Mets sign former Pirates prospect to rare 2-year minor league contract

There’s something uniquely Pittsburgh Pirates-coded about watching a former late-round pick leave the organization, disappear for a moment, and then re-emerge somewhere else with real intrigue attached to his name.

That’s exactly what just happened with Trey McGough.

The New York Mets have signed the left-hander out of retirement on a rare two-year minor league deal — a move that immediately jumps off the page in an offseason filled with one-year flyers and camp invites. McGough, a 24th-round pick by the Pirates in 2019, abruptly walked away from the game last May after a brutal start in the Chicago White Sox organization at Triple-A Charlotte.

Fifteen innings. Fifteen walks. Fifteen earned runs. Sometimes the grind wins. But this time, apparently, it didn’t win for long.

Now, a team is investing two years in the idea that the guy who posted a 1.92 ERA across three levels in 2024 — with 88 strikeouts in 81.2 innings — is still in there.

Former Pirates draft pick Trey McGough gets fresh start with Mets

As a Pirates fan, this one hits in a very familiar place. Not because McGough was ever a top-100 prospect or a household name in Pittsburgh’s system. He wasn’t. He was one of those guys: the late-round lefty who kept pitching his way up, quietly getting better, living on the margins of relevance. The type of arm the Pirates have historically unearthed, refined, and sometimes… lost.

You can’t help but wonder what his trajectory looks like if 2025 doesn’t spiral. Or if the Pirates still had him when he rediscovered the itch to pitch. Or if he becomes the latest in a long line of “former Pirate finds his footing elsewhere” stories.

The Mets giving McGough two years matters. Minor league contracts are usually a handshake and a shrug. This is belief. This is a front office saying, we see something worth protecting through the turbulence. And that’s the part that stings just a little.

Pirates fans have seen this movie before. The raw arm. The mental battle. The rocky stretch. The quiet exit. Then — somewhere else — a reset. A second act. Sometimes even a big-league debut.

McGough has never pitched in the majors. But now he’s back in the system of a team that clearly values what he can be when things are right. A 6-foot-3 lefty with a track record, a chip on his shoulder, and a story that writes itself.

It’s not hard to imagine him jogging in from a Citi Field bullpen someday while Pirates fans mutter, “Didn’t he used to be ours?”

That doesn’t mean the Pirates made a mistake. Baseball development is messy. People are messy. Sometimes a player just needs to walk away to remember why he started.

Still, it’s impossible not to feel that familiar mix of pride and frustration. Pride that a former Pirate is getting another shot. Frustration that the comeback might happen in someone else’s uniform.

Because that’s the Pirates experience in a nutshell: watching potential leave, change, and occasionally bloom somewhere else — while you’re left wondering what might have been.