The Pirates Have to Test the Market on Carmen Mlodzinski

Over the weekend, MLB Trade Rumors released their top 40 trade candidates for this winter.

Now to just talk about the validity of that list, some of them are people that we've heard connected in the past, floated either previous winter or at the trade deadline, or the teams just in such a clear and obvious rebuild, and some of them are speculative.

Every time there is like a speculative one, like there's good reason, they're not just pulling names out of a hat.

And number 30 on their list this year was Carmen Mlodzinski.

We've seen the Pirates be willing to trade starting pitchers the last couple winners.

If they were to do that again this winter, would he be the best candidate?

Good morning and welcome to OffBeat here on North Shore Nine.

My name is Alex Stumpf and this is a daily look at your Pittsburgh Pirates.

Carmen Mlodzinski, I personally think there are 150 starting pitching jobs available at the start of the season.

And in my opinion, Carmen Mlodzinski is one of the best 150 starting pitchers out there.

Honestly, if I was to make a top 100 list, he'd be close.

He'd either be cracking the back end of it or he would be, in the honorable mentions.

He has been basically a number six starter in Pittsburgh the last two years.

Starting the year in the rotation and then in 2025 being optioned down to the minors because he wasn't performing.

And in 2026 being demoted to the bullpen because Jared Jones came back.

And that demotion came with a lot of baggage, including him making some statements the day it happened.

Him telling the team later that weekend that he wasn't ready to pitch out of the bullpen and being placed on the restricted list briefly.

Now he did.

That was a very brief time on the restricted list.

But this didn't come out of nowhere.

It wasn't something that just came out of the blue of, whoa, what do you mean, Carmen, that, you're going to be talking to your family and your agent because of this.

Mlodzinski has, for years, positioned himself that he wanted to be a starting pitcher.

He's really pushed for that opportunity.

And that's fine.

And look, we've talked about this a lot in the past.

But just going to the bullpen and how many days he had in between outings, it never sat right with me.

It wasn't until the end of the year, whenever he was doing these shorter outings, that I felt that he was actually making a real impact in the bullpen.

And I have spoken very highly of his bullpen work down the stretch.

I think he has the potential to be Andrew Miller.

That guy who could go multiple winnings, theoretically, if he goes one inning, it could be a leveraged spot.

He could be used anywhere.

He's your Swiss Army knife.

He is your bullpen ace.

Might not be the closer, but he is your best reliever, your most valuable reliever in terms of war, in terms of win probability added, in terms of being him.

In a perfect world, I would say just slot him into that role for next year.

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

I don't know how receptive he is going to be to that.

Now, he did it.

There were no incidents after he came back from the restricted list.

There were no incidents in 2025 whenever he was returned from AAA Indianapolis as a reliever.

But I don't know.

There's just something, whenever it comes to that, it always sticks a little.

Like, this is forever part of his story here in Pittsburgh.

We look at this rotation, and assuming Mitch Keller is healthy, there is a clear top five.

You're not going to boot Mitch Keller to the bullpen.

He has the contract.

He has seniority.

At this very given moment, Bajinsky's the number six.

Now, a lot of people this winter are going to say, well, just trade Mitch Keller.

The two years, $38 million he still has left on his contract.

Try to get out of as much of that as possible.

Reallocate those dollars into signing free agents and adding to the 20-20-17.

And I get that argument.

But if you trade Keller, I'm using a lot of those dollars into this free agent market.

You have to add another starting pitcher.

Because I look at Wilber Dotel and Antwone Kelly and Khristian Curtis, and I'm like, yeah.

If those are your depth guys, that's fine.

But it's a far cry than what I think a lot of people would have thought a year or two ago, in terms of, like, their depth.

Those guys have, like, four or five upside.

There is no Mike Burroughs, who has, like, middle of the rotation, or Luis Ortiz, or those type of guys.

So if you trade a starting pitcher, I think you need to add someone who could either be a swingman or a starter in the mix anyway.

And that could be part of the case if you do want to float the Carmen Mlodzinski.

My point with Keller is that just strikes me as a pure salary dump.

If you are not going to make your 2020-17 better through a Mitch Keller trade, it would have to be the Mitch Keller trade.

And then you parlay those dollars into signing someone else.

Which, with a short offseason, it's going to be difficult to be able to pull off two moves like that.

So I don't know.

I think if I'm trading a starting pitcher, I'm trading Carmen Mlodzinski for a couple reasons.

One, what we talked about, where does he exactly fit into this role?

And two, I think he'd be one of the more attractive pitchers available in this market.

I'm going to get into more of that in a second here.

