Day 3 of the Winter Meetings came and went, and the biggest news of the day belonged to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
We heard the Pirates involved in numerous rumors of the past couple of days involving numerous starting pitchers, first basemen, and utility players. We were wondering when the team would fill their biggest hole: the need for a quality pitcher to slot behind Gerrit Cole and Francisco Liriano. And they did just that on Wednesday, but it came at a price.
On Wednesday afternoon, the tenure of long-standing Pirates’ second baseman and local kid Neil Walker came to an end when he was traded to the Mets for left-handed starting pitcher Jonathon Niese. We knew that the Pirates and Walker never truly came close in any extension talks, and that we was on the trading block. We also knew that the Pirates were going to get another quality starter for their rotation, whether that be through free agency or through a trade.
I won’t go through all the details of the trade, as we broke that down yesterday here. Just know that it was a straight up player-for-player trade, and no cash exchanged hands. Niese is under club control for the next three seasons and is still relatively young at 29 years of age. Walker is entering his final season of arbitration eligibility, and could get an extension with the Mets if he performs well there. It will be tough to see Walker go, there’s no doubt about that. Him and Pedro Alvarez were mainstays with the Pirates for years and a huge part of the team’s rise to success. They will be missed.
The Pirates didn’t make any other moves of on day three of the meetings, but they’re still involved with a decent number of rumors. Matt Gatjka of DK Pittsburgh Sports reported that talks may have intensified between the Pirates and Scott Kazmir now that they freed up some money by trading Walker. Unfortunately to the interests of many Pirates’ fans, he goes on to say that comments given by Neal Huntington later in the evening suggested otherwise, that the 2016 rotation may be set for this team now that they have Niese.
We also know that the Pirates are still looking for either a full-time first baseman or, more realistically, a platoon bat opposite Michael Morse. They’ve been connected to Mike Napoli and, previously, Mark Reynolds, both of whom have power but are past their primes.
It will be interesting to watch how the Pirates’ bullpen situation plays out. We know the Pirates have received calls about Mark Melancon, who is likely to get traded based on Huntington’s history of trading closers. At the same time, we also see teams like the Red Sox and the Astros filling their closer needs (and the Dodgers attempting to) already. You wonder with Chapman off the board if Melancon’s value is increasing, but we haven’t seen any teams connected to him over the past day or so.
The final day of the meetings is today, and that includes the Rule 5 Draft. Typically, this draft doesn’t lead to many impact players at the major league level. But there have been some steals: Johan Santana and Josh Hamilton are just a couple names that come to mind. We’ll keep an eye on that, as well as how the Pirates address their bullpen and the first base situation over the next couple of days. I don’t think the Pittsburgh Pirates are finished adding to their roster just yet.
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