5-10-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
The Pirates will have to make an honest effort to do things differently than they have historically. No, not to save 2025, but to pull this thing from the tailspin its grown into.
You aren’t going to get the one you want. Bob Nutting won’t sell, so if you can’t bring yourself beyond “nothing will change until Nutting is gone”, you might as well just check out, cause that’s not what this piece is going to focus on.
Spending or not, there is absolutely no reason this franchise shouldn’t have themselves in a position where the team they’ve built internally can sustain and produce a roughly .500 record.
They’ve built enough pitching to ensure they can make that happen, and beyond that, they could have spent the dollars they did spend more wisely.
The rest of 2025, this team should improve. I know, I know, stick with me…
They will get infusions of more of the young pitching we were excited to see. Jones, Chandler, Oviedo, Moreta, Ashcraft, Burrows, Harrington, Barco now is very much so in that conversation.
They’ll get Spencer Horwitz back, and nobody knows what that’ll be, but I think his opportunity with Toronto was positive. Gonzales will return, IKF will return too. None of them are Vladdy Jr, but they’ll all help.
Guys like Cook and Yorke, and Nunez, lots of those types, hell maybe even Jack again, look, Bae’s here for a minute waiting on Horwitz to finish his rehab.
Point is, they should get better. And I didn’t even mention Bryan Reynolds, who always heats up when the thermometer does, and his wife delivers…IYKYK.
That’s just internally, and while I don’t want Ben Cherington making large trades here, this start has ensured they have a few trades he needs to execute well.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa
First, how about his recent quote after the Shelton firing.
“Everything that could have gone wrong in the organization these first two months has gone wrong,” “You’re talking about things that are happening outside our control. This is not what I envisioned coming into getting traded here last year. This year, so far, has been extremely disappointing for me.”
Yeah, he’s caught Bucco Fever, and boy, it didn’t take all that long. This trade was going to have to happen, but not being in the race, it’s something they better start planning and laying track for now.
He’s a nice bench pickup on a pro-rated contract that isn’t all that expensive in the first place, so you should be able to do ok here. He has no control beyond this year, so you can’t get crazy but you should be able to get yourself a top 10-20 prospect if he continues to play reasonably well. Nobody will be acquiring him to be their SS though, so they can just use him as intended if you ask me. Either way, can’t miss here, even if the player they get is far away, it needs to be a quality, and preferably offensive oriented pick up.
He’ll be a free agent, you won’t offer him a qualifying offer, you aren’t in anything, move him, whenever it presents itself for the best return you think you can get.
Andrew Heaney
This was just about always going to be the plan, even if they were in a heated race. The hope was the pitching would grow him out of space to find sunshine anyway or push him to the pen. Now you just don’t need to act like it was a painful last second decision.
We’ll see how Heaney does for a while here before we decide what kind of return you should look for. He’s hit a little road bump lately after a very hot start. Chances are though, he looks a lot like the Free agent signing he was, and vet arms especially lefties at the deadline usually will net you a decent prospect. Maybe just about what you would be looking for with IKF, or, you might be able to flip him into a reliever with some team control left, that’s been a nice return option for this team with rentals a few times now, Moreta, Holderman, Oviedo, you know, different degrees of success, couple injuries, but that’s a smart way to build out a bullpen with options for a couple years.
Lottery ticket is fine here too. But he gone.
David Bednar
David went to the minors, figured some stuff out, and right now he’s humming.
Thank god, because he wasn’t tradeable before, now he is.
He has one more year of arbitration, and frankly, the Pirates should not even entertain picking it up. We’ve already tasted how quickly it can fall apart and at his age, I don’t want to pay him what figures to be over 7 million only to turn around and have to trade him at next year’s deadline for a lesser return.
I have no interest in extending him, I just don’t believe he’s going to trend in the right direction for that.
But you could be selling a dare I say dominant back end reliever, should he continue to pitch like this anyway. With a year of control on top.
That, might just return a prospect who has had a hard time making a stacked team, or a blocked prospect who should have gotten a shot by now. That would be my hope anyway.
Bullpens win championships, and teams will pay for it, to me it’s a gigantic waste of a resource to hold onto him.
If there’s a PR hit, honestly, Bob is likely gonna fire this GM anyway, just blame him. lol
This needs to happen.
These are all trades I think absolutely have to happen, tomorrow, I’ll write about some moves I’d make if I trusted this GM to do them well.
Steel City Pirates 