Pittsburgh Pirates

The MLB off-season continues to get more depressing for Pirate fans. As the rest of the NL Central gets stronger not just for the present but the future, the Pirates have entered tear-down mode with little path to competing as their prospect system has fallen to the middle of the pack and once regarded top prospects like Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows are no longer the significant trade chips they were a year and half ago to improve the roster dramatically. While the Pirates stand on the sidelines, the Brewers have made major additions with the signing of Lorenzo Cain and trade for Christian Yelich……. The Cardinals significantly upgraded their roster with the trade for Marcell Ozuna who belted 37 homers and 124 RBIs, and now the Cubs have made their move in signing free-agent ace pitcher Yu Darvish to a six-year, $126 million deal on Saturday night. The Cubs oneRead More »

Pirates GM Neal Huntington will tell anyone who will listen that the Pirates expect to be competitive in 2018. How the organization decides to act in whether they add a legitimate starting outfielder in free agency or not will be telling. Do the Pirates go the outfielder by committee route and just use the likes of Adam Frazier, Sean Rodriquez, Jordan Luplow, and maybe Jose Osuna as their third outfielder or does the team actually look to improve the position? Even if Austin Meadows goes out and has a dominant spring training, the Pirates are not starting his clock till at least June. Huntington has talked up Jordan Luplow a bit since the McCutchen trade but the Pirates have no excuse not to add a starting caliber outfielder on a one or two year deal with several good buy-low options available. This is a market where the stars are eventuallyRead More »

SFG Receive: Andrew McCutchen, $2.5 million in cash considerations PIT Receive: RHP Kyle Crick, minor league OF Bryan Reynolds, $500,000 International Bonus Pool The Pittsburgh Pirates either had to go all-in this off-season and stretch the payroll, which was never going happen with Bob Nutting as the owner, or start the process of a re-tool. With the way Bob Nutting operates, an Andrew McCutchen trade was always going to happen at some point, but with an iconic player like McCutchen it still doesn’t make it any easier for the fan base to accept. “The reality is, he had one year left in Pittsburgh under the best of circumstances,” GM Neal Huntington said of McCutchen. “As a result, with where we are in the win curve, the Gerrit Cole trade did not dramatically impact our potential to win the World Series this year. This trade does not dramatically impact our potentialRead More »

Trade talks between the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants have reached the serious enough stages where a deal to send Andrew McCutchen to San Francisco is now considered a formality.

HOU Receives: Gerrit Cole PIT Receives: RHP Joe Musgrove, 3B Colin Moran, RHP Michael Feliz, OF Jason Martin Gerrit Cole is joining the World Champion Houston Astros.

Is Andrew McCutchen San Francisco bound? With Jay Bruce headed to the New York Mets, the on again-off again trade talks between the San Francisco Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates are said to be back on. In what the Pirates believe was an attempt to sell Giancarlo Stanton on accepting a trade to San Francisco, the Giants went hard after McCutchen in November and nearly secured a deal for the former MVP but after Stanton spurned San Francisco, the Giants pulled back on pursuing McCutchen to evaluate other options. Now the Giants

Cards, Brewers & Cubs in on Cole? One thing to emerge in the Gerrit Cole trade talks over the last month in a half: Pirates GM Neal Huntington has no reservations about trading Cole inside the division.

One of the Pirates most popular players is considered ‘highly likely’ to be on the move before spring training opens. A Pirates source put the percentages of the club moving Josh Harrison next month at