Pirates Prospects Daily: Pirates Continue To Trade From Positions Of Strength To Help Immediate Needs

The first step under the current regime of Ben Cherington was to acquire as much talent in the system as possible.

Now after stockpiling prospects, it turned to getting them on the field and developing them to reach their potential. After a while, when you accumulate enough talent, there are bound to be traffic jams at certain positions.

One way to take full advantage of that is trade from one area of strength to help boost something in need.

We’ve seen the Pirates did into the prospect well quite a bit this offseason, trading Jack Hartman for Ji-Man Choi, Nick Garcia for Connor Joe and then more recently, Ricky DeVito for Mark Mathias.

Devito was acquired in the Richard Rodriguez trade, along with Bryse Wilson back in 2021. He sat out the rest of that season with an injury before pitching in Greensboro last year.

While some of the base numbers weren’t pretty, especially considering his age and the level he was at, DeVito had some intriguing stuff which included one of the best offspeed pitches (splitter) in the system.

At the end of the day, the Pirates are in the position where they want to start improving the major league team, and that means moving on from some of their prospects they’ve added.

DeVito had the stuff to be a good reliever at some point, maybe even as a late-inning option, but even that isn’t a guarantee. With the amount of options in the bullpen in the upper levels, it was smarter to maximize on any value he had.

As the names that are Rule 5 eligible continue to grow, we will continue to see more of these trades getting made. It will be up to the Pirates to continue to find value out of the excess they build up from within the system to keep things a continuous wheel.

Ke’Bryan Hayes Homers Again

Hayes has missed some time with an injury this spring, which is concerning a bit considering his history, but seeing him drive the ball the way he has when he’s been on the field has been encouraging.

Hitting the ball hard has never been the issue for Hayes, getting it off the ground has been. He finished in the 89th percentile when it comes to average exit velocity last year, but only in the 13th percentile when it came to barrel rate. The biggest issue was launch angle, which averaged 5.2° last year.

The power is there, it’s just maximizing on it and getting the ball up in the air.