Breaking: Pittsburgh Pirates Trade Richard Rodriguez

After a slow couple of hours on Deadline Day 2021, Ben Cherington and the Pittsburgh Pirates were able to make a last-minute trade to get their long-time trade chip Richard Rodriguez moved to Atlanta

After an early trade this morning with the Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates were pretty quiet when it came to making trades, or even having rumors emerge on this year’s Deadline Day. Shortly after the deadline time of 4 EST came rolling around, this changed quickly for the Pirates.

The Pittsburgh Pirates made two moves at the deadline, one sending Austin Davis to the Red Sox and the other sending Richard Rodriguez to the Atlanta Braves. The Braves have long been known to have interest in Rich Rod, so it is sort of surprising that the deal took this long to be made.

Richard Rodriguez has been having a roller coaster type season, as he was posting career numbers at the beginning of the year, but his stats started to dip heavily after the MLB cracked down on foreign substance use. The most glaring notice of that is that his ERA in June was down to 2.25 for that month, but for the month of July it was 6.75.

This shows that the Pirates were smart to get rid of him while he still has some value as teams put some stock into his stats early in the year and the fact that he still has 1.5 years of control left.

The return that the Pirates got for Rich Rod were two rightys, Ricky DeVito and Bryse Wilson. Devito was ranked as the 23rd best prospect in the Braves farm system, whereas Wilson is ranked as the Braves 9th best prospect. Both of these rankings are according to FanGraphs.

Wilson is clearly the headliner in this deal, as he carries a 45 FV from FanGraphs and has some Major League experience. He has gotten knocked around a little in his short stints in the Majors, but has the potential where a change of scenery and new pitching coaches could help him to greatly improve.

According to reports, Wilson will join the club tomorrow with the role of being a starter, so it will be interesting to see if he gets the starting role Sunday or if that will go to Keller, as there still has not been named a starter for that game.

The other piece in this trade, Ricky DeVito, carries a FV of 40 and has been doing great in High-A this year. In five starts, DeVito carries an ERA of 2.66 and 27 strikeouts, so he will definitely be an interesting player to see how he can progress through the system and one day crack the Major League roster.