The Pittsburgh Pirates have reinstated third baseman Pedro Alvarez from the Bereavement List and relief pitcher Ernesto Frieri has been designated for assignment.
Frieri was acquired by the Pirates in exchange for Jason Grilli on June 27th. He made 14 appearances for Pittsburgh, posting a 10.13 ERA in 10.2 innings.
Alvarez has been on the Bereavement List since August 5th. He returned to Pittsburgh today and was taking grounders at first base prior to the game according to Rob Biertempfel.
#Pirates Pedro Alvarez now is fielding grounders at FIRST base.
— RobBiertempfel (@RobBiertempfel) August 8, 2014
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
Captain Obvious finally pulls into port and waves bye bye to Frieri. I’m guessing NO team takes a shot at him, so maybe he’ll be on his way to AAA if he wants to stay. I’d much rather they also do some housecleaning and ship out Martinez. That guy has never hit in the majors. What he is doing on the Pirates is a mystery, ship him out, please.
You don’t start throwing away position players when your two most productive bats are currently injured. Martinez is doing no worse than Clint Barmes would be right now
Frieri DFA’d – thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Addition by subtraction. Now, do the same with Pimentel, who is another pitcher who cannot be trusted to pitch in anything but mop up duty. Mazzaro would be a huge improvement and would give some of the other guys a breather.
DFA’ing Pimentel would be a bad move, in my opinion. He has a lot of potential and is still young. He is out of options so he can’t be sent down.
So, we handcuff the manager in a playoff race, with a pitcher he cannot use?
Just because he is young and is out of options?
Hurdle likes being handcuffed. Barajas, Barmes & Grilli just a few examples of “Hurdles Guys” he kept running out there no matter how horrible they where
Speaking of being handcuffed – you cannot put a lineup out there that includes Sanchez (or Davis), plus Martinez and Nix. Yes, Nix got two singles – so the three were a combined 2-9?? Why wasn’t Alvarez at 3rd tonight?
September call ups will be arriving soon.
According to my calendar, that is three weeks away – a lot can happen in 3 weeks.
Did we ever find out the nature of Alvarez’s bereavement?
According to WTAE: “He was placed on the bereavement list Tuesday after the death of his grandmother-in-law.”
Good job dfaing frieri, pedro still has some trade value(not much,but some)so keeping him around as a bench bat is not a bad idea until they can offload him this winter.
Well done, Neal. It’s not easy to admit you were wrong, and he’s done it twice this year – by outrighting Tabata in the middle of the extension Neal signed him to, and now DFAing Frieri, a guy he’s apparently been coveting for years.
Writing was on the wall when Frieri didn’t pitch in any of the 3 blowouts vs. Florida.
Poor job letting an established reliever like Grilli go for nothing though. Especially since Grilli has re-emerged as an effective pitcher in Anaheim, while we got nothing from Frieri.
You can’t win every trade, and you can’t fault him for trying. That said, I wanted them to keep Grilli. There were signs that he could be finding himself before we traded him
Yeah in retrospect it sure doesn’t look good. Not only was Frieri found out to be an absolute liability, but the domino effect put Wilson into higher leverage roles, where he really hasn’t done well consistently. It’s difficult to imagine Grilli wouldn’t have at least held his own as the 4th guy out of the pen, and that’s before you even look at what he’s doing in Anaheim.
I imagine that when they looked at Frieri, Searage would’ve had some input as to what Frieri’s issues were and the confidence level that Ray could help make him productive vs. what they could get out of Grilli. So they rolled the dice. And they lost – which, regarding pitching acquisitions, they haven’t done too much of lately. Can’t win ’em all.
Difficult to imagine. Really you must have short time memory loss. Since all-star last year until trade he made Justin Wilson look like Sandy Kofax
Regardless, some team should have been willing to give up more than Frieri for Grilli. If we had gotten a couple of grade B prospects I would be thrilled. Instead we got zip.
When trading a 37 yr old who’s been brutal you can’t expect much
I remember the 21-appearance stretch from September 16 through June 11 when he managed an ERA just north of 2 and a WHIP under 1.2. And that includes the back to back blown saves where he gave up the Braun HRs. Yes, he had a brutal 2-week stretch after that; he also had one in early September and followed that up with 9 straight scoreless appearances to close out the season.
I think we’d all be thrilled if Wilson could roll off a stretch like that.
Cherry picking stats is easy, but facts are facts from June 19, 2013 until trade
IP 43
ER 23
ERA 4.81
Sitting on the edge of my seat or turning off my TV = Brutal
I do hope if some team picks him up, they have him pitch vs Arizona.
OMG bucs,that is a good one !