Former Pirates pitcher’s recent surge represents another Ben Cherington trade failure

In July 2024, the Pittsburgh Pirates opened the trade deadline by dealing Quinn Priester to the Boston Red Sox in a move that flew under the radar at the time. 

A little more than a year later, and it’s becoming more and more clear that it was a mistake for the Pirates. While Priester never ended up doing much in Boston, he’s turned into a frontline ace with the division-rival Brewers, which is a development that should make every Pirates fan’s skin crawl. 

Quinn Priester's recent surge represents yet another Ben Cherington trade failure

Priester entered play on Wednesday with a 3.48 ERA in 120 innings with Milwaukee, who has the best record in baseball thanks to a recent 14-game winning streak. 

And while that winning streak was led by some more well-known players like Christian Yelich and William Contreras, the lesser-known guys like Priester were just as important. Although he’s struggled a bit as of late (4.86 ERA in August), he burst onto the scene in June when he posted a 1.98 ERA in 27 2/3 innings followed by a 3.07 ERA in July. 

He began August by recording arguably his best start of the year when he gave up just one run in seven innings against the Atlanta Braves, and rebounded from a rough outing against the Mets to pick up the win against the Reds his last time out. 

His 120 innings would be the third-most on this year’s iteration of the Pirates, and his 3.48 ERA would be the second-best ERA among Pittsburgh's starters behind Paul Skenes’ MLB-leading 2.16 ERA. He’s been worth 2.0 bWAR, which would be the second-highest total for an individual player behind Skenes. 

Meanwhile, Nick Yorke (the player the Pirates got in return from Boston) has hit .273 in 92 games at Triple-A and is currently ranked as the Pirates’ No. 11 prospect per MLB Pipeline. A fine prospect, sure, but he’s got big shoes to fill thanks to Priester's return to form. 

The Brewers acquired Priester from the Red Sox at the end of spring training in the hopes that he’d be able to eat some innings while they managed some injuries to the big names in their rotation, and it quickly turned into one of the year’s shrewdest moves.

While it undoubtedly hurts Pirates fans to see Priester's success in Milwaukee, it’s not a guarantee that he would have had this same level of success with Pittsburgh. He had a 6.46 ERA in 94 2/3 innings with the Pirates and consistently looked like a guy who should be in the minor leagues as opposed to pitching against the best players in the world. But the Brewers seem to have done something to help him unlock something. 

Those kinds of things just simply aren’t happening under the Pirates' current leadership, and that's the lesson to learn from this.