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Pirates Rumors

Pirates Place Colin Moran On Injured List With Wrist Fracture

By Anthony Franco | July 1, 2021 at 3:32pm CDT

Pirates first baseman Colin Moran is going on the 10-day injured list after suffering a small fracture in his left wrist/hand area, manager Derek Shelton told reporters (including Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). Outfielder Jared Oliva has been recalled from Triple-A Indianapolis to take his spot on the active roster.

Moran suffered the injury when he was struck by a Kyle Freeland pitch on Monday. Sheldon didn’t provide any sort of timetable on his return, although even a minor fracture seems to have the potential to be rather bothersome. This will be Moran’s second IL stint of the season, as he also missed a little less than a month earlier this year with a left groin injury.

It’s particularly notable with the trade deadline less than a month away. The rebuilding Pirates are certain to listen to offers on veteran players, and a healthy Moran could draw some interest from contenders. The 28-year-old has hit a solid .280/.345/.414 with four homers across 174 plate appearances this season.

It’s not clear whether Moran will be able to make it onto the field before July 30, or whether he’ll immediately settle back in at the plate. Hand injuries can sometimes linger, particularly impacting a hitter’s power upside. Players on the IL can still be traded (the Marlins traded injured outfielder Corey Dickerson earlier this week, in fact), but there’s no urgency for the Pirates to move Moran if his value is at a low point. He’s on an affordable $2.8MM deal this season and controllable via arbitration through 2023.

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Blue Jays Interested In Richard Rodriguez

By Mark Polishuk | June 30, 2021 at 11:12pm CDT

The Blue Jays are one of the teams showing trade interest in Pirates right-hander Richard Rodriguez, according to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman (Twitter link).  Toronto has already made one early move to upgrade its struggling bullpen, as righty Adam Cimber was acquired yesterday part of a four-player deal with the Marlins.

As MLBTR’s Steve Adams recently illustrated, Rodriguez figures to be one of the most sought-after players of this deadline season.  The 31-year-old closer is not only inexpensive ($1.7MM salary for 2021) and controllable (through the 2023 season), but he also posted some of the best numbers of any reliever in baseball.  Rodriguez has a 1.78 ERA/3.55 SIERA through 30 1/3 innings, with that higher SIERA reflective of such factors as a .215 BABIP and a 24.5% strikeout rate that is barely above average.

However, Rodriguez also has some elite control — he has issued only three walks, the fewest of any pitcher in the league with at least 30 innings pitched.  The lack of strikeouts, as Steve notes, is more due to a change in pitch selection rather than any sudden inability to miss bats, as Rodriguez has increased focus on generating weak contact in the form of infield pop-ups.  Rodriguez’s success in 2021 also isn’t coming out of nowhere, as he is now in his fourth season of delivering quality results out of the Pittsburgh bullpen.

The right-hander would solidify any relief corps, but he would be an especially major upgrade to a Toronto bullpen that has struggled badly in recent weeks.  A rather stunning number of reliever injuries has thinned the Jays’ depth, and while a few of those arms will return, there isn’t much time to spare considering how many blown leads have already cost the Blue Jays several crucial victories in a very competitive AL East.

The acquisition of Cimber over a month before the trade deadline indicates that the Toronto front office is already being aggressive in exploring options, even if league-wide trade activity isn’t expected to really kick into gear until after the July 11-13 amateur draft is completed.  The Pirates could be a particular team to monitor in this regard, considering the Bucs face the especially big decision of who to select with the first overall pick.

The Blue Jays have enough minor league depth to get the Pirates’ attention in what should be a very competitive market for Rodriguez, and Pittsburgh is certainly justified in demanding a big return.  Pirates GM Ben Cherington worked in the Jays front office before being hired in his current role in November 2019, though while this connection has often linked the Jays and Pirates together as natural trade partners, the two clubs have yet to actually swing a deal during Cherington’s tenure.

