The Pirates and Nationals made a deal yesterday that sent the first baseman Josh Bell to Washington for a pair of right-handed candidates, Wil Crowe and Eddy Yean. Some reports after the agreement:
- The Pirates did not hide their desire to remove players from the major league squad to gain future value in this off-season. Trading Bell is certainly not Pittsburgh’s final move in this genre, as General Manager Ben Cherington acknowledged. “It probably won’t be the last. There will probably be more,”Cherington told reporters (including Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). “I’m not saying this to predict anything, this is the realization, this is where we are.” Joe Musgrove and Adam Frazier are the most prominent potential commercial candidates for pirates, but any of the Richard Rodríguez, Steven Brault, Chad Kuhl, Chris Stratton and Jacob Stallings could plausibly attract other teams.
- Crowe will compete for a spot in the Pittsburgh rotation in 2021, Cherington confirmed (via Gorman). This is hardly a surprise; the 26-year-old spent most of 2018-19 in the minor highs and made his MLB debut last season. Crowe was bombed in his three starts in the major league, but this is far from a sample enough to discard him as a short-term rotation option. Musgrove, Mitch Keller, Jameson Taillon, Kuhl, Brault and JT Brubaker everything could be ahead of Crowe on the depth chart at the moment. It appears that one or more of these players will be traded before Opening Day.
- Of the two prospects acquired by Pirates, Crowe is the most well-known name thanks to his experience in the major leagues. Yean, however, was the most attractive to the Pittsburgh front office, reports Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post. This feeling was shared by nationals, it seems. Washington “(doesn’t) believe they gave up too much to fill a stark gap” on the list, writes Dougherty, largely because they were “lukewarm” about Crowe’s future. On the other hand, ESPN’s Buster Olney points out (via Twitter) that Bell’s profile (hitter at the bottom of the defensive spectrum) is the type that teams have devalued in recent years. For what it’s worth, MLBTR readers seem to favor ending nationals’ trade.