Deal the Prospects
Perhaps the biggest lesson that the Pittsburgh Pirates can learn from the World Series-bound Cleveland Indians is when to go all-in and push your chips to the center of the table.
In the summer of 2016, the Indians were leading the AL Central. They were holding off a resurgent Detroit Tigers team and a lingering Kansas City Royals squad. They recognized an area of need and acted accordingly.
And boy, did they act.
The Indians traded their top position player prospect – Clint Frazier, now the 15th-ranked overall prospect in baseball – plus window dressing for Miller. Miller’s two remaining years of control after 2016 necessitated a top prospect, and the Indians did not blink.
Give the Lake Erie neighboring club high marks for not being shy about its intentions. There are obvious parallels to the Pittsburgh Pirates in regards to each team’s pipelines.
Going into 2016, the Pirates had as well stocked a farm system as anyone, headlined by Jameson Taillon, Tyler Glasnow, Josh Bell and Austin Meadows. Yet, it is unfathomable to think that the Pirates might have parted with one of those four, even for a controllable world-class arm like Miller.
The parallels don’t stop there. The Indians knew they had enough offensive talent locked up for long enough to lose Frazier. Much like the Pirates, their core of Francisco Lindor, Jason Kipnis, Jose Ramirez and others are in tow for the foreseeable future. And we have not even mentioned the boost that the club can get from Michael Brantley and Yan Gomes returns to good health.
Though they are a small-market team, the Indians knew they had a legitimate window to reach the World Series with a great chance to win, and they acted accordingly, no matter the cost.
These are but three lessons that the Pittsburgh Pirates can learn from their small-market brethren, but the lessons are universal. The way in which the Indians have built up this window of competitiveness should be held up to all similar market teams as a shining example of how to get to the promised land.
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