Pittsburgh Pirates Rumor Mill – Will the Pirates Make a Move Soon?

Welcome to the weekly Pittsburgh Pirates Rumor Mill, where we update you on all of the latest Pirates trades, signings, rumors, injury news, promotions, demotions, and the like from the past week.

We’ve been without the Rumor Mill here at Pirates Breakdown for a little while, but now that the off-season is well under way and the Winter Meetings have passed, it’s time to re-evaluate where the Pirates stand at the moment. For many fans, it seems like another lost off-season for the Pirates. The team hasn’t made any major moves, and they’ve lost players in the process. Sean Rodriguez is gone. Matt Joyce is too. Andrew McCutchen wasn’t traded. Other teams have signed big name players or made big trades, but the Pirates haven’t.

Now, we know that this isn’t what the Pirates do. And there’s still plenty of time left before spring training. But the team has more holes to fill now that two key bench players are gone. And, most importantly, they need another starter. We’ll take a look at who the Pirates might be keeping their collective eye on, but first some injury updates.

Injury Updates

It sounds like everything is progressing well for the players that ended the season on the disabled list:

#pirates GM Huntington said Gerrit Cole (elbow) and Josh Harrison (groin), both shut down in Sept., are in "normal offseason programs"

— RobBiertempfel (@RobBiertempfel) December 5, 2016

The rest of the players that ended the season on the DL did not have any serious injuries.

Minor Moves

The Pirates haven’t done much recently, but they have made some minor moves. They recently brought back Brady Dragmire via waivers from Texas after the team released him earlier in the off-season. We’ll see if the team holds onto him this time around.

Andrew McCutchen here in 2017?

The Andrew McCutchen rumors have died down fast now that the Winter Meetings are over. The Nationals, the strongest suitor for McCtuchen, traded for Adam Eaton instead, and Neal Huntington has since made it seem like McCutchen will be back in 2017.

Of course, there are still other teams that could make a late push for him. The Dodgers and Rangers had mild interest, which has also seemingly subsided. And there was the famous “mystery team” that was in the mix. If some team’s plans for an outfielder go awry, maybe a big late offer could perk Huntington’s interest. It’s highly doubtful at this point, sure, but anything can happen. I still expect McCutchen to patrol the outfield of PNC in 2017, it’s just a matter of where in that outfield he’ll be.

What’s the deal with Arquimedes Caminero?

The former Pirate reliever, who was mysteriously traded to the Mariners last summer, was not brought back by Seattle. Caminero is expected to sign a deal with the Yomiuri Giants in Japan. Caminero wasn’t assured of a spot in the Mariners bullpen next season, and he’s out of options. Thus, whoever he signed with would have to keep him on the big league roster, or he’d have to clear waivers in order to be sent to the minors.

The loss of Caminero isn’t a huge blow for any major league team. But I wonder if the Pirates even thought about bringing him back this season. Heck, it’s almost baffling that he didn’t find a deal with a major league team. Does he have his walk issues? Absolutely. But his results over the past two seasons as a full-time reliever have been pretty good. He had a 3.62 ERA with the Pirates in 2015, then was carrying a 3.51 ERA with the Pirates in 2016 before he was traded to Seattle. Then, with Seattle, he put up a 3.66 ERA. Since his time with the Marlins, Caminero had seemingly turned his career around. But even for a player that’s not arbitration eligible yet and not making a lot of money, he wasn’t appealing to the Pirates.

I’m not a baseball expert by any means. But for a team that was willing to hold onto Jeff Locke, it’s interesting that the Caminero tenure didn’t end differently in Pittsburgh.

Will Ivan Nova return?

Arguably the best free agent starting pitching option left on the market is Ivan Nova. We know that the Pirates want to bring Nova back if it’s for the right price. And we know that Nova isn’t averse to coming back. But are we getting our hopes up that Nova could actually return?

It all depends on if Nova is willing to take a major discount to re-sign in Pittsburgh. It’s not like the Pirates could offer Nova a deal that’d be competitive to what he’d likely field or has already fielded from other teams. A team that needs a starter will overpay for him, which the Pirates just can’t do.

Bringing Nova back on a four-year deal would be ideal. I also think it’d be financially affordable for a team that will have the rest of it’s rotation making minimal money comparatively to what good rotations typically make. Now we just have to wait and see if this could actually happen.

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