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Pirates Place Bryse Wilson, Anthony Alford On IL

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The Pirates placed Bryse Wilson and Anthony Alford on the IL today, per a team announcement. Ben Gamel has come off the IL to take one of the roster spots, with the other going to Dillon Peters, who was recalled from Triple-A. Mike Persak of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette spoke to Pirates general manager Ben Cherington, who said that Alford is dealing with back spasms, while Wilson’s IL placement is mostly about rest from fatigue.

Wilson, the 23-year-old righty, was just recently acquired from Atlanta in the Richard Rodriguez trade. In 48 2/3 innings this year between the two clubs, he has an ERA of 5.55. His strikeout rate is well below average, at 14.5%, but he has a decent walk rate of 7%. The Pirates can afford to be cautious with his workload, given that they’re nowhere near competing for the postseason. Their .359 winning percentage is better than only three teams in the majors.

For Alford, this is another frustrating hurdle in a challenging season. He struggled out of the gate and was designated for assignment by Pittsburgh in April. However, after being assigned to the minors, he completely turned things around and was nothing short of magnificent. His line through 226 plate appearances at Triple-A this year was .307/.420/.593, producing a wRC+ of 167. This performance forced Pittsburgh to give him another shot at the big leagues, which they did August 7th. Now, after just five games since having his contract selected, he will have to go on the shelf for at least 10 days.

For Peters, this will be his first time in the majors since coming to the Pirates from the Angels in July. He had been designated for assignment when the Angels signed Adam Eaton, heading to Pittsburgh in exchange for cash considerations. The 28-year-old lefty has logged 53 1/3 innings at Triple-A this year, between the two organizations, with an ERA of 3.71, a strikeout rate of 27.8% and a walk rate of 8.4%.

Pirates Sign Yoshi Tsutsugo

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The Pirates will sign Yoshi Tsutsugo, according to Yuki Yamada of Sankei Sports. Tsutsugo had been designated by the Dodgers in July and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Oklahoma, but was released yesterday. The Pirates have a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding move of some kind.

Pittsburgh will be Tsutsugo’s third big league team this season. He started off the year with the Rays for the second season of the two-year contract he signed in December of 2019. In the first half of the deal, he put up a line of .197/.314/.395, production just slightly below average, evidenced by wRC+ of 98. However, his 2021 season got off to a miserable start, slashing .167/.244/.218 with Tampa, a wRC+ of 36 and enough for them to cut him loose, designating him for assignment in May.

The Dodgers were intrigued enough to send cash considerations to the Rays and give him a shot. Unfortunately, his stint in Hollywood wasn’t much better, as he produced a line of .120/.290/.120, a wRC+ of 38.

However, since accepted that Triple-A assignment, he has shown much better form, hitting .257/.361/.507, a wRC+ of 108 over 180 plate appearances in Oklahoma City. This bounceback appears to have intrigued the Pirates enough to give him a roster spot. There will be no financial risk for the team, as the Rays are on the hook for the majority of his remaining salary, as was agreed upon in their trade with the Dodgers.

 

Phillies Acquire T.J. Rivera

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The Phillies have acquired infielder T.J. Rivera in a minor league trade with the Pirates.  Because Rivera was playing on a minor league deal and hadn’t seen any MLB action this year, he was allowed to be dealt after the July 30 trade deadline.

The trade represents Rivera’s second stint in the Phils organization, as he signed a minor league deal with Philadelphia during the 2019-20 offseason but was released prior to the opening of the club’s 2020 summer camp.  Rivera caught on with the independent Long Island Ducks back in May, but was quickly inked to a minors contract by the Pirates and he has since hit .249/.295/.389 over 212 PA for Triple-A Indianapolis.

Rivera’s big league resume consists over 106 games and 344 PA with the Mets in 2016-17, with the Bronx native delivering a very respectable .304/.335/.445 slash line in that rather brief amount of playing time.  Rivera underwent Tommy John surgery in September 2017, however, and continued to face elbow problems before the Mets eventually released him in 2019.

Pirates Designate Erik Gonzalez, Select Anthony Alford

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4:03PM: The Pirates have also released outfielder Dustin Fowler.  Pittsburgh acquired Fowler in a trade with the A’s during the winter, and the outfielder posted a .434 OPS in 46 PA, marking Fowler’s first bit of big league action since the 2018 season.  Fowler was outrighted to Triple-A in April and has since battled injuries for much of the season.

