Pirates Cannot Afford to Punt at the Trade Deadline

that was an eventful weekend in Cincinnati. Ryan O'Hearn is out for most of the rest of the season. A new reliever is in, Spencer Horwitz is back, and the Pirates find themselves a game under .500 on trade deadline day.

But you've got to storm ahead at this point. You have made the bed. It was a rough week. But you've got to take one more swing.

Good morning, and welcome to OffBeat here on North Shore Nine, presented by FanDuel. My name is Alex Stumpf, and this is a daily look at your Pittsburgh Pirates.

And this is one of the biggest days on the baseball calendar. This is the trade deadline.

And it's hard to believe, but one week ago today, the Pirates beat the Diamondbacks and had the wild card.

It has been a very bad week since then.

Friday's game, time will tell. There's a lot of season left, but Friday's loss has the potential to be a real backbreaker.

Having that lead late, and then not having a setup man. You go to Wilber Dotel. He blows it in the eighth.

Then you have the play with Nick Gonzales and Brandon Lowe to send across the go-ahead, deciding run.

And then O'Hearn gets hurt, and man, is that a brutal injury for this team.

Because O'Hearn is not just war and OPS and RBI. He is one of those guys that makes this club go.

He is one of those guys that whenever he came in, he is going to be a culture setter.

He helps make this clubhouse come together, go.

And it's not like he's gone completely. He can still do stuff behind the scenes.

But he told reporters in Cincinnati, it's an estimated six to eight weeks, according to Colin Beasley of the Post-Gazette.

That is a brutal projection.

And yeah, he beat the projections once to come back from the injured list.

I don't know if you can count on that again.

And how I talked earlier, or I guess last week, about how all the resources, this trade deadline should go into pitching.

Now, without O'Hearn for most of the rest of the year, I guess you look to see if you could get a right-handed outfielder.

Because I can't count on Marcel Azuna to play the field ever.

And the bat has not played this year.

So, yeah, I guess you do have to look.

First base should be covered, though.

Spencer Horwitz coming off of the injured list.

That's big.

That was always the hope.

That, whenever these guys come off the injured list around, August, early August, that it would be just as big as, like, any deadline acquisition.

O'Neal Kreese will probably be doing rehab assignment in the not-so-distant future.

He's eligible to come off of the injured list on August 7th.

That would be big.

But without O'Hearn, I think you have to find a way to supplement that roster at this point.

I don't think you can count just on internal guys getting healthy right now.

You have to take a look.

And you have to continue to look at the bullpen.

My priority is still the bullpen.

Even though the Pirates made a trade for Camilo Doval.

We'll talk about him in the second half of this show.

First half, we're just taking the state of the union.

Of a team that's without one of its leaders for most of the year.

For most of the rest of the year.

And then you've got a pitching staff where Mitch Keller did not have a good day.

He just pitched completely naked in Cincinnati.

And Paul Skenes had a pretty horrible day.

Just didn't get into his mechanics.

Got hit hard.

Pulled after 100 pitches in four innings.

And then whenever you look at, Braxton Ashcraft had a better outing.

But there's still the innings concern.

Bubba Chandler, innings.

Jared Jones innings.

There's a lot of concern with this pitching staff that I have to be sure about my offense right now.

And I can't be as sure without Ryan O'Hearn being part of it.

This is one of the things that this team has done well so far this year is the bounce back.

That they haven't had a lot of really long, prolonged stretches of losing.

That they do a pretty good job fighting their footing and getting back on track.

The criticism is they haven't really strung together long winning streaks or weeks where they just catch fire.

this is a team that has been with arm's length of 500 pretty much the entire year.

And you're just hoping, if you're the team, like, yeah, we're playing 500 ball and we are going to catch fire in August and September.

That's how we get over the top.

And there's still only a handful of games out.

Like I said, this time last week, we all went to bed with the Pirates holding that third wildcard.

It's not like they're so terribly far behind.

That's why I'm not buying this talk of, oh, you have to trade Brandon Lowe, you have to trade Soto, become sellers, abandon ship.

They don't have that right now.

That's a luxury this team doesn't have.

After seven years in this regime where they haven't been all that close too often, you can't punt a year where you are close.

So, yeah, the O'Hara injury is a blow.

Yeah, falling below 500, not ideal.

