We’re past the two-year anniversary of a trade that has made a significant impact on the Pirates, the Astros and perhaps Major League Baseball as a whole. In January 2018, the Pirates sent right-hander Gerrit Cole to the Astros for a package consisting of righties Joe Musgrove and Michael Feliz, third baseman Colin Moran and outfielder Jason Martin.
Was the blockbuster worth it for Houston? Sure. Cole absolutely dominated in their uniform for two years and helped them to an American League pennant last season. But he’s now a member of the Yankees, who signed him to a record contract worth $324MM over nine years last winter. Has it been worth it for Pittsburgh? Debatable. Feliz and Moran haven’t amounted to much more than replacement-level players in the majors, while Martin has failed to register solid numbers at the Triple-A level. There’s at least one silver lining in Musgrove, who has emerged as a quality starter for the Pirates.
Let’s start by acknowledging that now-former Pirates general manager Neal Huntington was hamstrung by the team’s low budget. As a result of owner Bob Nutting’s unwillingness to commit a relatively enormous amount to any player (to this day, the biggest contract the Pirates have given out belongs to Jason Kendall, who signed a six-year, $60MM deal 20 years ago) there was no way the Pirates were going to be able to extend Cole – a Scott Boras client. And Cole, although a former No. 1 overall pick who logged ace-like numbers at times in a Pirates uniform, was not the Cy Young-level hurler he is now. Cole ate up 203 innings in his final year in Pittsburgh, but he also recorded a 4.26 ERA/4.08 FIP. No question that’s a useful output, but the run prevention was nowhere close to elite.
Whether or not you want to rail against the overall return the Pirates got for Cole, it’s clear they received at least one valuable player in Musgrove. Now 27 years old, Musgrove showed well in Houston from 2016-17 and has held his own in Pittsburgh during his two seasons there. He registered a 4.06 ERA/3.59 FIP in 115 1/3 innings in 2018 and put up similar numbers last year. Musgrove’s 4.44 ERA across 170 1/3 frames doesn’t look amazing, but he was near the top of the league in other important categories. He ranked 22nd in the majors in K/BB ratio (4.03), 24th in FIP (3,82), 30th in fWAR (3.3) and 34th in xFIP (4.31; that tied Madison Bumgarner, whom the Diamondbacks signed to a five-year, $85MM contract in free agency).
None of this is to say that the Pirates emerged from the Cole trade in great shape. They won 69 games last season and haven’t been a playoff team since 2015, after all, but their recent struggles certainly haven’t been the fault of Musgrove. Going forward, he’ll make a rather affordable $2.8MM this season – his third-last arbitration-eligible campaign – and could continue to improve his stock before his team control expires. Just how long Musgrove will stay a Pirate is in question, though; depending in part on whether they return to contention and if he’s amenable to an extension, the Bucs could decide Musgrove’s expendable if they’re not willing to make a long-term commitment to him.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
to be fair, the combined value of Musgrove, Moran and Martin is nothing to sneeze at. that’s like half of PIT’s talent not named Newman or Bell.
bryan reynolds says hello
yeah true that was a bit of an oversight.
Bryan Reynolds is no slouch
Not sure why you didnt replace Moran or Martin with Feliz. By season end, if played, he will be their closer.
While PIT cant boast about developing elite level talent at other positions, they have been proven to be a closer factory, and by end of this upcoming season, this may a more balanced trade.
i dunno. he’s terribly inconsistent. i liked him as a prospect but i havent seen enough translate yet to be sold.
Last year he did fairly good. Really just had one bad game where he gave up like 5 runs in a third of an inning vs the Dodgers as an opener. Other than that, he was terrific. Just needs to cut down on the long balls.
haha. funny. i mean, not really.
I don’t care for the return, but Musgrove is valuable for them though. He will have some good trade value if they decide to trade him, cause he’s a 3 or 4 on a contending team. I just hope the Pirates sell low on Archer (maybe to the Astros lol), and the team he goes to tells him to stop throwing his two-seamer so much and he turns back into an all-star.
It’s not like they got killed in the trade. They got some useful pieces. They didn’t get anyone with a high ceiling, just decent, solid players. Teams have done worse (cough, Indians).