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Pirates To Promote Max Kranick

By Mark Polishuk | June 26, 2021 at 5:15pm CDT

5:15 PM: Right-hander Geoff Hartlieb will be optioned to Triple-A tomorrow to make room for Kranick, tweets Mackey. The 27-year-old has appeared three times out of the pen, struggling with his control, issuing five free passes en route to four earned runs in 3 2/3 innings. Control was Hartlieb’s bugaboo last season as well when he walked 18.8 percent of opposing hitters in 22 1/3 innings.

1:06 PM: The Pirates will promote right-hander Max Kranick to the majors tomorrow, according to Alex Stumpf of DK Pittsburgh Sports.  Kranick will make his MLB debut as the Pirates’ starting pitcher for their game against the Cardinals.  (Mackey also shared the amusing way that Triple-A manager Brian Esposito and pitching coach Joel Hanrahan told Kranick about the promotion in prank form.)

A Pennsylvania product born in Scranton, Kranick was an 11th-round pick for the Bucs in the 2016 draft, as the team went well above slot price to land him at a $300K bonus.  He has started 54 of 58 career games in the minors, posting a 3.47 ERA over 280 overall innings, and he reached both the Double-A and Triple-A levels for the first time this season.  Kranick has a cumulative 4.37 ERA, 24.65% strikeout rate, and 6.16% walk rate over 35 total innings (19 1/3 at Triple-A, 15 2/3 at Double-A) in 2021.

“While he doesn’t have one pitch that jumps off the page, Kranick does have good feel and has shown an ability to throw strikes with all of them,” according to MLB Pipeline’s scouting report, with Pipeline ranking him as the 26th-best prospect in Pittsburgh’s farm system.  His fastball has the highest grade (55 on the 20-80 scouting scale) of any of his three offerings, and Kranick regularly hits the 94mph plateau with the ability to get up to 98mph on occasion.

Since the Pirates are firmly in rebuild mode, taking a look at a 23-year-old arm fits right into the organization’s plans about focusing on the future.  Room opened up in the rotation when Trevor Cahill was placed on the injured list and Mitch Keller was optioned to the minors, so it makes sense that the Bucs would take a shot with Kranick after his solid (if unspectacular) showing at Triple-A.

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Pirates Sign Shelby Miller To Minor League Contract

By Mark Polishuk | June 26, 2021 at 8:45am CDT

The Pirates have agreed to a minor league deal with right-hander Shelby Miller, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports (Twitter link).  Miller will be assigned to Triple-A after completing COVID-19 protocols.

Miller was designated for assignment and then released by the Cubs in May, as he was rocked for seven runs over two innings pitched for Chicago.  These two rough innings represent the only MLB action for Miller in the last two seasons, as he opted out of the 2020 campaign.  He was also a member of the Brewers organization in 2019-20, so Pittsburgh represents the fourth different NL Central team of Miller’s career.

Best known for his three-season heyday with the Cardinals and Braves from 2013-15, Miller has a 7.15 ERA in 185 innings since the start of the 2014 season, battling injuries (including a Tommy John surgery) and a lack of effectiveness.  The Pirates will be the latest team to see if they can fix Miller, who is still only 30 years old.

The righty can provide the Bucs with some pitching depth, perhaps as a starter though Miller only had three abbreviated starts with Chicago’s Triple-A affiliate this season.  At this point in Miller’s career, a turn to relief pitching might be advisable, though he didn’t fare well in relief duty with the Rangers in 2019.

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2021 Amateur Draft Rumors: Pirates, Mayer, Orioles, Mock Drafts

By Mark Polishuk | June 26, 2021 at 7:25am CDT

The 2021 amateur draft begins on July 11, and with the later date comes more time for analysis, predictions, smokescreens, rumors, and possible major changes up and down teams’ draft boards.  With this in mind, there is naturally quite a bit of uncertainty over which prospects will land with which teams, as a real consensus has yet to develop in almost every single spot in the first round.

Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo, The Athletic’s Keith Law, MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis, and ESPN.com’s Kiley McDaniel have all published new mock drafts within the last week, and one constant emerged between the four pundits — the Pirates taking California high school shortstop Marcelo Mayer with the first overall (1-1) pick.  It isn’t a sure thing by any means, however, as the Pirates are said to be focused “only on position players at this point,” according to Law, so such candidates as Louisville catcher Henry Davis (Callis cites Davis as Pittsburgh’s apparent “Plan B”) or high school shortstops Jordan Lawlar and Khalil Watson could still be in the mix.  Collazo also believes the Pirates are considering Vanderbilt right-hander Jack Leiter.

The Pirates’ $14,394,000 draft bonus pool is the highest of any team, and they plan to maximize value by drafting a player at 1-1 who is thought to be less willing to insist on the full slot price $8,415,300 slot price for the first overall pick.  “I think that’s what Pittsburgh’s pick will come down to: taking the one that is clearly cheaper to sign,” McDaniel writes, which certainly isn’t welcome news to Pirates fans long frustrated by the team’s unwillingness to spend.

That being said, many teams have deployed the strategy of spreading around their draft bonus money in the past.  The most famous example was the Astros’ pick of Carlos Correa (seen as a slight reach at the time) first overall in 2012, and Houston signed Correa to a below-slot bonus and then using that saved money to sign 41st-overall pick Lance McCullers Jr. to an above-slot deal.  It also isn’t like Mayer would be a controversial choice at 1-1, considering that MLB Pipeline ranks him first on their top 250 draft prospects list, and McDaniel’s most recent prospect ranking has Mayer second overall.

While Mayer looks like the favorite at the moment, it is quite possible the perceived price tags could still fluctuate in the next three weeks.  For instance, the three pundits all note that the Tigers love Mayer, so he isn’t likely to fall beyond Detroit at the third overall pick if the Pirates and Rangers (who pick second) both pass.  As McDaniel observes, this impacts Mayer’s leverage in potential negotiations with the Pirates, since the young shortstop can be reasonably certain of at least landing a bonus in range of the $7,221,200 slot price attached to the third overall pick.

There is no consensus whatsoever in the mock drafts after a hypothetical Pirates/Mayer 1-1 pick, so if Pittsburgh went in another direction, the draft boards would be entirely blown up.  To give you an idea of the wide range of scenarios, here is the list of players cited by Callis, Collazo, Law and McDaniel as possibilities for each team drafting in the top eight, along with which pundit selected which prospect for each top-eight team in their mock draft.

  • 1. Pirates: Mayer (Callis/Collazo/Law/McDaniel), Henry Davis, Jordan Lawlar, Khalil Watson, Jack Leiter
  • 2. Rangers: Leiter (Callis), Lawlar (Collazo/Law), Davis (McDaniel), Kumar Rocker, Mayer, Watson….in a contrast to the other three pundits, Callis writes that Texas has Lawlar and Davis “on the back burner” behind Watson, Mayer, and Leiter.  “Watson has real heat at this spot,” Collazo writes.
  • 3. Tigers: Mayer, Jackson Jobe (Callis/Collazo), Leiter (Law), Brady House (McDaniel), Lawlar, Watson, possibly Rocker “as a big maybe” in Collazo’s words
  • 4. Red Sox: Lawlar (Callis), Davis (Law), Leiter (Collazo/McDaniel)….Collazo doesn’t believe Leiter would fall beyond Boston at fourth overall,
  • 5. Orioles: Davis (Callis), Colton Cowser (Law), Watson (Collazo/McDaniel), House, Harry Ford, either of Mayer/Lawler if they happened to fall….Baltimore is widely expected to take a college position player at an under-slot price, as a way of keeping money in reserve to go over-slot on other picks.
  • 6. Diamondbacks: Rocker (Callis), Davis (Collazo), Watson (Law), Lawlor (McDaniel), Jobe
  • 7. Royals: Watson (Callis), Rocker (Collazo/Law/McDaniel)….this is another minor consensus area, as Law and McDaniel believe that Rocker isn’t likely to fall beyond Kansas City.  “The market for Rocker is weirdly specific,” Law writes, citing the Rangers, Red Sox, Royals, Nationals, and Mets as perhaps the only true interested parties.  Of course, Callis projected the D’Backs to take Rocker at sixth overall, so Arizona could also be a candidate for the Vanderbilt righty.
  • 8. Rockies: House (Callis/Collazo/Law), Benny Montgomery (McDaniel), Jobe

