Pirates owner lays out club's approach to trade deadline

Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bob Nutting

The race for the final two wild-card spots in the National League is quickly becoming a dogfight and the Pirates are one of a whopping eight teams all within two games of each other in the standings currently vying for those final two spots in the postseason picture alongside the division-leading Phillies, Dodgers, Brewers (plus the Braves, who have a firm grasp on the top wild-card spot with a 5.5-game lead). That positioning in the thick of the playoff hunt comes in spite of Pittsburgh’s lackluster 36-39 record to this point in the season, but club owner Bob Nutting nonetheless recently indicated to reporters (including Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) that he believes the club can contend for the playoffs this year.

“I think we’ve shown it’s attainable,” Nutting told reporters (as relayed by Gorman) when discussing the possibility of postseason berth this year, before going on to acknowledge that the club needs more production from its offense, which ranks fourth from the bottom in the majors with an 85 wRC+. Nutting went on to suggests that the club is currently working to determine how much the offense can improve internally and how much of the improvement will need to come from external acquisitions.

Nutting suggested that those external acquisitions won’t necessarily have to wait until the July 30 trade deadline is imminent, even as the league has generally gravitated towards making the bulk of its major summer transactions in the days and hours leading up to the deadline in recent years. As noted by Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the club’s owner floated that the Pirates could “have opportunities well in advance of the deadline” this year.

“I think we should be prepared to move early,” Nutting told reporters (as relayed by Hiles). “I think we should be prepared to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. I know [club GM Ben Cherington] has that flexibility to look across a broader range of alternatives, options but also a timeline of when it makes sense to strike.”

Hiles goes on to note that Nutting reaffirmed his past remarks that more funds would be made available to the baseball operations department now that the club is, in his view, in a position to contend for a spot in the postseason. That’s good news for Pirates fans, as the club’s current payroll of just over $86M is already the highest payroll they’ve posted since 2017 according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. The following offseason saw the departures of key players like Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole that served as a clear sign the club was entering the rebuild they’ve only just now begun to fully come out of.

The club has a strong starting pitching apparatus with Paul Skenes and Jared Jones offering top-of-the-line stuff at the front of the rotation while Mitch Keller and Bailey Falter serve as solid mid-rotation arms behind them. Between that strong pitching staff and the club’s aforementioned difficulties on offense, it’s hardly a surprise that Robert Murray of FanSided recently reported that the Pirates are expected to making buying offense a “high priority” this summer. As things stand, the only clubs that are currently clear sellers are the White Sox, Rockies, Marlins, Angels and A’s. Those clubs certainly have some interesting potential targets available, ranging from Chicago’s star center fielder Luis Robert Jr. to late-blooming A’s slugger Brent Rooker.

Either of those targets make sense on a speculative level for a Pirates club that has clear room for improvement in the outfield, and it’s also certainly possible to imagine the club having interest in adding at first base, where Rowdy Tellez has a 71 wRC+ in 61 games this year. Star first basemen Pete Alonso and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. have both found their names in the rumor mill fairly frequently this winter, although even a smaller acquisition such as long-time Pirate (and currently Marlin) Josh Bell or recently DFA’d A’s corner bat J.D. Davis could potentially constitute an upgrade for the club over Tellez.

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