All afternoon, all I wanted was the Pirates to finish their deadline moves up even a little bit early because I knew that at 5 PM I was supposed to be out in Durham to meet up with friends to head out to Raleigh for this year’s Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ festival. When the deadline passed, the Pirates had seemingly been quiet, and I started to work on a quick “Pirates do nothing” post. Then the news got out that they’d swapped Mike Morse for Jose Tabata. Well, that was easy enough to explain. As I finished writing that up, we all found out that they’d swapped Adrian Sampson for JA Happ. Well, hmmm. That required thought that I did not have time for.
The little bit of additional time that not writing about the move at the deadline actually helped give some clarity: shortly after the Pirates acquired Happ, AJ Burnett went on the disabled list. The timeline muddles things a little bit, but my guess is that the decision-making process went something like this:
- The Pirates thought that Joe Blanton would be a more useful reliever than Vance Worley has been, for whatever reason (more on this in a bit), and so they grabbed Blanton and put him on the roster in Worley’s spot. My guess is that they knew they had a trade for another reliever in the works (revealed to be Joakim Soria) and figured to use Blanton in Deolis Guerra’s role, but moved Worley onto the waiver wire first for various reasons that may be procedural or to try and get Worley a landing spot with someone else or who knows.
- They then grabbed Soria, who took Deolis Guerra’s spot
- AJ Burnett pitched like a person that was hurt hours after Blanton and Soria were acquired and Worley was designated for assignment, leaving the Pirates needing a sixth starter, as they’d just designated theirs for assignment.
While we were all trying to make sense of the Blanton-for-Worley swap yesterday, more than a few people pointed out that Worley had pitched fine since he moved to the bullpen in mid-May. His ERA since that move was 3.00 on the nose, and almost half of the runs he gave up were in the unexpected spot-start against the Brewers right after the break. Still, the Pirates obviously didn’t feel comfortable with him coming out of the bullpen; he made a grand total of five appearances in June and wasn’t likely to have more than that in July. There were a few times when he went more than a week in between appearances, and the club pretty obviously immediately favored Deolis Guerra for higher-leverage multiple-inning stints out of the ‘pen after his call-up in late June (Guerra also appeared in ten games in June and July, but his debut was on June 27th).
I sort of alluded to this earlier, but my guess after seeing the Pirates get both Blanton and Soria was that their goal would simply be to shorten games to help a rotation that was already showing cracks before Burnett’s disaster start last night. Friday’s win over the Reds was a great illustration of how this works: Jeff Locke was fine, but not great, and with righty Marlon Byrd leading off the sixth, there was no reason to risk having Locke face him and then create a mess before having to be pulled to avoid having him face the top of the lineup for a fourth time. The Pirates knew they had four relievers to turn to, and so Locke could be done after five (whether Locke would’ve had a better sixth than Jared Hughes is up for debate, of course). It’s hard to have the pen shorten games like that with one reliever in it that you barely use, though, and so my guess is that that’s where the Blanton-for-Worley swap came in: for whatever reason, the Pirates feel more comfortable with Blanton in that long relief role.
Whether the Pirates would’ve rather used Worley in Burnett’s spot over Happ is sort of immaterial: Worley was already DFA and on waivers by the time Burnett needed to go on the DL, and so if the reason the Pirates picked Joe Blanton up was to be a reliever, the Pirates needed another starter. Maybe the Pirates tried to move for Tyson Ross or Carlos Carrasco to fill that role and maybe they didn’t, but those guys didn’t move anywhere at the deadline and that makes it kind of hard to fault the Pirates for not trading for them. JA Happ is JA Happ: he’s got a 4.06 FIP and a 4.02 xFIP this year, compared with career 4.32 and 4.31 marks, respectively. He’s more of a fly ball pitcher than the Pirates typically like, but he’s also a lefty and marginal-type lefty starters at least fit into PNC Park better than righties do. The Pirates also aren’t married to Happ being their fifth starter while Burnett’s out, he just gives them more options. If he doesn’t work out, the Pirates can try Radhames Liz. If Liz doesn’t work out, maybe Vance Worley will clear waivers. If all of them struggle and Burnett’s still not back (which is unlikely, we’re dealing with a finite season here), well, Tyler Glasnow should have some innings in the bank due to his ankle injury (we’ll cross this bridge later). Adrian Sampson was a relatively interesting back-rotation fringe prospect early last year, but he hasn’t really taken well to Triple-A, and he was going to be part of the Pirates’ much-discussed roster crunch this winter. If you’re going to lose the guy one way or another, you might as well get someone that can help you short-term.
Of course, swapping Burnett out of the rotation for Happ creates the exact situation that worried me at the break: the Pirate rotation has been mostly phenomenal in 2015, but a big part of that was Cole, Liriano, and Burnett all pitching well and making 60% of the club’s starts. For now, at least, that trio’s down to a duo that will only pitch 40% of the time, and while JA Happ is a capable big leaguer, he certainly doesn’t bring anything more to the table than Jeff Locke or Charlie Morton. I guess it’s a good thing the Pirate offense has started to wake up lately.
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