All four mock drafts are well worth reading in full, to get a sense of what the 29 teams with first-round picks are generally targeting this year or have historically looked for in past drafts.  (The Astros aren’t included, as they lost their first-rounder as part of their punishment for the sign-stealing scandal.)

For more on the prospects themselves, you can check out the aforementioned lists from McDaniel and MLB Pipeline, Baseball America’s top 500 list, or some of the individual writeups from the Sports Info Solutions blog on such top college players as Florida outfielder Jud Fabian, Wake Forest right-hander Ryan Cusick, UCLA shortstop Matt McClain, and Mississippi right-hander Gunnar Hoglund.

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Pirates Trade Troy Stokes Jr., Jandel Gustave To Brewers

By Steve Adams | June 25, 2021 at 12:48pm CDT

The Pirates and Brewers have agreed to a trade sending outfielder Troy Stokes Jr. and righty Jandel Gustave from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee in exchange for 17-year-old catcher Samuel Escudero, according to a team announcement out of Milwaukee. Stokes and Gustave have both been assigned to Triple-A Nashville for the time being.

It’s a bit of an oddball trade between two division rivals, as neither Stokes nor Gustave are on the 40-man roster for the rebuilding Pirates. Stokes, 25, was originally a fourth-round pick by the Brewers back in 2014 but made his way to the Pirates via a pair of waiver claims over the past couple seasons. He made his MLB debut earlier this season with Pittsburgh, appearing in eight games and 2-for-18, but he’s since been outrighted off the 40-man roster.

Stokes hasn’t been hitting particularly well in Triple-A Indianapolis since being removed from the 40-man roster. He’s logged 29 games and 84 plate appearances with a tepid .169/.298/.310 slash, dropping his career slash at the Triple-A level to .221/.333/.372 in 465 plate appearances. He’ll give some upper-level outfield depth to a team that traded Billy McKinney to the Mets last month and currently has Lorenzo Cain on the injured list. Milwaukee also recently designated outfielder Derek Fisher for assignment, and if he ends up elsewhere that’d only further deplete their outfield depth.

For the Brewers, the acquisition of Gustave could be the greater focus. Milwaukee’s acquisition of Willy Adames from the Rays bolstered its defense and lineup, but the Brewers had to part with righties J.P. Feyereisen and Drew Rasmussen in order to get that deal done. Righty Trevor Richards came to Milwaukee in that deal and has thrown well, but they’re down a reliever on their depth chart following that swap.

President of baseball ops David Stearns suggested in an interview with The Athletic’s Will Sammon this week that looking for some complementary bullpen arms might be on the to-do list as the deadline approaches. “Where we’ve struggled is finding those complementary players who can round out a pitching staff and provide consistent performance,” Stearns told Sammon.

Acquiring Gustave certainly seems to mesh with Stearns’ comments. The former Astros and Giants righty was once a prospect of some note, going with the top pick in the 2014 Rule 5 Draft. Tommy John surgery limited him to five innings with the ’Stros in 2017 and wiped out his entire 2018 campaign. He made it back to the big leagues with the Giants in 2019 and tossed 24 1/3 innings of 2.96 ERA ball, albeit with a lowly 14.1 percent strikeout rate and a 9.1 percent walk rate.

Gustave didn’t pitch in the Majors last year. Though he started the season on the Giants’ 40-man roster, he wasn’t added to their initial 60-man player pool and was designated for assignment in early August. He inked a minor league deal with Pittsburgh over the winter and has thrown well in Indianapolis, holding opponents to six runs on a dozen hits and five walks with 18 punchouts through 15 frames (3.60 ERA).

