Pittsburgh Pirates Hot Stove Rumors

Accoding to Jon Heyman of CBS sports, the Pirates have fielded offers on all of their players with one year remaining on their contracts.

Heyman said,

“They have fielded offers on all seven of their players who have a year to go before free agency, so that also includes Neil Walker as well as Melancon and Pedro Alvarez.”

This could lead to several huge changes in the core of the 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates. You could see a team without Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker. The entire left side of the in field could be vastly different than the last five seasons.

It raises the questions of, would this lead to Josh Harrison becoming the everyday second baseman? Do the Pirates pick up another first baseman to platoon with Michael Morse? The hot stove has only just been turned on and already the Pirates are looking like a team that will look vastly different on Opening Day 2016.

The other big component to this story is the potential trade of Mark Melancon. It’s no secret that the Pirates are shopping the All Star closer as Neal Huntington almost always tries to sell relievers at their peak value for a huge return. Wouldn’t expect them to be any different with Melancon. If the Pirates do trade Melancon, it would shift the 2016 bullpen drastically and I would not be surprised to see Huntington make a ton of moves in the wake of any Melancon trade. I expect the Pirates’ bullpen will be completely made over by Opening Day next season.

I think more people would be very concerned about a potential Melancon trade if not for Tony Watson waiting in the wings to take over as the closer. Watson has been one of the elite relievers in all of baseball since 2013 and will do just fine as a closer. Contrary to popular belief, if you can pitch in the eighth inning, you can pitch in the ninth inning. People had the same reservations when Melancon originally took over for an injured Jason Grilli in 2013 and all Melancon did was become one of the game’s premiere closers. I would expect the same results from Tony Watson. He’s been great in the seventh and eighth innings in his career and I have no doubt he’ll be more than capable in the ninth inning.

Once Watson is shifted into the closer’s role, the bullpen gets a little murky. The Pirates will undoubtably need to make some moves before next season because just moving everyone up a spot, would likely turn the bullpen from a strength to a huge question mark entering 2016. Jared Hughes has been great in his role as a clean-up man, but has struggled at times when starting innings clean. Just moving him into the setup role wastes his best talent, which is getting ground balls with men on base and taking care of inherited runners.

Outside of Hughes, the only returning contributors would be Arquimedes Caminero, Rob Scahill and Bobby LaFromboise. All perfectly capable pitchers, but none outside of Caminero have had any proven success at the Major League level. Once you trade Melancon, it creates a huge domino effect on the bullpen and I would expect to see a lot of acquisitions to ready the bullpen for 2016.

No deal has happened yet and currently everything is pretty much guessing and predictions, but more than likely you will see a lot of major changes this offseason and the Pirates that open the 2016 season will look vastly different than the one that closed 2015.