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I look at this free agent class in particular, and honestly, there are four guys I look at, and I'm like, yeah, they're real studs.

Skubal, believe it or not, I think is actually really good.

He is the prize of this free agent market.

He might be the most coveted free agent starter we've hit the market since Gerrit Cole.

He is really good.

Okay, he is the S tier.

He is at the very top.

What's next?

Who are the guys who would be like your number two or three starter?

You've got Trevor Rodgers.

You've got Sonny Gray.

You've got Kevin Gossman.

Michael King, probably.

If you are a Foster Griffin believer, yeah, but all of those guys come with significant risk injuries, or injury risk, or age risk, being over 36 years old.

You'd be like, well, what about Flaherty?

Well, there's injury risk there.

Chris Bubik hasn't really stretched out a lot.

I look at this free agent class.

Trevor Rodgers and Sonny Gray are really good.

Foster Griffin and Michael King are good pitchers.

There are quality guys you can throw into your number two, your number three, your number four slot.

But they all come with risk, and they're all going to cost a lot of money in an offseason where owners are insisting there is going to be a cap installed.

So, how big a contract do you want to give out this winter?

I look at the trade market, and there's Rossman, there's Detmers, there's Kirby, there's Hancock.

Again, really good pitchers.

But with the exception of Rossman, they're all going to cost a ton in terms of prospects.

And Rossman's also going to cost a lot, but it's a one-year, $20 million contract.

That's the only reason why that price would go down.

Detmers is going to cost a lot.

Kirby would cost a lot.

Hancock would cost a lot.

And there's no guarantee those guys are going to be traded.

I look at Carmen Mijinsky as a middle-class option here that will not cost you a lot of money that this market does not have.

He is set to make or enter arbitration for the first time.

He has three years of team control remaining.

Going off of Matt Schwartz and MOBTR's projections, he's slated to make $1.6 million.

That's the projection.

If I was a team, I get there is a lot of risk of last year was the 123 innings, the most he's thrown in the major leagues as a pro.

He hasn't really thrown $160, but I think if you go $120 and you pitch six months, you can reasonably assume this guy can throw $140, $150, $160 maybe.

If you do that, here you have someone who could definitely bolster your rotation.

There are a lot of teams where I think Carmen Mijinsky, contending teams, where Carmen Mijinsky would slot in very nicely as a number three or four.

He's not going to cost a lot in terms of dollars, $1.6 million.

Those next two years of arbitration are going to be raises off of that $1.6 million, so he's never going to break the bank.

If he doesn't work, he has a really good track record as a reliever.

He can find different ways to help your club.

I think that makes him a very attractive trade piece here.

And whenever I look at this team that could use an infielder, either a second baseman or a third baseman, they could use another outfielder, they could use just a right-handed hitter in general to try to add some balance,

to try to counteract how terrible they were against left-handed starting pitching last year.

If Carmen Mijinsky was the guy you were floating, I think that's, you could get a lot for him.

I think you could get the hitting version of Carmen Mijinsky, whoever that might be, whether that's an Otto Lopez, whether that's a speculation right there.

I don't want to connect them, but like, just that mindset.

You could add a controllable, young, affordable infielder who can bolster this team in 2027 and stick around for years to come.

Or you could go the more Brandon Lowe route.

I didn't see a lot of players on this top 40 list that, we haven't seen before that I really would have thought like, oh yeah, he would definitely help.

But if you wanted to get, if you were thinking like, man, if you could pull off a Hunter Goodman three-team trade or something like that, the way they did last year with Mike Burroughs, that's pure speculation.

I don't have any, insider info on that.

But it's, if you're floating them out there, you can create a lot of trade capital to acquire at an area of need.

And you could still have, the Khristian Curtis's, the Wilber Dotel's, the Antwone Kelly's be in that swing man role.

Yeah, you'd have to bolster your bullpen in another way.

It doesn't really create a lot of money flexibility, financial flexibility, but if you want to just acquire a stud hitter for you, who is right now your number six starter, I have to at least see what the market says.

It's going to probably be a fast-moving market.

We're going to see how much of that is free agents, how much of that is trade.

And Pirates have, I think, something that's rare.

A good pitcher, a good starting pitcher, who's not going to break the bank and isn't going to cost you a bunch of top 100 prospects.

Now, they're going to want major league players, but if you want to just make a good old-fashioned baseball trade, help your rotation, and help your payroll situation, I don't think there's anyone better on the market right now than Carmen Mlodzinski.

So, I think this is going to be an interesting month of transactions.

And I wouldn't be shocked if Carmen's name is floated more than a couple times.

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