Either you win the World Series or you are no better than the Orioles . Astros have no silver lining from trade
You must be fun at parties. Christ.
The Dodgers are well better than the O’s
Imagine believing this.
That’s like saying Mike Trout isn’t any better than the best player on the Orioles because no rings.
If you’re not 1st, you’re last. Literal translation.
If you’re Mikel, you’re no fun at parties. Loosely translated.
Lol imagine Mikel Grady ran MLBTR. An article about evaluating any trades would just be “Neither team won the World Series so it was a failure. End of story.”
Well at least the Bucs still have the 4 players while the Astros have nothing but a draft pick if they even still have that.
And loads of trash can lids!
And a World Championship, which beats Colin Moran every time.
Wk-They won the championship the year before they got Cole,a championship which will go down in history second only to the Black Sox loss.
$60M being the highest contract ever given out is straight up criminal
Well, its almost $90 million in todays dollars which is still damn ridiculous. Of todays team I only see Reynolds as a lockup contract. I think that Bell is a Boros player which means no extension.
Yea, unless the Pirates drastically overpay, Bell should be traded next off season. The demand for a guy like him might actually go up if they implement the DH for 2021.
It only looks bad because Cold exploded under Brent Strom’s coaching and Houston’s data-heavy approach. If not for that, there’s no reason to expect he would have been anything close to what he was with Houston for the last two years with Pittsburgh. The thing Pittsburgh deserves criticism for is not evolving their methods of developing pitchers. In terms of the deal, they got fair value for a couple seasons of what was at the time a guy with #1 starter stuff but #3 starter results.
BK-Your post is spot on.Something should have registered with Hurdle or Searage that they had an ace pitcher not pitching like an ace.He was the first pick in the draft the year after Washington got Strasburg and Harper in back to back years.Cole had some injury problems and did not want to pitch in Pittsburgh after they gave him the normal low salary for second year players.He was also better when he pitched for the very good teams that they had 2013-2015.I am surprised that they could not get more quality in return but Cole had evidently not shown enough in the last two years with the Pirates and other GM’s knew that he would need to be traded.
I don’t think being a low budget team is a good excuse to justify this deal when Cole made a bit over $20 million combined in his two years with the Astros.
If the Pirates couldn’t fit that into their payroll then I don’t know what to say other than glad I am not a Pirates fan.
So they will end up in last place one way or another, so why would Nutcase spend any money
If only Pirates dealt with Yankees instead
Package of Frazier/Andujar and others worth so much more
They were asking for that package. The Yankees were only willing to deal Frazier plus smaller pieces. The Astros deal was/is probably better.
Blaming Huntingdon for taking the best of the bad offers he got, rather than the other 28 GM’s for making serious attempts at landing a TOR arm, sort of has it backward.
People act like he was offered a bus load of top 20 prospects and just said no.
This is what happens when teams KNOW you have to trade a guy.
Outstanding.
Pirate fans have rehashed this trade over 1000 times.NH got quantity but not quality.It was the best that he could do.The only consideration was to wait until the next trade deadline.Pirate philosophy is to trade 1-2 years in advance of free agency to get something for their good players and that is a normal consideration for the small market teams.
Cashman on the other hand could have had a WS championship if he would have given up Andujar who was the one who did get hurt and cannot field anyway.Nobody notes that but it is his job to win the WS.
The return was far better than a comp pick. At least the pirates front office was able to see that eventually locking up Cole long term just wasn’t happening. They got what they could and should be commended for it, all things considered.
Welll….the thing is that it was an off-season deal, and there was no compelling reason to trade Cole at that moment. You can’t tell me the Bucs couldn’t get a deal at least that good at the trade deadline.
Pity Pirate fans. Have the best city view of any ballpark in the majors, and I love that campy bridge fans walk over to get to the ballpark. But you have an owner who throws around nickels like they’re manhole covers.
Best that’s ever gonna happen in Pittsburgh with this guy owning the team may be a handful of .500+ seasons and/or a shot at the last wild-card. Currently, either one of those scenarios occurring is, at minimum, ten years down the road.
Lou-Small market teams have won once since 1991 so the Pirates are in the same boat as seven other teams as far as potential to win a championship.
