Pittsburgh Pirates Rumors: Jason Grilli, Blue Jays Catchers, and Carl Pavano

facebooktwitterreddit

RumBunter, home for all your Pittsburgh Pirates rumors

The news from the Major League Baseball Hot Stove has been quite cold for for Pittsburgh Pirates.   With the upcoming week a short one for Major League Baseball executives, if some news doesn’t happen early this week, it might leave the Pirates a two week window to get some fresh faces for December’s PiratesFest.

So we looked around the league to develop our own Pittsburgh Pirates news, it was challenging, but here we go.   We hope we made you proud.  Take it for what it’s worth:

Carl Pavano is mentioned in an aritcle by Nick Cafardo (link below.)  The former Minnesota Twins horse is now healthy, but he turns 37 years old in January.  If Neal Huntington is looking for a pitcher that can eat up innings while Gerrit Cole gets seasoned in Triple-A Indianapolis, Pavano might be his guy.

The right hander has ate up more than 220 innings in his previous two seasons.  The 13th round pick from 1994 fired 221 innings in 2010 with seven complete games and two shutouts.  The 6’5″ Pavano threw 222 innings in 2011, and allowed an ‘oh-so-hittable’ 262 hits.  He was injured last season after throwing just 62 innings last season.

The reason for the connection is simple to us, the Bucs were interested in 2011.   Minor league deal anyone?

_________________

Justin Upton is still an Arizona Diamondback outfielder mainly due to GM Kevin Towers not getting a great deal thrown his way.  We don’t think the Bucs are a good matchup in any deal for Upton.   We also can’t help but wonder if the Pirates are one of the teams on his no-trade clause too.

_________________

The Red Sox still looking to deal Jarrod Saltalamacchia as we wrote about last week. Nick Cafardo of The Boston Globe doesn’t mention the Bucs in the deal, but points to the White Sox as we did.

_________________

Jason Grilli has a few offers said his agent Gary Sheffield with eight teams expressing interest in the one-time Pirates fireballing set-up man.

Jason Grili to Milwaukee?

___________________

The Blue Jays have three catchers getting shopped including John Buck, J.P. Arencibia, and Travis d’Arnaud.  Ummm, let’s trust the Bucs make a serious call this week.   Melissa Couto has the details including numerous scenarios in this story from The Toronto Sun.   The focus of her story is on Arencibia with this interesting look in the cons of ‘Keep Arencibia until the trade deadline, using Buck as a backup….’

"Arencibia certainly got off to a rocky start in 2012, hitting .188 in the month of April. Though he turned it around in May, he reverted back to those abysmal numbers in June, hitting just .189 through the third month of the season, striking out 29 times in 22 games."

Looking briefly at some of the numbers, Arencibia hit 18 bombs for the Jays last year, and 23 in 2011, the catcher will be 27 years old in January.  The 21st overall pick in 2007 threw out 29 percent of base stealers in 2012 (22CS vs 53SB), while gunning 24 percent in 2011 (28CS vs 87SB) and 40 percent (2CS vs 3SB) in 2010.

___________________

.

The Marlboro Man has signed with the Texas Rangers according to the MLB.com transactions page. The 28-year-old Scott Olsen has spent the Buccos money and is looking to get back in the big leagues, somewhere he hasn’t been since 2010.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/#bHrDiHGcuObWFhWq.99