Pirates insider creates firestorm with debunked bombshell Orioles trade rumor

There seems to be some disagreement within the MLB insider community about whether this rumor is true.

Emma Lingan

Tampa Bay Rays v Pittsburgh Pirates / Justin Berl/GettyImages

On Wednesday, Dejan Kovacevic of DK Pittsburgh Sports reported that he was "told by a high-ranking American League executive that, at some point in 2024, the Baltimore Orioles approached Pittsburgh Pirates about a trade of elite prospects, one that'd send Jared Jones to Baltimore and 20-year-old infielder Jackson Holliday to Pittsburgh."

Kovacevic added that Pirates general manager Ben Cherington was the one who reportedly "backed off" from the deal.

"I've got no idea when within this year it occurred," Kovacevic said. "Only that it did."

The report was jarring for Baltimore fans, who were – understandably – less than thrilled with the idea of their team trading away the top prospect in baseball after they drafted him No. 1 overall in 2022. Admittedly, Holliday struggled out of the gate after making his MLB debut earlier this year; but the idea of trading a prospect with such a high ceiling based off a 10-game sample size still felt premature.

The Orioles, who currently sit just ahead of the New York Yankees at the top of the AL East standings, are in win-now mode. Jones is two years older than Holliday and contributing at a high level in MLB, but even that logic feels like a stretch at best for an Orioles team that certainly shouldn't be that desperate.

MLB insiders have conflicting beliefs on rumored Pirates-Orioles trade proposal

The unlikelihood of the aforementioned trade proposal left many struggling to ascertain the veracity of Kovacevic's claim. A Twitter/X user posed the question of whether it actually happened to FanSided MLB insider Robert Murray on Wednesday, to which Murray simply replied, "No."

But Murray's decisive response wasn't enough to put the rumors to bed; things got even muddier when Kovacevic responded to Murray, calling the report a "hundred-percenter."

Love your work, Robert. You wouldn't want to contradict who told me this. I'm not big on this type of content, in general. This one's a hundred-percenter.
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) July 10, 2024

The rumor mill will continue to churn as we inch closer to the July 30 trade deadline, and in the end, we may never know the truth. What we do know for certain is that Pittsburgh needs hitting and Baltimore needs pitching; and while the idea of swapping highly-touted prospects is certainly intriguing, it's still highly unlikely in this particular scenario.

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Emma Lingan

Emma Lingan is an MLB Staff Writer for FanSided primarily covering the Pittsburgh Pirates. She has been covering baseball for more than a decade dating back to her time as a student at Wake Forest University, and she has won two gold medals as a member of the U.S. National Team delegation (2016 Pan-American Championships & 2017 World Baseball Classic). She is also a credentialed NHL reporter and a member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. You can follow her @Emma Lingan on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.