Pittsburgh Pirates: Ranking Ben Cherington’s Trades

Josh Bell to the Washington Nationals

So far, this has probably been the worst trade Cherington has made with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Though worst doesn’t mean awful. I wouldn’t consider it a bad trade based on how Bell has done and the return the Pirates got. Speaking of the return, the Pirates received two prospects, that being Eddy Yean and Wil Crowe.

Yean was considered the headliner of the deal. He’s a young right-handed pitcher but struggled at Low-A Bradenton this season. The big issue he had was walks, which he dealt at a 13.2% rate. He did have a solid 23.3% strikeout rate and 1.08 HR/9, as well as a phenomenal 52.6% ground ball rate. This was only Yean’s age-20 season and while he had some rough moments, there was some upside to his season.

Yean’s role was constantly flipped between starter and reliever and was the first time he pitched more than 50 innings in one season. Plus a few big blow-up outs inflated his numbers. He had 2 outings where he had given up 5 earned runs in less than 1 inning each. Outside of those outings, he had a much better-looking 3.97 ERA as opposed to 5.27 (those two outings made up over a quarter of the earned runs he gave up). Plus he had an uptick in velocity. Overall, he showed a fair bit of upside despite some bumpy patches throughout the season.

Crowe also struggled during his first season with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He mostly pitched in the major leagues, having a 5.48 ERA, 5.67 FIP, and 1.57 WHIP. Crowe’s struggles mainly came from the long ball, having a 1.93 HR/9. Plus it didn’t help that he had a so-so 10.9% walk rate. Crowe is only considered a back-of-the-rotation type starting pitcher, but he has some potential to be a solid #5 starter.

Bell did well with the bat over in Washington, having a 118 wRC+, 27 home runs, and a .823 OPS. But his poor defense at first base continued to plague him, which brought his fWAR down to just 1.4. That only ranked 6th among the team’s position players. But the only position player ahead of him to have more than 100 games played in a National uniform this year was Juan Soto. All of Trea Turner, Alcides Escobar, Kyle Schwarber, and Josh Harrison played much fewer games than Bell’s 144. Heck, 3 of the 4 didn’t even reach 400 plate appearances.

Considering that the Nationals may trade Bell this offseason, and they finished just 4 games ahead of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the overall MLB standings, this could be a lose-lose trade, where neither team gained anything of value in both the short term and long term.

Sure, Bell overall, was a better player than Wil Crowe, if you’re going straight by major league performance so far. But Bell, at this point, is what he is. A solid hitter whose best position is probably designated hitter. His continued play at first base is only going to keep his fWAR per season in the 1.5-2.5 range, putting him in the average value range. Being a roughly average value player is completely in the realm of possibility for Yean, possibly even more-so if he can get his command under wraps.