Pittsburgh Pirates News: Pirates Swing Minor Trade, Kyle Crick DFA’d

July is always a super active month for trades in MLB and Monday was no different as the Pittsburgh Pirates added yet another small trade to the few that they have already completed this month. 

The Pittsburgh Pirates are hoping to strike gold twice, as they have traded cash for another struggling player with very little service time after the John Nogowski trade appears to have been very successful. This time, the Pirates acquired lefty Dillon Peters from the Los Angeles Angels.

Peters is going to be sent to Triple-A Indianapolis to start his Pirate tenure but needed to be added to the 40-man roster, so the Pirates decided to designate reliever Kyle Crick.

This came as a bit of a surprise as while Crick is having a not-so-great season this year (4.44 ERA and 4.89 xERA), he was coming off of one of his best seasons last year (1.59 ERA and 4.83 xERA). While his ERA was great last year, his expected ERA is matching what he is doing this season, so this may contribute to what led the Pittsburgh Pirates to choose him as their DFA candidate.

Like previously mentioned, the player the Pirates got, Peters has been struggling in the little amount of major league time that he has played. In total, Peters has pitched 132.2 innings of Major League work with 24 of his 31 appearances coming as a starter. In these games, Peters has an ERA this is all the way up to 5.83 and a FIP of 5.85. His FIP number shows that even when fielding is taken out of the equation, Peters is still allowing just shy of six runs per nine innings, which is not good at all, especially for a starter.

Even more concerning than his ERA, is his ability to strike people out. In his MLB career, Peters has only struck out 101 batters compared to 60 walks and 94 runs allowed. If Peters wants to be a successful pitcher he certainly needs to get his strikeouts up and walks and runs allowed down.

Over the last two seasons though, Peters has improved some as he has been able to get his K/9 totals north of 10, and this year in Triple-A has more strikeouts than he has allowed hits (48 Ks vs 47 hits). While his numbers are trending upwards, Peters still has a long way to go to be great, but if the Pirates have any more magic leftover from turning Nogowski around, the Peters trade could be another good one.