Pirates Shed Salary at the Cost of Two Prospects
The trade of reliever Mark Melancon by the Pittsburgh Pirates to the Washington Nationals sent a clear message: the Pirates are in retool mode. Not rebuild mode — they’re too good for that. And certainly not go-for-it mode — the Pirates barely had a 1-in-10 shot of making the playoffs, and you don’t go for it by trading away one of the best relievers in the game. No, the Pirates were retooling, selling from the immediate future to improve in the very short-term future, and, to a lesser extent, the long-term future. The crux of the return, left-handed reliever Felipe Rivero, will contribute for the Pirates both immediately and moving forward. That’s the difference between he and Melancon — he’ll be sticking around for more than one season. Prospect Taylor Hearn is the longer-term play; small-market teams like the Pirates live for long-term plays.
Which is what makes Monday’s last-minute deal for broken pitching prospect Drew Hutchison — one which allowed them to dump Francisco Liriano’s salary on the Toronto Blue Jays but also cost them prospects Reese McGuire and Harold Ramirez — so puzzling on the surface. While neither prospect cracked Baseball America’s recent top-100 update, McGuire and Ramirez are both legitimate prospects, the type of pieces that can be essential to a franchise like the Pirates by providing cheap value, allowing them to continue chugging along at an affordable operating cost while retaining the pieces that really matter. McGuire is regarded as one of the best defensive catching prospects in the minors, one whose receiving ability alone gives him a near-certain path to the majors. Ramirez is an athletic bat-to-ball outfielder with a plus hit tool who’s playing center in the minors even if he’s likely to move to a corner.
In Hutchison, the Pirates get back a Ray Searage reclamation project, and little more. Hutchison’s still just 25 with some former prospect shine, but the career ERA in more than 400 innings is nearly 5.00, and he’s got a serious home-run problem. Maybe Searage can coax some ground balls out of him.
But Hutchison’s not so much what this deal was about. The motivation behind this deal was clear. It was a straight salary dump. The Blue Jays are taking on the entirety of Liriano’s salary, which amounts to roughly $17 million through the end of next season. They had the space available to take on the money — though it is interesting to wonder how this could impact their ability to re-sign Jose Bautista or Edwin Encarnacion in the offseason — and they were willing to do so for the price of the prospects.
To rationalize this deal from the Pirates’ perspective, you’ve got to believe the organization thinks it can do more with the $17 million and Hutchison to help it win next year and moving forward than it could with Liriano and the prospects. It may be a tough sell, but it is what it is. And to believe that, you’ve got to believe the organization views Liriano as broken.
The thing about an organization selling low on a player is, no one else has as much information on the player in question as the selling organization. So, on one hand, you’ve sort of got to give the Pirates the benefit of the doubt. Liriano’s looked broken, but every broken player has the potential to be fixed. The Pirates selling this low on Liriano indicates they don’t believe he can be fixed, and no one knows Liriano better than the Pirates.
I wrote about Liriano’s struggles earlier in the season. The walks and homers are way up, the strikeouts are way down. Nothing looks great. Liriano’s pitched with such an extreme approach during his time in Pittsburgh, throwing fewer pitches in the zone than anyone while getting batters to chase at unthinkable rates, and it seemed like all hitters would have to do was stop swinging and Liriano would start beating himself. And that’s almost exactly what’s happened. From one year to the next, Liriano went from running one of the highest chase rates in baseball to one of the lowest. Batters are laying off the breaking and offspeed stuff that Liriano buries in the dirt, and when they do swing at a slider, it’s because Liriano’s leaving too many up in the zone:
You can pretty easily see it in Liriano’s mechanics. I’ve got a .gif of Liriano throwing a good, tight slider from last year, and a .gif of Liriano throwing a flat, elevated slider from this year, and they look like two different pitchers.
Last year:
This year:
I cherry-picked these examples, of course, and I’m sure the bottom clip isn’t perfectly representative of every Liriano pitch, but the point is that, as of late, there’s been too many examples of the bottom type of pitch, relative to the top. Liriano’s too often been closing off in his delivery, rendering his motion stiff and unathletic, without the drive necessary to really pull that slider down through the zone. The hitters have made their adjustments to Liriano, sure, and those haven’t helped, but it’s not like Liriano isn’t beating himself, too.
A popular theory seems to be that Liriano reconnecting with Russell Martin, the catcher with whom he worked to a great deal of success in Pittsburgh from 2013-14, will help fix him. And it probably can’t hurt; Martin’s great. But there seems to be more to this than just the catcher. And the Blue Jays could use the help, what with Aaron Sanchez’s imminent move back to the bullpen.
Maybe Liriano really is broken without the potential for repair, and the Pirates just cleared enough space for them to go get a player next offseason who can positively impact their playoff-quality roster. But even if that is the case, though, it’s not like $17 million is a ton of money in this day and age — it’s the cost of a couple wins — and the Pirates still have to count on the difference between the future value of McGuire and Ramirez relative to Hutchison to be less than the amount of cash saved.