You must be very smart though if you can predict with certainty ten years down the road.
Very so true. Cashman job is to win Championships. He should of given up Andujar for Cole. Cubs fans I’m sure much rather have the Championship than Glyber Torres right now. Cashman always refuses to give up that top prospect for an ace. He did the same thing years ago with Cliff Lee and Lee beat them in the playoffs when he ended up in Texas.
Could argue they would have won had the Astros not cheated….
MLB-Even the best and richest teams have windows of opportunity that eventually get shut down for a few years.Look at the Red Sox now.
The Yankees are the historic best so they will almost always have a good team.In general the Dodgers have it right to have a fine farm system but they do not seem to want to pay for the relief pitcher to put them over the top.There are no guarantees in baseball but sometimes the GM has to take a chance as they are the guys who are supposed to know the odds.
It is baffling how utterly great every part of the dodgers except relief.
Pirates should be contracted. Absolute joke of a franchise.
The franchise is a historical fixture in baseball and shouldn’t be lost. The owner should go.
Bill Mazeroski’s home run. Enough said.
Go-Unfortunately that and the two 1970’s teams are about all that there is really left for that generation to remember and the future is not very rosy.
Why look at the past, when we need to create a future. That’s not going to happen with nutsag as owner.
IMO the best move the pirates have made since signing Russel martin and getting AJ has been cleaning out the coaching staff. I like them and they did fairly well for us but it quit working. Ray in particular.
A marginal improvement in pitching will make a nice sized difference to the ’21 team and that mostly sits with the coaching staff.
the second half offensively was a great deal worse than the first half likely do to the poor performance and lack of motivation which points to Clint.
Similar with the pitching. As horrible as the pitching was in the first half, it was even worse in the second half. I could see a couple pitchers being poor, but top to bottom it wasn’t very pretty which points to Ray.
Maybe with this time off the Staff can watch enough video and talk enough with the players to help them and jump into a season quicker.
Spot on Joe W
I remember people saying Cole would get let it up in the AL, especially by the Yankees. Now, he’s the best pitcher in the AL.
What was the yankees offer? Just curious if since the trade the players they offered have produced more WAR. I think frazier was in but they didn’t want to send Andular. Does anyone remember?
94- see previous comments above
so Frazier and…who? hard to judge that package without full info. id prefer the new package over Frazier alone by a mile – and im a big Frazier fan.
Pirates could have kept Cole for two years at 20 million. They chose not too. They should have traded him to the Yankees for the better deal. This team will be cellar dwellers for the next ten years. Bob will not spend any money. Same old news. I am not going to any games this year until bob spends some real money.
Army-see several accurate comments above about the proposed Yankee trade for Cole.
all they got for Cole was a bag of baseballs, Musgrove is 4th or 5th starter, Moran is just a good utility in fielder, 25th man on TB, will out of BB in 5 yrs. and who knows about the other 2… Being from Pgh. everyone is sick of Nutting , they will be lucky to win 70 games this year!!!
Steve-unfortunately there are many teams this year who will not win seventy games.
At least if there is no baseball this year, nutbag will save millions. At least we can not say the pirates suck. At least it will keep up from being an embarrassment in the mlb.
I cant believe the author didnt mention this or any of the comments, but it should also be taken into account that because the pirates traded away cole, they felt the need the very next year to move meadows and glasnow for archer which i feel like HAS to he mentioned somewhere when discussing the cole for musgrove deal.
Archer and several million to the Ray’s for Wendle, Roe, and a couple pitchers not on the 40 man roster. Pittsburgh trades Bell and a rp+ for a sp prospect and prepare to move any piece not part of the extremely long-term plan for the best possible return while restocking a barren system. They’ll start seriously entertaining younger free agents after year four, trade for a couple veterans, and look at acquiring an aging Trout from the team that never got him there after year five. Year 6 they hope it all comes together before Trout nose dives but are well enough stocked with prospects and MLB talent for the future to look bright. Sorry guys, just the way I see it. Good news is they come back like they were with Marte, McCutchen, Bell, Cole, Tallion, Glasnow all ready at the same time with others and reinforcements.