latest in minor moves from around the game…

Twins lefty Gabriel Moya has cleared waivers and been outrighted to AAA-Rochester, tweets Do-Hyoung Park of mlb.com. Moya, 24, had struggled with command at Rochester this season before his designation last week, the first time in eight professional seasons he’d exhibited such an issue. FanGraphs lauds the lefty’s 60-grade changeup, which won’t effectively be put to use if the wildness continues.
Angels infielder Wilfredo Tovar has cleared waivers and been outrighted to AAA-Salt Lake, per the team. Tovar had a 16-game stint with Los Angeles earlier this season, during which he slashed a meager .195/.283/.293 in 46 plate appearances. The 27-year-old’s been mostly punchless in 12 professional season thus far, though he continues to flash his sticky leather all around the infield.
The Pirates have signed former farmhand Gift Ngoepe, per the team’s Altoona Curve affiliate. Ngoepe, 29, will report to Altoona after a less-than-stellar showing with AAA Lehigh Valley in the Phillies system this year. Like Tovar, Ngoepe hasn’t hit much in the minors over his career, though his defense has his earned him call-ups with both Pittsburgh and Toronto over the last two seasons.

Pitcher Notes: Vazquez, Brewers, Luzardo, White Sox, Padres

By Connor Byrne | June 28, 2019 at 10:59pm CDT

The Brewers expressed interest in Pirates closer Felipe Vazquez last summer, though talks didn’t go anywhere, Robert Murray of The Athletic reports. The left-handed Vazquez would have teamed with Brewers southpaw Josh Hader and righty Jeremy Jeffress to form a nigh-unhittable relief trio on paper, perhaps one that could have pushed the club over the top in the National League. He remains a Pirate, though, and the Vazquez-less Brewers fell to the Dodgers in a seven-game NLCS last year. Milwaukee may call its division rival again this year about Vazquez (if the Brewers haven’t already), but it’ll continue to be incredibly difficult for anyone to pry him out of Pittsburgh.

Rehabbing Athletics lefty Jesus Luzardo threw five innings and 66 pitches at the Triple-A level Thursday. He’ll extend to six innings and 90 pitches Tuesday, according to Martin Gallegos of MLB.com. The highly touted 21-year-old prospect hasn’t gotten to debut in the majors yet because of a shoulder strain he suffered late in the spring, but the hope is he’ll burst on the scene next month to bolster the playoff-contending A’s rotation. The club needs Luzardo’s assistance, having lost ace Frankie Montas to an 80-game performance-enhancing drug suspension a week ago.
At 6 1/2 games back of a wild-card spot, the White Sox may be closer to playoff position than expected this season. However, general manager Rick Hahn unsurprisingly isn’t going to mortgage the future for short-term pitching help prior to the deadline, Bruce Levine of 670 The Score writes. Asked Friday about adding an established starter in the next month, Hahn said: “”I wouldn’t say you can count on additions at the deadline that will be short-term fixes. Our focus going to remain long term.” Hahn admitted Chicago “would like to add controllable starting pitching,” but he quickly noted that’s a goal for every team in the game. Below-average starting pitching has prevented the White Sox from making a more serious playoff push this year. While Lucas Giolito has been tremendous, the team hasn’t gotten respectable production from any of its other starters.
Injured Padres reliever Aaron Loup will return in “late August, early September if things go well,” manager Andy Green said Friday (via AJ Cassavell of MLB.com). It’s clear this will go down as a mostly lost season for Loup, whom the Padres signed to a one-year, $1.2MM contract entering the campaign. The 31-year-old lefty has been on the injured list since April 9 because of a forearm strain. Loup was effective in a small sample of work before then, throwing 3 1/3 scoreless innings of two-hit ball with five strikeouts against one walk.

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