While Gustave hasn’t missed too many bats in the big leagues, he’s whiffed 29 percent of his opponents in Triple-A this season and 23 percent in parts of three career campaigns there. The right-hander carries a 3.43 ERA in 44 2/3 innings at the MLB level and a 4.39 mark in 98 1/3 innings of Triple-A work. At the very least, he gives the Brewers another depth arm with some experience should they need to tap further into the minor league reservoir.

As for the Pirates’ return, there’s not much publicly available data on the young backstop. The Brewers signed him as an amateur out of Venezuela back in January, and the Pirates have assigned him to their affiliate in the Dominican Summer League. Given that the Bucs are trading away a player who cleared waivers a month ago and a second non-roster player who was acquired on a minor league contract, getting even a far-off lottery ticket who’s just setting out on his pro career is a nice pickup.

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Pirates Move Miguel Yajure To 60-Day IL

By Mark Polishuk | June 24, 2021 at 9:12pm CDT

  • The Pirates shifted right-hander Miguel Yajure from the seven-day minor league IL to the 60-day IL.  Yajure was first sidelined with right elbow/forearm soreness on June 1, and today’s transaction is “just more of a paper move” that “has nothing to do with how he’s progressing or what he’s doing,” manager Derek Shelton told reporters (including Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).  Yajure only just began throwing, and it appears as though he wasn’t going to be back within 60 days from his initial IL placement anyway — as Mackey notes, the Bucs don’t gain a 40-man roster spot with the move, since Yajure was in the minor leagues when first placed on the injured list.  One of the four players acquired from the Yankees in the Jameson Taillon trade back in January, Yajure has a 2.76 ERA over 16 1/3 MLB innings over the last two seasons.
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The Pirates Have One Of The Best Bullpen Chips On The Trade Market

By Steve Adams | June 18, 2021 at 10:59pm CDT

There are plenty of clichés about the usefulness of a closer on a rebuilding and/or last-place team, and for the most part they hold true. Locking down victories on the path to 100 losses — even if you’re doing your job well — often goes somewhat overlooked. A high-leverage reliever on a team that has few high-leverage chances isn’t going to get much national love.

Richard Rodriguez | Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

This time of year, however, they should get plenty of love around the league as contending clubs look to bolster their relief corps. Enter relatively anonymous Pirates closer Richard Rodriguez, who has solidified himself as one of the most effective relievers in the game over the past few seasons.

Rodriguez, 31, is nowhere near the top of the saves leaderboard in MLB or even in just in the National League, which isn’t much of a surprise given the Pirates’ 23-44 record. He’s only had nine save chances all season, and he’s converted seven of them. He’s sitting on a 1.71 ERA through 26 1/3 innings so far in 2021, and dating back to his Pirates debut in 2018, he has a 2.83 ERA in 184 1/3 frames.

Of course, teams in 2021 aren’t going to be particularly wowed by a shiny ERA or a player’s save total/save percentage. Rodriguez shines in other areas, however. His 21.1 percent strikeout rate in 2021 is the lowest it’s been in parts of four seasons in Pittsburgh, but he’s also sporting a career-best 3.2 percent walk rate and has yet to hit a batter in 2021. It’s also important to note that while his punchouts are down in ’21, Rodriguez has shown in the past that he can miss bats in bunches.

Rodriguez whiffed 31.5 percent of his opponents in 2018 and a whopping 36.6 percent in 2020. In both of those seasons, Rodriguez threw his breaking ball roughly one in four times and his four-seamer the other 75 percent of the time. So far in 2021 — as was the case in 2019 — he’s throwing roughly six times as many heaters as breaking ball. Fewer sliders, fewer strikeouts — but also fewer walks.

The strikeout rate is rather pedestrian this year, but that’s in large part because Rodriguez has excelled at inducing mediocre contact with his fastball that he hasn’t much needed to lean on his swing-and-miss breaking ball. Opponents have only “barreled” two balls against Rodriguez all season, per Statcast, and what he’s lacking in punchouts he makes up for with harmless infield fly-balls. A pop-up to the infield is nearly every bit as productive as a strikeout; for a pitcher’s purposes, they’re both effectively automatic outs.