3:18PM: The Pirates selected the contract of outfielder Anthony Alford from Triple-A.  In corresponding moves, Phillip Evans was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis, while utilityman Erik Gonzalez was designated for assignment (Gonzalez had been on the injured list, and was reinstated before being DFA’ed).

Gonzalez has been out of action since July 2 due to a left oblique strain, and he had been wrapping up a minor league rehab assignment in Triple-A.  Now, the 29-year-old could be potentially headed elsewhere after two-plus seasons with the Bucs.  Gonzalez has been utilized all over the diamond in his 174 games in a Pittsburgh uniform, but hasn’t hit much, batting only .236/.268/.324 over 578 plate appearances since the start of the 2019 season.

While Gonzalez could remain in the organization after clearing waivers, it seems likely that the rebuilding Pirates want to give more big league playing time to less-experienced players like Alford.  The former top prospect isn’t young (he just recently turned 27) but he has yet to earn a long look at the MLB level, appearing in each of the last five seasons but totaling only 62 games.

The Pirates claimed Alford off the Blue Jays roster in August 2020 but the change of scenery hasn’t unlocked anything for the outfielder, who has a .540 OPS in the small sample size of 42 PA with Pittsburgh.  At Triple-A, however, Alford has been red hot, hitting .307/.420/.593 with 14 home runs over 226 PA for Indianapolis.

Examining A Potential Ke’Bryan Hayes Extension

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The Pirates made an extension offer to Ke’Bryan Hayes back in Spring Training, which obviously didn’t manifest in a deal, but Hayes himself confirmed to The Athletic’s Rob Biertempfel this week that it wasn’t the team’s first effort. As Hayes explains, the Bucs also came to him with an offer before he’d even played in a big league game, during Spring Training 2020.

While the two sides still haven’t worked out a deal, Hayes made clear that he’s open to a long-term pact, wants to step up as a leader of future Pirates clubs and hopes to “win a championship with the team that drafted me.” For now, his focus is on a strong finish to the 2021 season.

Pirates fans, in particular, will want to check out the column for full quotes from Hayes on his future with the club. But for the purposes of this post, let’s take a look at some historical context to see just where Hayes might slot in if he and the Bucs were to approach an extension in earnest. As always, service time is crucial to these explorations, and historical precedent is quite often relevant.

Hayes will finish the 2021 season with a year-plus of Major League service time. We haven’t seen a third baseman in that service class ink a long-term pact since Jedd Gyorko’s five-year, $35MM agreement with the Padres back in 2014. That seven-year-old deal probably won’t hold much weight as a comp — particularly since even with his recent slump, Hayes has been more productive now than Gyorko was at the time. At the time of Gyorko’s extension, he carried a .242/.295/.433 line through 573 plate appearances — four percent better than league average, by measure of wRC+. He’d previously been regarded as a top-end prospect, but not to the same extent as Hayes.

Conversely, Hayes has slashed at a .282/.351/.463 pace through his first 319 Major League plate appearances. His 2020 performance vastly outweighs his 2021 performance, but his ’21 production has perhaps been sapped by a wrist injury that shelved him for two months early in the year. He’s been a better hitter than Gyorko, plays better defense, and that extension is rather dated by now.

Interestingly, however, there simply haven’t been many position players in this one-plus bracket of service time to use as a point of comparison. That’s been especially true in recent years, when touted young players have either signed before reaching a full year of service or waited to further establish themselves in the Majors. Ozzie Albies, who inked a seven-year, $35MM extension in 2019 is the most recent comparable, but that was one of the more widely panned extensions in recent memory. Hayes, presumably, would be looking to set some form of new bar for players in this general service bracket if he were to seriously entertain offers.

Of course, whether the Pirates would want any part of setting a new precedent in any service bracket remains questionable, at best. The largest contract the Pirates have ever given out was a six-year, $60MM one to catcher Jason Kendall way back in the year 2000. That pact ties them with Cleveland for the smallest franchise-record contract awarded to an individual player. Biertempfel speculates within his column that the Pirates may already have put forth a larger offer than that to Hayes. If that is indeed the case, it’d be a rather shocking effort from such a historically low-payroll club.

