Pirates and their infamous trades: Second thoughts about giving away Meadows and Glasnow?





… both have led Rays to top of AL-East 

As the calendar turned to August last summer, Pittsburgh Pirates GM Neal Huntington thought that he would prove to the fans that the team did not just give away top players like Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutcheon.

He decided to mortgage the farm and give away some promising young studs. Huntington sent two of his potential prospects, outfielder Austin Meadows and right-handed pitcher Tyler Glasnow, to the Tampa Bay Rays for 30-year-old pitcher Chris Archer, who had been an all-star in his early years.

In a July 31 story in the Post-Gazette, Huntington was quoted as saying, “We gave up a lot, but the belief was that this club’s good, but it would also position ourselves to be one of those clubs next year and into the future.”

The Bucs thought that Archer, who has not had a winning record since 2014, would return to his earlier prowess and prove to be a mainstay for the team in 2019. The team has been playing respectably thus far, just a few games back of the Cubs right now.

However, the numbers for this trade tell a different story. This season, Archer is just 1-3 with an ERA of 5.58. He has started just six games this season. That is because of injury. He was placed on the 10-days injured list with an inflammation of the thumb in late April. At that point, he was 1-2 and had just lost to the Dodgers, 6-2.

Archer will be 31 in September.

Conversely, the two players whom the Pirates gave away in the trade are having great seasons. Prior to the Rays’ series with the Yankees this weekend, Glasnow, a 6-foot-8, 230-pound lefthander, was 6-1 with an ERA of 1.86 in eight games. He had five strikeouts and had walked just eight men in eight starts.

Meadows, who was great when first called up last year only to falter, was hitting .348 with eight home runs and 22 RBIs. At mid-week, his numbers were .360/.427/.721, not exactly shabby.

Huntington on Archer

Huntington understood the danger of the trade for Archer, but tried to justify it to the media after making the deal.

According to the PG,

Archer fits the mold for the Pirates as a hard-throwing starting pitcher under contract for multiple years. Archer, 29, has a 4.31 ERA in 17 starts this season, but his peripherals are promising. Archer has a 3.69 ERA in 177 career starts, with 9.7 strikeouts and 2.9 walks per nine innings.

“We understand the surface numbers aren’t typical Chris Archer surface numbers,” Huntington said. “We believe in what our scouts have seen and the quality of the pitches, the intelligence of the athlete, the competitor, how he goes about it. We believe that the underlying numbers that our analytics group has continued to pound us on … we’ve had a lot of success with that type of model in the past.

“Obviously, it’s a much bigger bet on Chris Archer than it’s been on any of the pitchers with whom we’ve had success in the past. We believe the indicators are there that Crhis Archer is still an upper-echelon, top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher.” According to that story, Archer is due to make $7.5 million this season “plus club options worth $9 million in 2020 and $11 in 2021, with buyouts of $1.75 million and $250,000, respectively.”

Conclusion

The only time to make assessments is at the end of the season. Perhaps Glasnow and Meadows will prove to the flashes in the pan for the Rays. Right now, they are doing great.

But for the Pirates, giving up two top young players, a 24-year-old and a 25-year-old, was very risky.

In addition, the Pirates gave up a “player to be named later.” He is Shane Baz, and right now, he is ranked as the 10th best prospect in the Rays’ organization.

Making things worse, he was a first-round pick of the Bucs in 2017.

Hammered on Twitter

I was criticized for complaining about this trade last year, saying that they were giving up quality players for a guy who had not been very good in recent years.

I cannot find the exact tweet, but it basically said that I was complaining about trades giving away great players, and then when they make a trade for a great player who had a very good price tag on him, I still complain.

I still maintain that this was not a good deal, but realize that you have to give everyone a full season to ascertain the impact.

We shall see …

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