Pittsburgh Pirates: Breaking Down Players Acquired in Adam Frazier Trade

On Sunday evening the Pittsburgh Pirates kicked off the last week before the trade deadline by moving their top trade chip – Adam Frazier

There have been rumors flying around for months about when the Pittsburgh Pirates would trade Adam Frazier, but the rumors came to fruition as Frazier is heading to San Diego. The Padres are making their second deal of the year with the Pirates, as earlier this year they got Joe Musgrove and now Frazier.

The full terms of the trade were that the Pittsburgh Pirates sent the Frazier and $1.4 million to the Padres in exchange for Tucupita Marcano, Jack Suwinski and Michell Miliano. People in the Pittsburgh media and fanbase have been complaining about these guys the Pittsburgh Pirates got back because they feel that it was not enough for Frazier, but do not take in a few key facts.

First off, Frazier is having a career year after having average at best seasons his other four years, the market is flooded with players right now, and everyone’s expectations were way too high after the report from Hayman weeks ago saying that Frazier could net one top-50 or two top-100 prospects.

While the return for Frazier has seemed underwhelming to Pittsburgh fans, once a deeper look is taken into the prospects coming to the Pirates, the trade really is not as bad as people are making it out to be. Let’s start off by looking at the headliner of this deal, Marcano.

Tucupita Marcano

The headliner of this trade was the 21-year-old utility player. Like Frazier, Marcano’s primary position has been second base, but he can also play third, short, left, and right field. Additionally like Frazier, Marcano is more of a contact hitter, who has a left-handed swing.

Tucupita Marcano has been disagreed upon a decent bit when it comes to his ranking because MLB Pipeline and FanGraphs have him listed at completely different ends of prospect lists. MLB Pipeline had him ranked at 5th in the Padres system just after their 4 top-50 guys, but FanGraphs plugged him in as the Pirates’ 33rd best prospect with a FV of 40.

Marcano has very little data for the Major Leagues, as his Major League debut was on April 1st of this year, and he was sent back down to Triple-A after only 50 at-bats. Looking at his Triple-A stats though, it begins to look more and more like the Pittsburgh Pirates traded 1.5 years of Frazier for 6 years of a player identical to him plus two more players.

At Triple-A this season Marcano has hit .272 to go with a .367 on-base percentage and a WRC+ of 101. Additionally, he has great plate vision, as he manages to draw walks at a greater clip than he does going down on strikes. (13.6% vs 12.6%) These stats are very eerily similar to what Frazier put up from 2016-2020 when you take out his outlier season this year.

Lastly, Ben Cherington was huge on this guy back before they made the Musgrove trade but the Padres did not want to give him up at all during the offseason. This should show the fans that even if something great about Marcano does not stick out to them, it definitely has to the Padres and Cherington, or he would have been part of the Musgrove trade, or the Pittsburgh Pirates would not have sent $1.4 million in addition to Frazier to get him.

Marcano will start off his Pirate tenure in Triple-A Indianapolis. However, he could join their MLB roster sooner rather than later.

Jack Suwinski

The next player that the Pittsburgh Pirates received in the trade was left-handed hitting outfielder Jack Suwinski. He was drafted by the Padres back in the 2016 draft in the 15th round. Suwinski has a FV of 35+ from FanGraphs but has been lighting it up in Double-A this season.

So far this year Suwinski is batting .269 with an on-base percentage of .398 and has a remarkable wRC+ of 153. Suwinski is a threat to get on base constantly as his OBP is almost at .400, but that doesn’t mean that his swing isn’t powerful.

Suwinski is currently tied for third in the Double-A Central with 15 home runs. This great power is something that would definitely be amazing to have in the outfield, but it does come with one minor flaw. That would be his strikeout percentage.

Suwinski striking out 27.7% of the time which is concerning, but even with this high strikeout percentage he still gets on base at a really good rate. With that being said, his strikeout ratio is concerning but not something that is a dealbreaker. Suwinski will certainly try to work on getting the percentage down some, as he will start off his Pirate career in Double-A Altoona.