Pittsburgh Pirates Rumors: Is Shane Baz Getting Traded?

The Pittsburgh Pirates have two players that will be going in trades sometime in the future.  The Bucs made two deadline deals that involved a Player to Be Named Later.

The Pittsburgh Pirates had their splashiest trade deadline ever under General Manager Neal Huntington.  However, to make the big moves, the team had to depart with bigger named prospect talent.  Taylor Hearn was the first big name, young talent to get dealt by the Pittsburgh Pirates.  He went to the Texas Rangers for Keone Kela. Then the team traded Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow for Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays.

With that being said, the team also had the legendary term “Player to be Named Later” attached in both deals.  Often times a PTBNL is a throw-in prospect who a team likes, a recently drafted player, or when a team is picking from a list of players.  In terms of the Kela trade, it was reported that it is more of a throw-in type prospect, meaning most likely not anyone that is considered to be in the Pittsburgh Pirates top 20 prospects.  However, Neal Huntington did say that Pittsburgh Pirates fans would recognize the player in the Tampa Bay deal.

So who could that prospect be?  Well, there has been a lot of speculation about possibly Oneil Cruz since the organization has so much middle infield depth.  Then there was talk about it possibly being a player like Braeden Ogle who was on the minor league DL.  It does not seem to be either of these players.  Instead, Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic may have shed some light on who the PTBNL might be.  He shared an interesting tweet this afternoon that said:

“…Shane Baz threw five solid innings and got the win last night for #Pirates Low-A Bristol club. Nice bounceback after a couple of abbreviated starts. That’s the kind of thing that sometimes gets you … named later. *wink wink nudge nudge*”

Biertempfel for a long time was the Pittsburgh Pirates beat writer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.  He has a lot of sources inside the Pittsburgh Pirates organization because of that.  So is former first-round pick (2017) Shane Baz going in the deal?  Or is Biertempfel just speculating that Baz would make sense in terms of value?  It is hard to say and we likely will not know until the end of the minor league season.  If he is, it will be a huge get for the Rays being Baz is already ranked as a top 100 prospect.