Pirates Sign Keury Mella

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The Pirates have signed right-hander Keury Mella to a minor league contract, reports Jake Crouse of MLB.com (Twitter link). He has been assigned to Triple-A Indianapolis. Mella was released by the Diamondbacks last week.

Mella has seen big league action in each of the past five seasons, albeit without ever carving out a consistent role on a staff. He’s never logged more than ten MLB innings in a given campaign, and his overall body of work consists of 28 2/3 frames of 7.22 ERA/5.11 SIERA ball. The 28-year-old made two appearances with the D-Backs this season, allowing six runs in 1 2/3 innings before being passed through outright waivers.

Over parts of four Triple-A campaigns, Mella has worked to a 4.55 ERA across 201 2/3 innings, starting a little more than half his appearances. He’s worked exclusively in relief this season, though, tossing 29 innings of 4.34 ERA ball in a hitter-friendly environment in Reno. Mella’s 22.7% Triple-A strikeout rate is a bit below-average, but he’s done well in avoiding walks and induced grounders on nearly half the balls in play against him.

In other Pirates roster news, the club activated left-hander Steven Brault from the 60-day injured list, as previously reported. He worked four innings of one-run ball against the Brewers this afternoon in his season debut. To create 40-man roster space, Pittsburgh transferred righty Chase De Jong from the 10-day to the 60-day injured list. De Jong is out for the season after undergoing surgery on his left knee last week.

Pirates Place Chad Kuhl On Covid List, Select Shea Spitzbarth

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The Pirates announced Monday that they’ve placed righty Chad Kuhl on the Covid-19-related injured list and selected the contract of right-hander Shea Spitzbarth in a corresponding move.

Kuhl, 28, tested positive for Covid-19, per the Pirates, so he’ll be sidelined a minimum of 10 days under this year’s health and safety protocols. The right-hander has been a serviceable back-end starter for the Bucs, pitching to a 4.43 ERA in 67 innings this year. However, he’s also averaged fewer than five innings per outing while posting sub-par strikeout and walk percentages (20.1 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively).

The 26-year-old Spitzbarth will make his MLB debut the first time he gets into a game with the Pirates. He’d spent his entire pro career with the Dodgers prior to the 2021 season, having joined the organization as a nondrafted free agent back in 2015. Generally speaking, he’s struggled in the upper minors — at least until the 2021 season. This year, Spitzbarth has pitched to a 1.41 ERA through 32 innings of relief work. Other metrics aren’t as bullish, as evidenced by a 4.42 FIP and 5.09 xFIP. Spitzbarth has benefited from a .202 average on balls in play and a 90.9 percent strand rate so far in Triple-A. Nevertheless, he’ll get his first look in the big leagues more than six years after first signing.

Also of note, manager Derek Shelton revealed to reporters that left-hander Steven Brault is expected to start tomorrow’s game for the Pirates (Twitter link via Mike Persak of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). The 29-year-old Brault hasn’t pitched yet in 2021 owing to a forearm strain suffered late in Spring Training. At the time, it was announced that he’d be shut down at least a month and could miss as much as 12 weeks with the injury, but the timetable proved even lengthier than that.

Brault has spent the past several weeks on a minor league rehab assignment, pitching a total of 12 innings between Class-A and Triple-A as he’s begun to build up for a return to the Pirates. He’s tossed four innings in each of his past two outings, totaling 58 and 56 pitches in that pair of starts (and allowing just one earned run). He’s unlikely to jump from that point to 90-100 pitches in a single outing, but he could give the Pirates four or five innings if he’s reasonably efficient tomorrow.

Pirates Claim Anthony Banda From Mets

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The Pirates announced they’ve claimed left-hander Anthony Banda off waivers from the Mets. Pittsburgh already had a vacancy on the 40-man roster. New York designated Banda for assignment over the weekend.

Banda’s tenure with the Mets proved a fairly short one. New York acquired the 27-year-old in a minor league trade with the Giants in early July. He was selected to the roster a couple weeks later but let go after making five relief appearances totaling 7 1/3 innings. Banda was tagged for eight runs (six earned) on fourteen hits in that time, although he did strike out seven while issuing a single walk.

