Pittsburgh Pirates: Why Each Connected Team Can’t Afford Bryan Reynolds

Conclusion

The last time that multiple top 50 or better prospects were moved in one trade was the deal that sent Chris Sale, a guy who consistently finished in the top 5 of American League Cy Young voting and lowest single-season fWAR in the 5 seaosns prior was 4.7, to the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox gave the White Sox Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech. Moncada was a consensus top 3 prospect and Kopech was a consensus top 50 prospect.

Very rarely do teams trade top 50 or better prospects, let alone multiple of them. The very few times that it has happened, it’s been for a player who is considered in the top echlon of players at the time. While that’s no knock on Reynolds, it’s been for guys who have had at least 3 seasons where they were considered all-star or better level players. Reynolds was really good in 2021, but still has only 3 major league seasons under his belt (2, 100+ game seasons as 2020 was only 60 games).

The Pirates are asking for multiple of them for Reynolds. The Pirates want the moon, stars, and the rest of the Milky Way for him. That’s an insanely high asking price, but a very reasonable one as well.

Teams know how the game is played. Winning teams build a good portion of their roster from within the organization and then outsource reinforcements. There’s no team that will meet the Pirates’ reasonable asking price for Bryan Reynolds, even if they have the pieces to do so, because it would mean potentially mortgaging the future of multiple good players for just one singluar really good player.