Pittsburgh Pirates: Potential Bullpen Arm Trade Deadline Target

The Pittsburgh Pirates should look into Washington Nationals’ reliever Victor Arano during this year’s upcoming trade deadline.

Although the Pittsburgh Pirates aren’t in contention yet, they’re showing massive signs of improvement. They’re slowly but surely becoming a better team. The starting rotation has been a quality group this year, and the offense, although lacking, is at least getting some fresh faces. In time, the offense will get better. But the bullpen has been an issue for the last month-plus. Outside of David Bednar, the Pirate bullpen pitchers have either been inconsistent or outright bad.

In my article talking about how to improve the Pirates’ bullpen, I said there isn’t much the Pittsburgh Pirates could do in acquiring players through trade. However, the only exception is a guy with multiple years of control remaining.

The Pirates should kick the tires on this reliever on the Washington National right-hander, Victor Arano, who could be on the market because the Nationals are selling and because Arano has two years of control remaining being in 2023 and 2024.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking. How can a guy with a 5.01 ERA improve the bullpen? Well, there’s a lot more to baseball than just one number. Although Arano has a poor ERA, he also has a very high .349 batting average on balls in play. Arano has a 2.74 FIP, 2.57 xFIP, and 2.41 SIERA. The right-handed reliever has a healthy 26.3% strikeout rate but a phenomenal 4.2% walk rate. He’s allowed just two home runs in 23.2 innings of work. His K:BB ratio of 6.25 is the 15th best among relievers.

Arano is great at limiting hard contact. Opponents have an 84.4 MPH exit velocity and a 27.7% hard-hit rate. Both are elite numbers. If he had enough innings to qualify, he’d be in the top 15 pitchers in both stats. Along with inducing a ton of weak contact, he gets a ton of ground balls. His ground ball rate of 56.3% is the 19th best among relievers. He’s just one of five relievers with an exit velocity lower than 85 MPH and a ground ball rate above 50%.

The reason Arano has struggled this year is to no fault of his own. The National defense is atrocious. While I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the Pirates are filled with Gold Glovers across the diamond, they might as well be when you compare them to Washington. The Nats have -27 defensive runs saved and -31 outs above average as a team. The Pirates, meanwhile, have +4 defensive runs saved and -11 outs above average. On average, the Pirates save 31 more runs and 20 more outs through their defense compared to the Nationals.

Arano is probably the most underrated reliever this year. He’s on a poor team that kicked off a rebuild last trade deadline and has struggled because of the defense behind him. As long as the Pirates wouldn’t have to trade any upper-tier prospects, I think it’s an opportunity to at least look into.

Arano would be under control for 2023 and 2024, two years the Pittsburgh Pirates would likely compete for at least a Wild Card spot, if not more. You’re getting full seasons from Oneil Cruz, Quinn Priester, Liover Peguero, Nick Gonzales, Mike Burrows, and many more between these two seasons. A bullpen of Wil Crowe, Victor Arano, Yerry De Los Santos, and David Bednar would be a formidable late-inning group.