This marks the fifth consecutive season in which Banda has gotten big league work, although he’s not picked up more than 25 2/3 frames in any single year. A one-time top 100 prospect while coming up in the Diamondbacks system, Banda has been set back by injuries and struggles at the highest levels in recent years. He carries a 4.99 ERA in parts of five Triple-A seasons but was quite good up through Double-A. Banda is out of minor league options, so he needs to stick in the big leagues or wind up back on waivers moving forward.

Dee Strange-Gordon Elects Free Agency

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Infielder Dee Strange-Gordon has decided to opt out of his minor league deal with the Pirates, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal (via Twitter).  The veteran signed with Pittsburgh in early July.

Strange-Gordon is still looking for his first MLB game of the 2021 campaign, which would make it 11 seasons in the Show for the 33-year-old.  Since the Mariners declined their club option on Strange-Gordon last fall, he has inked minors contracts around the NL Central, signing with the Reds, Brewers, Cubs, and now the Pirates without getting an opportunity to return to the big leagues.

Though Strange-Gordon had a few strong hitting seasons with the Dodgers and Marlins, the veteran has been best known for his speed, with 333 stolen bases (from 433 attempts) over his career.  Strange-Gordon is the active leader in stolen bases, and he swiped 22 bags as recently as the 2019 season.  He also offers versatility as an outfielder and middle infielder for any future teams that are looking for veteran depth.

Marlins Discussed Trades Involving Bryan Reynolds, Brandon Marsh

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Prior to the trade deadline, the Marlins were looking for outfield help, and explored what would have been a pair of major deals.  Barry Jackson and Craig Mish of The Miami Herald report that the Marlins checked in with the Pirates about All-Star center fielder Bryan Reynolds, and also discussed a fascinating deal with the Angels that would have seen Miami acquire outfielder Brandon Marsh in exchange for Max Meyer, the third overall pick of the 2020 draft.

It’s probably safe to assume that almost every team in baseball at least asked the Pirates about Reynolds, who has delivered great results in two of his three MLB seasons.  Reynolds has rebounded from a sophomore slump to hit .309/.388/.525 with 18 homers over 425 plate appearances this season, with an .385 xwOBA that ranks among the league’s best.

Reynolds turns 27 in January and is controlled through the 2025 season, making him one of the few assets that the rebuilding Pirates weren’t looking to move in general, and certainly not for anything short of a huge return.  “Pittsburgh wanted more than the Marlins were willing to consider,” Jackson/Mish write, so talks ultimately didn’t pan out.

As for the negotiations with the Angels, other players may have been involved in the proposed deal, so it wouldn’t have been only a straight Marsh-for-Meyer swap.  Such major trades of top prospects are rare, though this particular move would have addressed needs for both clubs.  It isn’t any secret that the Angels are looking to add young arms, as evidenced by their two deadline day trades that netted five minor league pitchers, or their 20-player draft class consisting of nothing but hurlers.

Meyer might already be pretty close to the majors, after throwing three years of college ball and making his pro debut this year at Double-A.  The right-hander has a 1.93 ERA over 70 innings for Double-A Pensacola and ranks 38th on Baseball America’s midseason top 100 prospects list.

As impressive as Meyer has been, he is only one of several impressive pitchers at both the MLB and minor league levels of Miami’s organization.  With this surplus in mind, Jackson/Mish write that the Marlins are looking to deal a pitcher for “a front-line offensive prospect” like Marsh, who made his Major League debut earlier this month.

Marsh had an even higher placement on BA’s midseason list, ranking as the 26th-best prospect in all of baseball.  His first taste of Triple-A ball was limited to 24 games due to shoulder inflammation, but he hit well over that limited playing time and earned his first look at the MLB level.  Seen as a center fielder of the future, Marsh would be a natural replacement for Starling Marte up the middle in Miami, and the Angels might be willing to move such a player for premium pitching talent since L.A. has another big outfield prospect in Jo Adell.

Between Marte, Adam Duvall, and Corey Dickerson, the Marlins have traded three veteran outfielders in a little over a month’s time, making the position a target area for the offseason.  Jesus Sanchez and the newly-acquired Bryan De La Cruz will be in the mix as potential starters, though Jackson/Mish write that Lewis Brinson and Monte Harrison aren’t seen as long-term options.  For Harrison, “his future with the organization is uncertain” after an internal matter that reportedly involved Harrison having to be restrained after an argument with Marte.

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