Breaking down the five prospects from the Musgrove trade

In his time as the Pirates’ general manager, Ben Cherington has not shied away from acquiring young players. He has said the Pirates will need to assume some risk with every player they acquire, and age is one with which they feel most comfortable, believing players will be properly developed in the farm system.

The Pirates acquired more young talent en masse Monday night, dealing their most valuable trade chip, Joe Musgrove, to the Padres for five players in a three-team deal with the Mets. Four of the players the Pirates got back were 22 years old or younger.

The teams have not yet finalized the trade, working to complete medical reviews before it is officially announced.

The headliner is 19-year-old center fielder Hudson Head, the Padres’ eighth-best prospect, per Baseball America. It is worth noting the Padres have one of the deepest systems in baseball, and their top seven each cracked Baseball America’s update top 100 list Monday. Their eighth-best player is better than most team's fifth-best, and Head is on a trajectory that could put him on top 100 lists soon.

Also coming in return are catcher Endy Rodriguez, a 20-year-old, switch-hitting catcher who MLB Pipeline ranked as the Mets’ 14th-best prospect, David Bednar, a 26-year-old right-handed reliever and native of Mars, Pa., left-hander Omar Cruz, MLB Pipeline’s 17th-best Padres prospect, and right-hander Drake Fellows, a Friday night starter when with Vanderbilt who was taken in the sixth-round of the 2019 draft.

There are the names. Here's what the Pirates are getting back.

Head was selected in the third round of the 2019 draft, not because of his ability, but because of signability concerns. The Padres ended up taking the risk and had it pay off when he agreed to a $3 million signing bonus, the largest ever for a third-round pick at the time.

At 6-foot-1, 180 pounds, he has the look of a leadoff hitter, especially since he has a reported 6.33 60-yard dash time, which is borderline elite. He also has potential for some pop, with FanGraphs tracking his max exit velocity at 108 mph, which is 10th-best among tracked prospects age 20 or younger. The publication also praised him for his bat speed and control.

He’s raw and still needs to fine tune his mechanics and cut down on movement during his swing, but he has already taken steps towards doing that while in the Padres system and at their alternate training site:

Baseball America called Head "one of the best athletes in the Padres' system." He has potential to be a leadoff hitter and a plus fielder, though it's going to a couple years to get there.

Going by FanGraphs’ 2020 scouting report on Rodriguez, the two tools that stick out the most are a potential 60-grade for hitting and for fielding. At the time of that report, he also was rated as a 45-grade fielder and 25-grade hitter, so there is a lot of growing to do, which is expected for a 20-year-old prospect who hasn’t played a game over rookie ball yet.

The Pirates feel good about developing catchers defensively, having catching guru Glenn Sherlock on the Major League staff and minor leaguers adopting the weighted ball program Jacob Stallings and bullpen catcher Jordan Comadena developed to improve his pitch framing. The concern will be mostly hitting, where he has excellent results so far, but over a very small sample.

Watching his swing, Rodriguez does a good job keeping his head steady and getting his hands through the zone quickly. He doesn't profile as a power hitter, but he will run into one from time to time:

Rodriguez can also play first base and the outfield, so his defensive versatility helps hedge the bet on him. He would be most valuable behind the plate, though, especially since he becomes the Pirates’ best catching prospect by a large margin. This has long been a sore spot for the organization. While Stallings emerged as a late-bloomer and was named the team MVP in 2020, it has been years since the Pirates have had a legitimate catching prospect in the farm system.

Fellows, 22, did not pitch in the minors in 2019, with the Padres deciding to shut him down to manage his workload after going on a deep playoff run with Vanderbilt that year. He has a very good pitcher build, listed at 6-foot-5, 205 pounds, with a smooth delivery from his 3/4ths arm slot:

There is a lot of arm action there which looks to be causing some unnecessary stress on his elbow. We've seen some Pirates pitchers, like Jameson Taillon and Max Kranick, simplify their windup to try to prevent that. That's something to watch going forward with Fellows.

His fastball sits in the low 90s with a potentially plus-slider. His stuff would probably play better out of the bullpen, and given the number of highly rated starting pitching prospects in the lower half of the farm system, it might be better to make that change sooner rather than later.

Bednar could potentially be in the mix for a spot in the bullpen opening day. He’s had brief cameos with the Padres the last two years, and while neither has gone particularly well, he has flashed signs of promise. His repertoire consists of a mid-90s fastball, a curve and perhaps most intriguing, a splitter with drop:

If you want to talk just pure stuff, Bednar has it. FanGraphs gave the fastball and curveball 60-grades and the splitter a 50. Relievers don't usually have three plus pitches. The problem is control. It's not so much walking batters as much as it is missing the glove and leaving pitches up. 

Bednar is going to be a project for Oscar Marin. His pitches mirror each other and he can get movement. If he can put the whole package together, he can be a late-inning reliever. But since the Padres are in win-now mode, they didn't have the patience to try to develop a reliever like that right now.

Cruz, 21, has really good strikeout numbers pitching in the lower levels of the Padres' system, with FanGraphs mostly crediting that to his good control. His curveball has 1-to-7 break and is probably his best pitch:

That was a curveball out of the stretch. Here's a fastball out of the windup:

Those gifs are from a video by Chris Kuisolek.

The arm path is lot longer and starts from a higher point during the full windup. He also shows the ball more on the backside. All this might need cleaned up if he can't find a consistent release point.

His fastball sits in the low-90s, though he could grow into a little more velocity. If he doesn’t, that control might not be enough once he reaches the upper levels of the farm system. Then again, soft-throwing lefty relievers tend to hand around longer and get second or third chances.

When a trade like this happens, there is always a bit of a "new prospect smell" that can cloud the judgement of a return. Even so, the Pirates acquired a quickly rising center fielder, a potential catcher for the future and some young arms that could fit into the bullpen some day. It's a good haul. 

And although it's not fair to draw this comparison, Musgrove came to the Pirates in 2018 in a similar deal that brought four players back. In that Gerrit Cole deal, the Pirates prioritized getting players with higher floors to guarantee they'll get something back. Here, they're going for higher ceilings.

Musgrove is a talented pitcher, but with only two years of team control remaining, he was not part of the Pirates' long-term plans. Someone in this group could be.