Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled that the Pirates drafted a bunch of high school students the other day, getting a head start on the post-Paul Skenes era and maybe positioning themselves to upset Avonworth in the WPIAL playoffs next season.
On a related note, I believe the Pirates now lead all of Major League Baseball in shortstop prospects at the lowest levels of the minors. They could have their own shortstop prospect Olympics.
It’s just that I’m slightly more interested in the big league club and what is happening right here, right now.
Like, whether the Pirates will capitalize on having maybe the greatest young pitcher in baseball history while he’s healthy and how it might only take a few good prospects to help get them where they want to go.
This team is a game-and-a-half out of a playoff spot and built to win a short series or three. But they need a slugger, which means they must be willing to part with a few prospects — and to hear some of the chatter around town, you’d think that somehow translates into asking Pirates executives to part with their own children, not merely a couple of unproven young baseball players after years of hoarding the like.
“They’re not ready,” is what I keep hearing people say about the Pirates. Fact is, they might never be more ready, because we cannot predict the future health of young fireballers. The Pirates have a massive opportunity here.
Better said, it’s a massive responsibility.
They must seize the moment. They need a high-impact hitter, and it might only take one phone call and a few prospects not named Bubba Chandler to get one.
The Oakland A’s reportedly are willing to trade slugger Brent Rooker by the July 30th deadline. Rooker has pounded 51 home runs since the beginning of last season and ranks seventh in the majors in slugging percentage this season with a figure (.573) that would lead the Pirates by nearly 90 points, putting him just behind Bryce Harper and just ahead of Juan Soto.
Rooker’s .942 OPS would top the Pirates by more than 100 points and rank eighth, just behind Gunnar Henderson and just ahead of Christian Yelich. And get this: Rooker is not a rental. He comes cheaply (Bob Nutting’s ears just perked) the rest of this season and has three-and-a-half years of club control remaining.
Why would the A’s trade him, you ask?
Good question. Easy answer: The A’s are rebuilding, and even though Rooker has all that team control remaining, he is 29. The A’s need to get younger. They’d be wise to sell high on Rooker, a late bloomer who has played the equivalent of only two full big-league seasons.
Oakland obviously would want prospects. The Pirates, after five years of abject tanking, obviously have prospects — and the willingness to part with just one of their top five could clinch a deal.
There seems to be this idea, by the way, that the Pirates can only afford one big trade involving prospects in their near future. Just one. And if they don’t get it right, the franchise is doomed for eternity.
Meanwhile, after all the prospect hoarding that has gone on here, there ought to be room enough for several such trades with plenty of good young minor leaguers left over. That’s assuming GM Ben Cherington and his staff have done their jobs (and that might be assuming too much).
Anyway, I keep seeing the Phillies, Reds, Yankees and Braves mentioned in the Rooker sweepstakes, and the prices thrown about are hardly exorbitant.
The Athletic, in a piece co-authored by longtime MLB executive Jim Bowden, suggested an Atlanta-Oakland trade in which the Braves prospect headliners—pitcher Cade Kuehler and center fielder Luis Guanipa—are ranked between 6 and 10 in their system. Another proposed trade I saw had the Reds relinquishing three of their top 13 prospects but none of their top five.
The Pirates could top those offers, even blow them away, without severely damaging their prospect pipeline. I mean, if there is one bidding war the Pirates should win, it’s a prospect bidding war. This isn’t just about helping this year’s team make a playoff push, either. It’s about nudging the window open for a few more years and addressing an organizational crisis.
The Pirates have precisely zero homegrown, high-impact hitters at the major league level. Worse, they have a mind-blowing shortage of promising hitters in the minors, considering they just spent five years collecting prospects the way Tom Brady collected Super Bowl titles.
Fan Graphs has just one of the Pirates' top eight prospects as a position player (Termarr Johnson). There is no enticing Triple-A hitter knocking at the door. Double-A Altoona has played 87 games and has nobody with double-digit home runs.
Rooker would be a dream, though there are some drawbacks. He isn’t exactly Andruw Jones in the outfield, which is why he has been mostly a DH.
What would that mean for Andrew McCutchen? Well, he and Rooker would have to play some outfield, I suppose, with Michael A. Taylor as a ready defensive replacement? I don't know. Those details can be worked out. The Pirates need a bat like this so desperately that Rooker can leave his glove in the car if it comes to that.
The Pirates have multiple options for putting together a winning offer. They could sacrifice Henry Davis — if the A’s are interested — and have several highly rated young pitchers beyond Chandler with the likes of Braxton Ashcraft, Thomas Harrington and Anthony Solometo.
I hear they also might have some young shortstops available.
Joe Starkey: jstarkey@post-gazette.com and @joestarkey1 on X. Joe Starkey can be heard on weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan
First Published: July 18, 2024, 1:31 p.m.
Updated: July 19, 2024, 9:37 a.m.