But this is a team that's still not too far out of the postseason.

And even though they have a lot of question marks and doubts surrounding them, you got to make the bet.

This is if you're not going to do for this team, what team are you going to?

So, this is going to be a very eventful day.

We're going to see if the Pirates can add some more bullpen help, if they do get that right hand and bat.

Do they have someone who slots in and is O'Hearn for the next two months?

Do they have a Marlin Bird trade in them?

We're going to have to find out.

They did make one trade, though, for Camilo Doval, who we have seen could end up being an impact, but there's one split that really does concern me.

I'll talk about it after this break.

The Pirates traded for Camilo Doval on Saturday, sending over prospects Omar Alfonso and Luis Suarez.

In terms of acquisition cost, I think it's fine.

I like Alfonso, but I think he's probably a backup catcher, third string, journeyman catcher, unless he really hits.

And whenever you look at the catching room they have right now and the three catchers on the 40-man roster and how he would have to be added to the 40-man this winter, I see it.

It was minimal acquisition cost, and Doval, if he puts it together, not only would it help the bullpen this year, but he is under team control for 2027.

So that is a fine setup.

If he doesn't, then you cut him and it's no real loss at the end of the day, prospect-wise.

So it's a bet worth making.

But it doesn't address one of the biggest issues with this bullpen.

That they can't get left-handers out.

I wrote for Book Rule Bucks how left-handed hitters had like the fourth highest on-base percentage against the Pirates.

Bullpen.

Even though this is a bullpen that has Gregory Soto, that has Mason Montgomery, that has Evan Sisk, has Brandon Eisert.

It's been half lefty for a good chunk of this year.

And lefties are still thriving because there isn't a right-hander who could get lefties out.

Yarn Miras hasn't.

Isaac Mattson hasn't.

Ron Miriuchu hasn't.

It's just nobody has right-handed.

And Camilo Doval entered with a 999 OPS allowed against left-handers.

I see how Doval can help this bullpen.

He throws hard.

He gets a lot of ground balls.

He has experience as a leverage guy.

And there aren't a lot of people in that bullpen who can say that.

Like we talked, Wilber Dotel was brought in to pitch the eighth inning trying to protect a two-run lead.

Wilber Dotel was a starting pitcher in the minors his whole career.

It really wasn't up until here.

And even then, like he was doing those multi-inning things and it didn't work out.

Pirates blew that game.

Doval, at the very least, is someone with experience that if Don Kelly turns the ball over to him in the eighth inning, it's like, well, at least that's a real leverage arm.

I see an outcome where he is a good change of scenery candidate.

He had some pretty horrible home road splits.

Get him away from Yankee Stadium.

Get him away from New York and all the, media circus and junk that happens up there.

I could see him as a change of scenery candidate to work out and strengthen this bullpen.

But I really view him, at best, as like what we thought Dennis Santana was going to be.

If it's a leveraged spot and it's a lot of lefties, go to Gregory Soto.

If it's a right-hander, go to Dennis Santana.

Well, now go to Doval instead.

It's a fine pickup for the bullpen, but they need more.

And that's what makes today so important.

There are concerns on the offense with O'Hearn out.

With how they have not hit left-handed starting pitching all year.

They could use a right-handed bat.

They could use a right-handed pitcher who can get lefties out.

Hey, they could probably use another right-handed reliever on top of that as well.

There's a lot to this roster that just getting an average player, I think, really does lift.

It lifts – a rising tide lifts all boats.

And I think they could get someone like that.

They could get a couple players like that.

Because that was a very bad weekend in Cincinnati.

It feels like the season is – it's still in there.

The playoff odds are, what, still 22%?

I believe, according to fan graphs.

That's not unreasonable.

It's a lot better than we've seen a lot of the past couple years.

But they need to supplement this team.

That was a rough weekend in Cincinnati where they lost games they should have won.

And they lost key players in that on the roster.

This is whenever you make it right and you set yourself up for that last run.

And you hope this team that's played 500 ball for four months figures it out the last two months of the season.

Big day.

Looking forward to it.

We will break it all down in tomorrow's episode.

So you better subscribe to Offbeat here on North Shore Nine presented by FanDuel.

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Thank you so much for listening.

Have a fun draft day.

Be sure to keep refreshing social media.

We'll talk again tomorrow.

All right.

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