After several years of mostly treading water, the Pirates are in a full-blown rebuild. Over the course of a month, they have traded away three of their best and most recognizable players – Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon – bringing back a haul of 11 prospects.
For fans, the start of a rebuild is often a depressing time. They’ve grown attached to these players and now the club is punting away any chance of competing for the playoffs for a couple years. In reality, if the Pirates had kept these three and even added any free agent on the market, they still wouldn’t have been able to compete in 2021. It’s the classic Branch Rickey “we finished last with you, we can finish last without you” harsh reality, times three.
If there is anything to ease the blow, it is the appeal of new prospects. Shiny, new players who are, for a very brief time, without fault with their new club. I’ve written about all three prospect hauls, including the five players they got for Musgrove last week and the four that came over from the Yankees on Sunday for Taillon, so if you want to dive deeper on each individual player, go there.
Here, we’ll explore a much broader topic: Did the Pirates actually get a good deal in these three trades?
Back in a November Mound Visit, I theorized what Adam Frazier’s trade value could be, using the surplus value model. (The irony is not lost on me that of all the trades the Pirates have made this offseason, Frazier has stayed put.) If you want to get a primer on surplus value and future value, I go into more detail in that piece, and here are some helpful links that can fill in some blanks.
The short version is one WAR has monetary value (right now, the standard industry going rate is $9 million, though the pandemic could negatively affect it going forward), so if you multiply a player’s WAR by that total, you get how much value they provided. Subtract their salary and you have surplus value. Future value is similar. Each prospect is given a grade on the 20-80 scale, and through the research of people like Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli of the defunct The Point of Pittsburgh and Craig Edwards of FanGraphs, we can take predictions for what each grade prospect will provide in future surplus value. It’s just a model and each player can be anything from a bust to an MVP, regardless of their grade, but these are good rules of thumb.
The Pirates didn’t acquire any players on Baseball America’s top 100 in these trades, so we will be operating on Edwards’ data for players who fall in that 40-45+ future value range.
First, we have to look at what the Pirates gave up. Bell ended up settling before going to arbitration with the Nationals for $6.35 million. Musgrove and Taillon signed for $4.45 and $2.25 million, respectively, so the trio will make just over $13 million in 2021. All three have one year of arbitration remaining, and factoring in raises, they could make about $22 million combined if they each play well (about $10 million for Bell, $7.5 million for Musgrove and $4.5 million for Taillon). Let’s say these three will make $35 million during this season and next.
Of the 11 players the Pirates acquired in these three trades, here is how they break down by grade:
45: OF Hudson Head, RHP Wil Crowe, RHP Miguel Yajure
40+: RHP Eddy Yean, INF Maikol Escotto, RHP Roansy Contreras, OF Canaan Smith
40: RHP David Bednar
Omar Cruz, Drake Fellows, and Endy Rodriguez were not graded on FanGraphs’ scale. They still bring value in the return, but it won’t be measured here.
Totaling up those eight players who did earn a FanGraphs grade, their added future value is $29 million at the moment. I have to stress that last part because new prospect lists are coming out daily throughout the industry. It’s a busy time, and some of these scouting reports are outdated. A couple of these players will probably stay the at the same grade, but others will change.
Consider these educated guesses, but I believe Crowe will drop to 40+ after being hit hard in his Major League debut, while Yean moves up a spot to a 45. That evens out, so no change in the Bell trade. I wouldn’t be shocked to see either Head or Yajure be graded as a 50, but I’ll give a more conservative estimate and say they both become 45+. They’re on the upswing and Head could flirt with a top 100 spot come midseason. Rodriguez probably gets bumped up to a 40-grade player, too. If that happened, the trade package would be about $35 million in future value added.
So roughly $35 million in salary and $35 million in future value means the Pirates traded Musgrove, Bell and Taillon for about $70 million in total value, or a combined eight WAR. If that was a betting line, I think I would take the over on the amount of WAR those three produce over the next three years, but you have to look at what the Pirates traded away here. Bell is coming off a terrible season and has had only one year where he was worth at least 1.0 WAR. Musgrove has outstanding peripherals and could have the best year of his career with the Padres, but he never really broke out with the Pirates. Taillon hasn’t pitched since May 1, 2019 and is coming off a second Tommy John surgery. Teams assumed a lot of risk trading with the Pirates, and risk lowers the asking price.
That said, this is still a good haul of prospects the Pirates brought back. We’ll have to wait a couple years to see if their bet on player development was the right call, but there’s a collection here of rising players, MLB-ready arms with unexplored upside and young players with potential. Those are the types of players they need to be targeting in order to get back on track. Even though the buyers could end up on the winning end of these deals for the short-term, the Pirates restocked the farm system. If a couple of them hit, it'll be well worth the acquisition cost.