Of course, it’s possible that McGuire and Ramirez’s bats never play enough to make them more than bench pieces, and Searage works his magic on Hutchison to pull a mid-rotation starter out of thin air, and Liriano never throws a quality inning again. And if that happens, it’s a shrewd salary shed. Anything can happen. But for Pittsburgh, it just feels like things have got to break perfect for this to look good. Toronto’s got a number of ways.
August used to cover the Indians for MLB and ohio.com, but now he's here and thinks writing these in the third person is weird. So you can reach me on Twitter @AugustFG_ or e-mail at august.fagerstrom@fangraphs.com.
Moving to PNC from the Rogers Centre is a pretty great way to cut HRs, haha.
Moving from the AL East to the NL should help too. I legitimately think Hutch can build himself a half-decent career as long as he stays away from the AL. His stuff is too good for him not to at least make it as a reliever. It was just never going to happen with the Jays though.
Do you mean the AL East where the Yanks and Rays couldn’t hit at all this year? Sure the other three offenses are great, and pitchers have to hit in the NL at all, but it isn’t clear that the move will really help, given how offenses in the NL are faring. Plus some teams in the NL Central can hit too.
No, I mean the AL East of last year, which was utterly nightmarish for pitchers. It had 4 teams score over 700 runs and, for the record, that’s more teams over 700 than the entire NL; the last place Red Sox, who were 3rd in the division is runs scored, would have led the NL in runs.
But for a couple of spot starts Hutch hasn’t pitched in this year’s AL East. In 2014, when offences in the East weren’t quite as good Hutch looked like an above average starter.
Also “how offences in the NL are faring”, come on man, the NL has 4 threatening offences and Coors Field. The AL has 9 teams that would be in the top 1/3rd of the NL in runs scored. Yes, the Cardinals and the Cubs are very good, but the AL still has much stronger offences across the board.
Lastly, like the first guy said, park metrics matter and Wrigley, PNC and Busch are some of the most pitcher friendly parks in baseball. Miller and the GAB are rough, but the teams in Miller and GAB suck. The AL East has Yankee Stadium, Camden, SkyDome and Fenway, none of which are fun parks to pitch in.
Thanks for the well thought out piece! You’ve been on the “Liriano might be broken” bandwagon for a while.
I do think that something that should be counted in as well is that McGuire and Ramirez were well-blocked by cost-controlled options.
Cervelli and Stewart just signed extensions, and Elias Diaz seems extremely promising and is close.
Pirates’ outfield depth is well documented, and they might even be reintroducing Josh Bell to it.
doesn’t mean that you trade them willy nilly for less just because you have depth. but i get why they were trade candidates.
i’m a Liriano fan, so i hope he figures it out. But for the Pirates’ sake, he has to be broken for them to justify this.
Ramirez was completely blocked, but I’m not nearly as sanguine about the Pirates’ catching depth. McGuire will only be 25 or so when Cervelli’s contract runs out, Stewart is a non-factor (old, not signed for that long, not very good), and Diaz has a pretty low ceiling at this point. Also there was absoultely no depth behind McGuire, and now there’s absolutely no depth behind Diaz.
i feel like Diaz and McGuire have similar upsides at this point. I’m willing to be convinced otherwise though. Your point about life after Cervy only being when McGuire is still 25 is well taken too. A McGuire – Diaz tandem definitely sounds nice in theory.
I feel like it’s too soon to close the book on McGuire’s upside–when Diaz was his age he was awful in low-A. For whatever reason McGuire is impossible to strike out in AA; maybe his bat is just too weak for him to turn out productive (I haven’t scouted him or anything), but it feels like there’s a path for him to turn into a productive slap hitter.
I have a hard time believing that no one would take a chance on trading for Liriano in the winter. Some team is going to lose out on the sweepstakes for Jorge De La Rosa and Ivan Nova and trade a marginal A-ball guy to Toronto for him this winter. With how horrendous the starting pitching market is Liriano might get one year $13M in free agency if he were eligible…
Look, when you can shut down your most effective starter (or move him to the bullpen) and replace him with a guy with negative WAR, AND take on $17MM in salary in the process, such that it may hamper your ability to re-sign your big bats, you’ve just got to do it, OK?
I know this is irrational, but the response from the Pirates side has been so negative that it comforts me to see some negativity from the Blue Jays side as well.
My thoughts exactly haha.
Trades that both fanbases hate are truly the best.
Agree it’s hard not to take this trade as a severe indictment of Liriano’s future, from a well respected pitching factory.
I’m hopeful, and the Jays FO has earned the benefit of the doubt with pitching moves this year, but there’s the distinct possibility that replacing sanchez with liriano costs them the playoffs.
And I like the prospects but I’m not sure now’s the time for the Jays to celebrate trading for prospects.
This fits into Huntington’s “chain of contribution” theory, where Liriano has become a liability.
