Pirates to reportedly non-tender trio of players (but one reunion is possible)

The Pittsburgh Pirates are one of those organizations that has a well-earned reputation of using the non-tender deadline as an excuse to trim even more salary from their already questionably low payroll. There are baseball reasons for some of the moves to be sure, but the Pirates are definitely a team that is happy to cut a decent player to save a few nickels.

Heading into the deadline, two of the more likely Pirates candidates to get non-tendered were Connor Joe and Bryan De La Cruz.

Not only were both players set to receive real money in 2025 in arbitration (De La Cruz in particular was in line for a very healthy raise), but their consistency and overall production lagged, which a budget-conscious team like Pittsburgh is going to count against them more severely.

In the end, both Joe and De La Cruz are indeed expected to be non-tendered by the Pirates, according to Pirates beat writer Alex Stumpf, along with reliever Hunter Stratton, as first reported by Noah Hiles.

The notification about Stratton's fate came moments later:

Pirates expected to non-tender Connor Joe, Bryan De La Cruz, and Hunter Stratton

Again, the Joe and De La Cruz non-tenders are not that surprising. Both hitters had bad-to-terrible 2024 seasons and, given their expected arbitration salaries, they were near locks to get the axe. How the Pirates will replace them is a fair question, but one assumes it will be with guys from the bargain bin.

Stratton's case is a bit more interesting, as he actually performed perfectly fine in 2024, posting a 3.58 ERA in 36 appearances this past season. As noted in Stumpf's reporting, Pittsburgh would like to bring Stratton back, ideally. However, the initial talks with Stratton's camp clearly didn't go great if they were willing to non-tender him, so the likelihood he returns seems pretty small, unless his market fails to develop this offseason.

With that, most of the Pirates' most obvious non-tender decisions are made, outside of potentially Alika Williams. We'll see if Pittsburgh has anymore outside-the-box roster moves to make as we approach the 8 PM EST deadline.

More from Rum Bunter