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OT: Pirates Talk: Lets Play Ball

Nice outbreak from the offense today, now 5-2 after a Horwitz double. Horwitz has obviously struggled due to him missing spring training, but he's starting to look better recently.

In his last 11 games, he has a slash line of .282/.364/.385, which is much more in line with what I'm expecting out of him. Hopefully it continues.
 
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Marginally more optimistic about Hayes if oppo-Hayes is back. Just go only to right field.

Horwitz had a very nice game.

Even though Chandler is really struggling at the moment, the question to take Leiter or Davis and cost ourselves Chandler in the process is a no-brainer. Leiter was not it.
 
Empoleon8771 said:
I wonder how much better the Pirates record this year would be had they fired Shelton before the season started and had Horwitz and Gonzales healthy for the full year.
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Slightly better. Add three, maybe four, wins to their current record.

I like Gonzales but Horwitz has been underwhelming at his position.
 
Factorial said:
Slightly better. Add three, maybe four, wins to their current record.

I like Gonzales but Horwitz has been underwhelming at his position.
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Horwitz has been underwhelming because he missed all of spring training and was basically thrusted right into the middle of the season. If he had a normal spring training, I have no doubts that he's performing much closer to his normal level.

In June, he has a slash line of .273/.344/.382 for an OPS of .726, that's much more in line with where I think he'd be at on the year had he been healthy. That's very similar to Gonzales' .735 OPS on the year so far.
 
MrBrightside said:
Easy guys. The idea that a couple of .700-ish OPS guys cost the team 3-4 wins over a 50-game absence essentially is arguing that they are combined 10-12 win players. That's absurd.
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I think it's less "these guys are amazing" and more "the guys they were playing in place of them were horrendous".

Valdez and Frazier are the only replacement guys they'd used that have above an 80 OPS+.
 
With those guys, Bednar right and Holderman on an island a million miles away from the team, they are a .425-.450 club. That is their true talent which is a shame 6 years into Cherington.
 


The Pirates situation is still such a mess (more below), but I thought this proposal from a Red Sox fan for Duran was somewhat of an interesting temperature check. It's three solid but not spectacular prospects, the kind of trade that a team with a solid system can certainly match.

The standard Red Sox fan resistance seems to be that they want controllable pitching or a 1B solution in return, but the realistic Red Sox fan gets that any contending team is not going to deal that kind of talent at the deadline.

Were the Pirates actually interested, I think that could make a Keller swap advantageous, but like we said before, trading Keller for MLB talent would be a significant step backwards for an MLB team that already isn't good enough. The one angle I could see is financial, but 1) the Pirates likely wouldn't reinvest it asap, and 2) it would not really be possible to reinvest it in a player like Keller either.

I think the SP depth is too thin unless you are someone who really believes Duran can get back to his all star ceiling, which I'm skeptical about. The only way to squint and see it would be as a kind of shifting of the window (again...) in the sense that money could be reallocated to guarantee some cost stability with Skenes and/or Cruz, but I can't see it with either.

It's definitely not worth entertaining much in terms of a Pirates prospect package that could potentially work, since getting him is a kind of pipe dream anyways. The only other buy low OF option I see out there is Luis Robert, but the situation with the team is so cloudy that I just don't know what the real outlook is for us. Reynolds maybe going sideways is something that really looms badly, since any path to immediate contention in the next 2-3 years will require at least something from him.

Maybe Ashcraft or Mlodzinski show enough in the next few weeks that they can be part of a prospect package that would net this kind of return (no idea about Duran specifically, but I think that's part of the hope of the FO), but that seems like a long shot too.
 
bigdaddyk88 said:
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Reynolds is a much better hitter than Benintendi and this I wouldn't expect us to need to retain. I doubt Nutting would, anyway.

Reynolds is the most interesting decision of this deadline. Bednar is gone. Hayes is gone if they find a taker. Keller could stay or go but it doesn't present a crisis either way.

With Reynolds, the org has to weigh a couple of things:
1) Can they bounce back to competitiveness in 2026 and is there a feasible path to do so without Bryan Reynolds producing at a ~.800 OPS level? Absent someone else returned from trading him bursting onto the scene. Could they acquire an impact hitter in the Keller or Bednar deals?
2) Are they selling low, really? Reynolds is an obvious candidate to even bounce back in August with his new team freed of the disaster here. That will be priced into his market. Whereas even if Reynolds partially bounces back next year he is another year older and likely the team around him offensively won't be as bad. If he has another year where he produces like a mid-tier player, then his contract looks pretty bad.

There is also the matter of whether Cherington has any chance to save his job. If he does, he may hold onto Keller and Reynolds to try to win as many games as possible in August-September.
 
I would LIKE to think that minus the Pirates literally winning every game the rest of the season that Cherington is gone, so he will be severely limited in his allowance to make big trades.
 
GilbertSeinfeld said:
I would LIKE to think that minus the Pirates literally winning every game the rest of the season that Cherington is gone, so he will be severely limited in his allowance to make big trades.
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But if Keller and Reynolds get the best offer now, I think the org could still agree to take it.

Keller's value probably won't decline next year, but it is possible Reynolds' contract looks like Benintendi in 365 days
 
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