I think the trade itself shows that the Pirates won’t reallocate Liriano’s money. Think about it. They gave him the biggest FA contract in team history, and a year and a half later they are dealing two good prospects to get away from the $17M they owe him. That’s not a sustainable model, so I can’t see how they would ever be willing to spend like that again. This trade, above all, proves that the Pirates are Rays-like in their inability to spend (though in the Pirates’ case it may be more unwillingness than inability).
I agree they probably probably won’t reallocate with another Liriano-like big-ticket (or even mid-ticket) signing. But I expect their payroll will continue to modestly rise, and the $17 million will be spent somewhere, either across a few low-risk free agents or extending more young guys.
I mostly agree here, except that the Pirates front office has established a sustainable model. While this could turn to be a mistake, I’ll wait to see how things break. Where sport teams are more a public trust than a private business, pocketing money is odious, but I don’t remember the asset under Huntington that I was disappointed to see go. Liriano’s spot in the rotation, just as much as the money owed, looked to work against the Pirates.
To me, this seems like a clear salary dump from a team that has come to terms with the fact that it will not be seeing a playoff revenue infusion this year.
Liriano is broken. You can’t have a SP who pitches well once a month. It has to be demoralizing for the team to take the field and “hope” that it’s good Frankie only to see him struggle. Kind of strange that between ’15 and ’16 every opposing team got the lay off the junk stuff all at once. I also view this as a salary dump, but potentially a worthy salary dump.
The biggest question is what will the Pirates do with this found $17MM? There is a lot of on-line angst (surprise) that it will end up not being spent. And $17MM really isn’t that much money. It’s equivalent to QO money. I’ve been a Pirates fan since the early 70’s and I think our franchise heading for mediocrity. Not sure if that is a systemic issue or it is self-induced.
But I’ll be a Bucs fan no matter what.
Basically everything the FO has done since the Happ trade has been dispiriting (and the Happ trade was dispiriting at the time), but I think it’s too early to draw “heading for mediocrity” as a conclusion. There’s still a ton of talent in the organization, and while we’re in the midst of a series of misses, the front office has a track record of turning not much money into gems like Russell Martin, Francisco Cervelli, Jung-Ho Kang, and AJ Burnett. It’s a bummer of a season, but I’m still quite optimistic about the state of the franchise.
I buy all the premises of the trade and it’s still terrible.
I buy that the Pirates should dump the Liriano contract to get flexibility. (or to fill Nutting’s pockets. Whatever. It’s not the point.)
I buy that Huntington believes Hutchison can be special.
I buy that Harold Ramirez is a total surplus, a future 4th OF on a team that has Meadows, Frazier and Harrison ahead of him on the depth chart for posterity.
I buy that Reese McGuire is probably a bust.
Even accepting all these premises, this is still not a trade that needs to happen. If this was what Huntington’s old boss Shapiro asked for, Huntington should have called his bluff and said, “You can have either Ramirez OR McGuire and Liriano for Hutchison, and I’ll give you 10 seconds to accept it or the deal’s off.” I bet the Blue Jays would have caved, and Huntington would STILL be criticized for overpaying for someone who is a non-tender candidate.
If you wanted to dump Liriano, there is no rush to do so. It’s better to take a decent deal now than wait for the perfect deal, but that doesn’t apply here. Liriano is going to pass through waivers and Hutchison is going to pass through waivers. You have plenty of time to come up with something in August. You could even make this exact same trade in the off-season; Ramirez and McGuire are not likely to lose any value between now and December and there is no rush to make it an in-season trade.
And seriously, if the Pirates just wanted to dump Liriano, there are big-market teams out of contention this season – Yankees, Philies, maybe even Braves and Angels. The Philies need someone to eat innings while their rookies hit inning limits right now and next year, and they could do worse than take a one-year $13 million flyer on Liriano with the hope of flipping him next season. The Angels have no pitching and few ways to get it. One of those teams would likely be willing to take Liriano’s contract for something worth less than Reese McGuire.
This isn’t a dump for $17 million; it’s a dump for $4 million.
While being a Huntington defender, above, I agree with this. Dave Cameron’s point, that these prospects are unlikely to pan out, is valid, except the Pirates can’t afford to sacrifice much organisational depth. I often think back to the Sabathia LaPorta trade, where Michael Brantley was the player to be named later. Most minor leaguers are fungible, but a deep talent pool seems to be common among winning teams, because of the low confidence in individual outcomes.
Your argument isn’t logical. If all those premises are correct then this is a great trade for the Pirates – they get a middle of the rotation starter for nothing and save money.
If Liriano is broken, then the longer they wait the lower his value is, right now his poor performance could still be a blip, if he sucks for the rest of the season that’s less likely.
No team is going to pay big $$ for someone to “eat innings” poorly, there are guys who will do that for much less.
Liriano’s plant foot is falling towards 3B line in the top (good) gif while landing in-line with the plate in the bottom (bad) gif. The effect is his body falls away to 3B line at release and induces more spin.