Ben Cherington improved the Pirates.
Incrementally, it'd appear.
And he did so while persisting with his approach of not parting with much of the team's prospect base.
A process that'll extend into infinity, it'd appear.
For anyone who wasn't whacking away at the refresh arrows all afternoon, out-loud imploring Cherington to finally do something four months into a summer that's seen his team work its way into wild-card contention, here's what came of Major League Baseball's Tuesday 6 p.m. trade deadline from the Pittsburgh perspective:
• Acquired corner outfielder Bryan De La Cruz from the Marlins for two minor-leaguers, infielder Garret Forrester as the No. 18 prospect out of the system per MLB Pipeline, and right-handed starter Jun-Seok Shim. De La Cruz, 27, has slashed .245/.289/.417 with 18 home runs and 51 RBIs in his fourth season in the bigs. He'd be under team control for three additional seasons. He's logged most of his defensive time in left, but he can play right, too, and probably will for obvious reasons.
• Acquired super-utilityman Isiah Kiner-Falefa from the Blue Jays for a minor-leaguer, outfielder Charles McAdoo as the No. 29 prospect out of the system. Kiner-Falefa, 29, was in the midst of his strongest offensive season out of seven in the majors, slashing .292/.338/.420 with seven home runs and 33 RBIs. He's seen time at second base, third, shortstop and center field.
• Acquired lefty reliever Josh Walker from the Mets after he'd been designated for assignment by New York four days ago, for a minor-leaguer, left-handed starter/reliever Nicolas Carreno. Walker, 29, had a 5.11 ERA and 1.54 WHIP in 10 appearances for the Mets, and a 2.83 ERA and 1.29 WHIP in Class AAA.
• Acquired lefty pitching prospect Ronaldys Jimenez out of the Padres' Dominican Summer League affiliate -- the kid's only 18 -- to send Martin Pérez to San Diego. The latter was about to lose his place in the rotation here, so he'd have been a gross overpay with an $8 million salary.
• Acquired second base prospect Nick Yorke out of the Red Sox's Class AAA affiliate -- this kid's 22 -- to send Quinn Priester to Boston. York's been a slow starter but was at .278/.363/.422 with 10 home runs and 46 RBIs split between Class AA and AAA this summer.
I don't do trade grades. They're as infantile as they are irrelevant. If anyone ever catches me doing one, cancel the subscription at once.
This is why: The goal of a trade should be to put a team closer to contention and, ultimately, cumulatively, closer to a championship. It should never be about the actual exchange. As Craig Patrick once told me of his masterful move in the Penguins' trade of Mark Recchi to the Flyers in 1992 for Rick Tocchet, Kjell Samuelsson and Ken Wregget, "I knew I was trading a future Hall of Famer to our archrival, but I also knew we needed that trade to win another Stanley Cup." He'd be correct, of course, on all counts: Lost the trade, won the Cup, and the Wreckin' Ball's enshrined.
As Cherington himself would say on a post-deadline call, "We were able to finalize, I think, seven total trades this week. We always feel like, going into a deadline, that we need to look at moves in the totality and the portfolio, the total portfolio, because one can impact another and vice versa. Ultimately, we’re trying to impact the Pirates through a variety of trades and not one."
Agreed. So I don't care if Cherington won this trade or that trade, except over the longer term and except as it relates to putting the Pirates closer to contention or ... oh, that other surreal objective.
"Looking at the combination of moves we made," he'd continue, "we feel good that we were able to address several goals we had coming into the deadline. Most important was to improve our 2024 team, to recognize and honor the incredible hard work and toughness that our player group, our staff has shown. We want to support that and give this team in 2024 every chance to keep playing good baseball, to keep winning."
Agreed there, too. It's a bona fide cause.
Are they better now than a couple days ago?
Again, sure they are.
De La Cruz's consistent power -- 50 home runs over his past three seasons in Miami, and his next one in 2024 will match a career high for a season -- could offset that ominous .289 on-base percentage that'd fit a little too seamlessly into the current lineup. As such, he's got a good chance at being an upgrade over Josh Palacios, and a really good chance at being an upgrade over Jack Suwinski.
Better in right field means better overall.
Kiner-Falefa's .758 OPS could reasonably be considered scary, since he's 59 points above any other full-season figure in his career, and he's 112 points above where he was in 2023 with the Yankees. He'd seem to be due for a fall and a half the rest of the way. And yet, he's got a good chance at being a sound replacement for Nick Gonzales for however long the latter will miss with a strained groin, and a really good chance at being an offensive upgrade over Michael A. Taylor assuming he can handle center.
Or, um, maybe not:
MICHAEL A+ TAYLOR 👏 pic.twitter.com/R7CJDjADHr
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) July 31, 2024
Regardless, I digress. Taylor's also available as a late defensive replacement.