So far in 2021, Rodriguez has induced seven pop-ups to the infield — tied for fifth-most among all MLB relievers. The four pitchers ahead of him have pitched an average of 7 1/3 more innings than Rodriguez this year. (Again, being a high-leverage reliever on a team that doesn’t get high-leverage opportunities can limit your workload.) Statcast pegs Rodriguez’s average opponents’ launch angle at 25.5 degrees — fifth-highest among relievers — due to the number of balls that are skied against him. This isn’t a new phenomenon either; dating back to 2019, Rodriguez is tied for 12th among relievers in pop-ups induced. Six of the names ahead of him on the list have more innings pitched.

Rodriguez’s fastball isn’t overpowering, sitting at 93.4 mph on average, and it doesn’t miss bats in droves despite being a high-spin offering. But that high spin rate and his willingness to work in the upper portion of the zone (or above it) helps to generate those pop-ups and the occasional whiff. Spin rate is an increasingly dubious term these days, as the league cracks down on the use of illegal foreign substances, but there’s been no noticeable drop in Rodriguez’s spin since the league began warning of sanctions. Rodriguez has ranked among the league leaders in fastball spin since 2018, and his most recent outing, in fact, saw his four-seamer reach its highest spin-rate mark of the season (2680 rpms). Either he’s brazenly and blatantly still using some form of substance, or he simply has a more innate ability to spin the ball than most pitchers.

Taken in totality, Rodriguez is a high-leverage reliever with a solid fastball, a breaking ball that misses bats (but isn’t always needed), some of the best control of any reliever in the game, and what appears to be a repeatable ability to generate infield flies. All of that on its own would be appealing, but then there’s the matter of his contractual status and remaining club control.

Rodriguez is in his fourth full season with the Bucs and will finish out the year just north of four years of MLB service time. That gives him two years of remaining club control beyond the 2021 season. He’ll be up for a raise via arbitration in both of those years, but the Pirates’ lack of leverage opportunities for him will actually work to his detriment (and to a new team’s favor) in that regard. This is only Rodriguez’s first full season as a closer for the Pirates, and his limited chances this year have left him with all of 12 career saves. That lack of saves left his first-year arbitration salary at a highly manageable $1.7MM, and it’ll likely limit his raises in 2022 and 2023 — particularly if an acquiring team puts him back into a setup role.

In other words, the Pirates this summer can market two and a half years of control over a pitcher who has quietly been one of the NL’s most effective relievers since 2018, and those two and a half seasons ought to come at a combined price in the $7.5MM to $9MM range. Even in an extreme scenario where a new team plugged Rodriguez into the ninth inning and he went on to lead the league in saves, he’s starting from a low enough point that the price would remain eminently reasonable.

There are going to be plenty of high-profile relievers on the market this summer. Many will throw harder than Rodriguez, more consistently miss bats than he does, and have more saves/holds than he’s amassed on a persistently cellar-dwelling Pirates club. But there are few relievers with this type of track record at such an affordable price point and with multiple years of control remaining beyond the 2021 season.

Obviously, the former Pirates’ front office regime made its fair share of missteps. There’s a reason the Buccos are in the position they’re in, after all. But the signing of Rodriguez as a minor league free agent after he was cast off by the Astros and Orioles alike is a move that deserves praise. It’s also a move that has left new GM Ben Cherington and his staff one of this summer’s most appealing trade candidates.

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Pirates Rule 5 Pick Jose Soriano Undergoes Tommy John Surgery

By Steve Adams | June 16, 2021 at 1:22pm CDT

TODAY: Soriano underwent Tommy John surgery yesterday, Tomcyzk told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Kevin Gorman and other reporters.

