Josh Harrison

Pirates utilityman Josh Harrison has cleared revocable trade waivers, per Jon Heyman of Fancred (via Twitter). That means the veteran can be traded freely for the rest of the season — though he’d need to be moved by the end of August to be eligible for postseason play with a new organization.

Of course, clearing waivers hardly indicates a player is likely to be dealt. In this case, there’s no particular indication to this point that the Bucs are expected to find a taker for the 31-year-old.

It’s still notable, though, that Harrison is now among the players known to have cleared waivers. Those and others are still available for contenders in need of further upgrades.

There’s always a reason when a player does make it through waivers. Sometimes, it’s because no contending teams expect that player to be traded, as with some younger/more controllable players. Quite often, it’s simply a value proposition: placing a claim means you’re willing to take over a player’s entire contract, as the team that sought waivers has the option of revoking the waiver request, working out a trade, or simply allowing the claiming team to step into its shoes in the agreement.

This case, surely, is one of the latter variety. Harrison is earning a $10MM salary this year and is owed $1.5MM in buyouts on successive club options that are priced at $10.5MM and $11.5MM.

At times, those prices have seemed reasonable for Harrison, who at his best adds value in all facets of the game. He has appeared in the rumor mill as a possible trade candidate quite frequently in recent years. Unfortunately, his bat has been inconsistent in recent seasons and has never produced anything like the output he showed in the breakout 2014 campaign that preceded his extension with Pittsburgh.

Thus far in 2018, Harrison is hitting just .257/.299/.365 with seven home runs over 343 plate appearances. There’s not a lot to love in the underlying  numbers, either. Statcast, for instance, suggests that his contact quality has merited exactly the middling output that has resulted (.288 wOBA vs. .291 xwOBA).

It’s fair to note, too, that defensive metrics have soured on Harrison, who normally grades as a clear positive. That said, he’s still receiving only slightly below-average marks and it’s hard to read too much into those figures. While he isn’t stealing as many bags as he has in past seasons, Harrison still rates as a quality overall baserunner.

All things considered, it’s still reasonable to imagine contending teams liking the idea of adding Harrison down the stretch, though clearly they’ll need some help with the salary — especially, the option buyouts — to make it worthwhile. If the Bucs decide they won’t pay Harrison in 2019, then perhaps the club will be willing to hold onto the option obligations and work out a deal. While the Pittsburgh organization made some buy-side moves at the non-waiver deadline, after all, it has since faded out of contention.

The Pirates announced on Monday that second baseman Josh Harrison sustained a fractured fifth metacarpal in his left hand when he was hit by a Jose Urena fastball in yesterday’s game. He’s expected to return to game action in about six weeks, per the team.

Harrison, 30, has gotten off to a .263/.328/.351 slash with a homer, two doubles and a stolen base through his first 14 games (64 plate appearances). With the veteran infielder headed to the disabled list, the 11-4 Pirates can turn to Adam Frazier or Sean Rodriguez at second base, though the team’s depth around the infield will be a bit thinned out. Max Moroff and Christopher Bostick could conceivably come up to fill in an infield spot on the bench, though it seems likely that multiple roster moves are on the horizon; the Pirates are also still in need of a 25-man move to accommodate the claim of out-of-options lefty Enny Romero from the Nats.

Harrison is earning $10MM this season as part of the four-year, $27.3MM deal he signed three years ago. Had the Pirates gotten off to a sluggish start, there’d likely have been trade chatter surrounding Harrison this summer, though so long as they can maintain some of the momentum they’ve built up, that no longer seems likely. Harrison’s deal contains club options for $10.5MM in 2019 and $11.5MM in 2020.

After the Pirates traded franchise cornerstones Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole last month, utilityman Josh Harrison suggested he’d like to play elsewhere if “the team does not expect to contend this year or next.” The Pirates haven’t done anything to assuage Harrison since then, he explained to reporters (including Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) when he showed up to camp on Sunday.

Regarding a conversation he had with general manager Neal Huntington, Harrison said: “At the end of the day there wasn’t anything said or done that was like, aw man, I can breathe easy. He talked to me, said he wants to win and this or that. At the end of the day I said it’s about action, not speaking.”

Harrison also knocked the Pirates for a lack of transparency – “Some of it goes with not knowing the direction. I understand the business side. Every year, there’s going to be guys coming in and going out. You just want to know where we stand as a team, where you stand as a player” – and backed up teammate David Freese’s recent comments criticizing the Bucs for an absence of “accountability.”

“I don’t care how we do it, but things need to be done,” Harrison declared. “As Freese said the other day, it’s got to be urgent and not just from a couple guys, a couple people in the office. It has to be top to bottom. You talk about Freese, he’s a World Series MVP. The guy’s been there. He knows what it takes to win. I think it will go without saying that he and I, even some of the comments he mentioned, had been conversations we’ve had during the season. It’s been brought to light.”

Although Harrison isn’t content with the state of the Pirates, it’s unclear whether they’re interested in trading him or whether there’s even a market for his services at this point. The New York teams and Toronto have shown the most reported interest in Harrison since last season ended, but both the Mets and Blue Jays have made several moves to address their infield and outfield in recent weeks. Consequently, both teams are likely out of the running for Harrison.

The Yankees still don’t have a proven second or third base solution, meanwhile, and credible free agent options are dwindling. However, the Yankees only have in the neighborhood of $10MM to $15MM in spending room as they try to stay under the $197MM luxury tax line, which could help prevent a deal from occurring even if the Pirates are open to trading Harrison.

While Harrison’s $6.825MM luxury tax number for 2018 is affordable, it still might not be palatable for the Yankees, who have recently passed on similarly valuable, similarly compensated free agent infielders (Todd Frazier and Eduardo Nunez, for instance) and could use their remaining money to address their rotation – which is an area they’ve prioritized. Passing on expensive veteran infielders would enable the Yankees to allow promising prospects Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar to sink or swim at second and third, respectively. Torres could start the year in the minors, in part because it would give the Yankees an extra year of control over him, but they’d only need to wait until mid-April to promote him.

If no trade materializes by Opening Day, the 30-year-old Harrison will start his eighth season in Pittsburgh. Harrison is in the last guaranteed season of the four-year, $27.3MM extension he signed with the Pirates in 2015. He’ll earn $10MM this year and could make up to $21.5MM over the following two seasons, depending on whether his employer picks up his options for 2019 and ’20.