Being better at another spot in the lineup means better overall.
But how much better?
I'm of the firm belief that's a fair point to weigh in the broader scope.
Because Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller and once-he's-healthy Jared Jones account for a rotation that's a worthwhile investment every year they're together, so say nothing of what Bryan Reynolds is offering from his side. It's hardly a loaded roster, but then baseball's always been about pitching rather than balance when it comes to October. Two or three starters can be all it takes. And there doesn't need to be a gradual buildup to achieve this status. Just have to get in.
Why'd it take so damned long to do anything at all?
Another fair point, I'd say.
We've romanticized trade deadlines in all sports to the extreme that they're seen by some, absurdly, as being all that counts toward a general manager's contribution, as if he can take the other 364 days off. My schedule showed the Pirates as having played 106 games out 162 before the deadline, or 65% of the whole thing. And my standings, after the smooth, satisfying 6-2 victory that followed in Houston, now show this:
MLB
I see six teams vying for three wild-card spots, and the Pirates within a series of straddling across the border. But within that, while I'll commend the obvious improvement over this point a year ago, I also can't help but wonder if this improvement couldn't have been more ambitious. Or, since it eventually arrived in incremental form, if it couldn't have arrived ... weeks ago, if not months ago.
Anyone suggesting that Cherington couldn't have been more ambitious hasn't taken so much as a glance at the not-at-all excessive returns received for the likes of Randy Arozarena and Jazz Chisholm.
Anyone suggesting that Cherington wouldn't have wanted those players over the ones he'd get would have difficulty explaining why the Pirates were reported to have been in both and, according to the Miami Herald, came in "a close second" on Chisholm.
And for that matter, anyone suggesting that Cherington couldn't have made these moves until right up against the deadline would have difficulty defining the Marlins, of all teams, as just having deduced that they'll be sellers. Heck, that might as well have been known in the season's opening weekend when the Pirates took all four in Miami.
All of that's bothered me for a long while now, and this execution doesn't change that.
I'd hoped to see a competitiveness, a fire, a ... I don't know, just a pulse from 115 Federal far before this. As I'd been writing all that time, a couple average bats would've gone a long way. These, in fact, are a couple average bats. And while still welcome, they could've already made a much bigger difference.
What's more, there remains no end in sight to the Cherington process. Because none of this changes the same cycle that's been spinning since he showed up in late 2019. This is Year 5, and he's mostly still conducting business as he did back then. The exception is that he's adding -- again, incrementally -- but he's still doing so without touching his system. Even though that system's been reduced to having only two prospects among baseball's top 100. Even though better big-league players toward 2024 and 2025 could've been had now.
When does that end?
Does it ever end?
Does Skenes have to strike out every single batter he sees before it's realized that every year he's here is precious?
This facet's bothered me for a while on this front, as well: It's one thing for Bob Nutting to tell Cherington he's free to add significantly to this season's payroll, and it's quite another for either him or Travis Williams to order an upgrade of that scale.
And yeah, the spending authorization was there, even if these trades basically broke even financially. I was told again after the trades by a source I've trusted as much as any in 20 years on this beat that, if Cherington had a deal in place, he'd have gotten the same green light that Neal Huntington did at the deadlines in 2013-15. I wasn't given an exact dollar amount, but it was into eight figures.
Also and related, I asked why Pérez's $8 million salary needed to be sent out and if that had anything to do with the money assumed principally in Kiner-Falefa's $7.5 million. The response was twofold:
1. I was told that the Pirates are paying half of Perez's prorated remaining salary in San Diego -- that's $1,311,828 -- and that they did so because Cherington's scouts were "giddy" to get Jimenez, the 18-year-old. They see the latter as a sizable plus to the system. As Cherington added on this, "He's a kid that we had tracked as an amateur, and our scouts have actually spent a lot of time with him since he signed. We've got some -- we think -- intriguing data, some traits that we like."
2. If Cherington needed/wanted to clear cash, he could've moved out Aroldis Chapman's $10.5 million and gotten "a ransom" back for him, in addition to the savings. As Cherington addressed this, "We felt pretty strongly and were gonna be careful about doing anything that would hurt our bullpen in any way. But we got calls, for sure. A lot of calls."
All well and good. There still should've been more to the message and the money, though. And that'll need to be soon. This particular page has to be turned totally by 2025, and a $100 million payroll's going to be an absolute must.
For now ...
"Through that process, it does sometimes require patience, but we feel like we landed in a good spot," Cherington would say. "We believe we found deals that made sense for us. Time will tell. That’s the fun part of it."
It wasn't nothing. And it might well be something.
• Thanks for reading. Make no mistake: It's a good day for the Pittsburgh Baseball Club. Really.
• And for listening:
