As I was getting ready for bed last night, it occurred to me that I hadn’t written about the Pirates in over a week and that I needed to put something together since we’re headed into the heart of Hot Stove season now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is still more than three weeks away. This morning the Pirates have provided me with a topic: Marc Topkin at the Tampa Bay Times tweeted this morning that the Pirates acquired Sean Rodriguez from the Tampa Bay Rays for a PTBNL or cash. The Pirates quickly confirmed the news and announced the corresponding move: Gaby Sanchez has been designated for assignment.
Rodriguez is a utility player that was just designated for assignment by the Rays to make room for Ernesto Frieri on their 40-man roster. Last year he played every infield position, plus both corner outfield spots. He spent most of his time at second base, first base, and left field. For his career, the majority of his innings have come at second and shortstop. Careerwise, he grades out as above-average by UZR at first, second, and third, just below average at short, and slightly above-average in left, though the outfield sample sizes are way too small to be useful. He occasionally shows decent pop at the plate (he slugged .443 with 12 homers in 258 PAs last year and hit 30 home runs as a 24-year old in Triple-A split, though almost all of that damage was done in the PCL before he was traded from the Angels’ organization to the Rays), but won’t hit for much average (career: .225) or get on base much (career: .297).
Besides the positional variability and the smidge of pop, Rodriguez also hits left-handed pitching awfully well. Careerwise, he’s a .247/.342/.404 hitter against lefties, which isn’t quite the same level of pop as, say, Gaby Sanchez (in most years) or Jordy Mercer and his extreme platoon split, but it does make him an interesting player to have on the roster. Literally seconds after the trade was reported, Baseball Prospectus’s RJ Anderson (who made his name as a Rays blogger) tweeted me to say that he thought that Pirate fans would be awfully happy with Rodriguez. I don’t know if Rodriguez will be a straight-up replacement for Gaby Sanchez, in terms of role, but I think it’s worth noting that — while Sanchez was awfully good at what he was asked to do for the Pirates in 2013 — the role that he filled was really narrow. Sanchez wasn’t particularly useful as a defensive replacement, he couldn’t play other positions, and he was all but useless against right-handed pitching. That’s an extremely limited National League player. If we assume that Pedro Alvarez will play first base on most days against right-handed pitching and may need spelled against tough lefties, the Pirates could fill that role with someone like Rodriguez or Tony Sanchez, both of whom would have value to the Pirates at other positions. That’s probably a much wiser use of roster space, even if neither player can hit quite the same way that Gaby Sanchez could at first.
It is, of course, worth noting that Sean Rodriguez is the FOURTH utility infielder the Pirates have acquired this winter, as they’ve already picked up Jake Elmore, Justin Sellers, and Pedro Florimon in various minor deals. I get that that borders on parodic, but it does seem to me that a lot of these moves were borne out of necessity. Florimon functions well as a Clint Barmes replacement, and Rodriguez works as a Josh Harrison replacement now that Harrison is presumably the club’s starting third baseman. Neither Sellers nor Elmore are terribly exciting, but to my eye they do at least look like more useful players than Michael Martinez, Brent Morel, and Jayson Nix. Last year the Pirates were a sort of study in how quickly infield depth can dissolve for a baseball team. One starter didn’t pan out (Alvarez), a backup got injured (Barmes), another regular got hit with a freak illness (Walker’s appendicitis), and suddenly the Pirates had Martinez, Morel, and Nix playing important innings in August. All of this utility infielder wrangling is boring and obviously from a fan’s perspective you actually want it to be meaningless (Rodriguez will presumably play a decent-sized role for the Pirates this year, but seeing a lot of Florimon, Sellers, and/or Elmore will likely indicate that something has gone wrong), but that doesn’t make it unimportant.
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