JUNE 10: The Pirates selected right-hander Jose Soriano out of the Angels organization with the top pick in last December’s Rule 5 Draft, knowing at the time he still required several months of rehab following 2020 Tommy John surgery. The hope was to get some innings out of Soriano at some point this summer, but Pirates director of sports medicine Todd Tomcyzk told reporters yesterday that Soriano has new damage in his pitching elbow (Twitter link via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Mike Persak). Another surgery is now possible.

It’s a discouraging outcome for the 22-year-old Soriano, who is now nearly 16 months removed from that 2020 Tommy John procedure. He’d progressed his rehab to the point where he’d been cleared to pitch in minor league games as a ramp-up to his MLB debut, but based on his results, it’s clear that something was amiss. Soriano appeared in two games, the first of which included three shutout innings with one hit, no walks and five punchouts. In his second outing, Soriano faced 10 batters but was clobbered for seven runs on five hits and three walks while only recording two outs.

[Related: 2020 Rule 5 Draft Results | April Update On Rule 5 Draftees]

Entering the season, Soriano was ranked as the Pirates’ No. 18 prospect at Baseball America, No. 22 at FanGraphs and No. 24 at MLB.com. He’s praised as a hard-throwing righty with potential closer upside thanks to an upper-90s heater that can touch triple digits and a power curveball. His 2019 season in A-ball showed off plenty of that upside (2.55 ERA, 26 percent strikeout rate, 52.8 percent grounder rate) but also underscored one of the most pressing red flags in the righty’s outlook (15 percent walk rate).

The new injury casts doubt on whether Soriano will pitch for the Pirates in 2021 — or at all. He’s already on the 60-day injured list, so the Bucs can keep him there until season’s end without any ramification, even if he undergoes another surgery. When the offseason rolls around, however, they’d need to determine whether they want to carry Soriano throughout the winter in hopes of getting some innings from him in 2022. Soriano would retain his Rule 5 status into next season, meaning he still couldn’t be optioned to the minors until spending at least 90 days on the active roster.

If at any point the Pirates decide to cut bait, Soriano would be placed on waivers before being offered back to the Angels, who would not need to carry him on the 40-man roster.

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Pirates Acquire Taylor Davis

By Tim Dierkes | June 15, 2021 at 4:25pm CDT

The Orioles acquired minor league outfielder Jose Berroa from the Pirates for catcher Taylor Davis, reported Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com among others.

Davis, 31, picked up 20 games of big league experience with the Cubs from 2017-19.  He signed a minor league deal with the Orioles in January 2020, and played in 12 games for the Norfolk Tides this year.  Davis may not have made much of a big league impact yet, but he did garner fame for “shooting icy stares at the Iowa Cubs’ cameras,” as SI’s Dan Gartland put it in 2017.  Davis will now make the trip to the Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate.  The Indianapolis Indians open a six-game set against the Memphis Redbirds tonight.

Berroa, 19, did not fall within FanGraphs’ top 51 Pirates prospects back in February.  He played 56 games in the Dominican Summer League in 2019 and will be assigned to the Orioles’ Florida Complex team in Sarasota.  He was a July 2 signing out of the Dominican Republic back in 2018.

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Mariners Promote Cole Young, Activate Bryce Miller

2025-26 MLB Free Agent Power Rankings: May Edition

Evan Phillips To Undergo Tommy John Surgery

AJ Smith-Shawver Diagnosed With Torn UCL

Reds Trade Alexis Díaz To Dodgers

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Ronel Blanco To Undergo Tommy John Surgery

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Royals Designate Hunter Renfroe For Assignment

How Should The Cardinals Approach The Deadline?

Jerry Reinsdorf, Justin Ishbia Reach Agreement For Ishbia To Obtain Future Majority Stake In White Sox

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Pirates Re-Sign Nick Solak To Minor League Deal

Royals, Justin Dunn Agree To Minor League Deal

Brandon Woodruff Pulled Off Rehab Stint With Elbow Contusion

Astros Sign Omar Narvaez To Minor League Contract

Cooper Hummel Elects Free Agency

Rangers Option Kumar Rocker

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