Taillon to the Yanks

[torts]

The Yankees will send four prospects to Pittsburgh in exchange, a source said: right-handed pitchers Miguel Yajure and Roansy Contreras, outfielder Canaan Smith and shortstop Maikol Escott

 

https://theathletic.com/news/yankees-jameson-taillon-pirates-trade/S52v1T7WHUg1

[TURBO]

He would have looked nice in a Brewers uni...

[Simba2020]

Another trade a little heavier on quantity than quality for the Pirates.

[brewmann04]

Yes yanks do know how to keep the guys they want in trades

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Smith was a 4th round pick. The rest of these guys were international free agent signings. This is a credit to scouting, and proof that the Brewers need to continue to build their international academies and Latin America scouting. You hit on these guys, and they either turn into quality major leaguers, or are used as currency in team building.

[JosephC]

Return seems about right. Taillion is a huge question mark. Yankees going for the big upside, but they have a lot of uncertainty in their rotation and this move just adds to that. Kind of surprised that they haven't made a bigger push for rotation stability, but they are only a few million under the luxury tax threshold and they may be committed to staying under that number.

[wibadgers23]

Another quantity over quality type trade. Wonder if there’s a team out there willing to give up their 3B for a bunch of low-level prospects?

[Eye Black]

It was the right decision for the Pirates to move Taillon, but would anyone be shocked if he takes a significant step forward with the Yankees.

 

The Pirates have seemingly had a lot of former top prospects that never fulfilled their anticipated promise while wearing black and yellow (i.e. Cole, Glasnow, Meadows).

[JosephC]

I think everyone expects Taillion to pitch well if he is healthy. Don't really agree that he didn't reach his promise with the Pirates. 191 innnings with a 3.20 ERA, 3.46 FIP and 1.18 WHIP in 2018 is a pretty good showing. Just unfortunate that he had elbow problems after that and needed a second Tommy John surgery.

 

Meadows only got 165 plate appearances with the Pirates and hit a pretty respectable .292/.327/.468/.795. Don't think he was viewed as disappointing at all, just think the Pirates blew it and massively over-valued Chris Archer when paying too much attention to his strikeout numbers and not quite enough attention to his run prevention numbers. Glasnow had some significant control issues and the Rays did do a great job with that in 2019 (BB% dropped to 6.1) but that ticked up again in 2020 (9.2). Still much better than when he was with the Pirates when the BB% was up around 13. As far as Cole's dramatic improvement, that is likely due to cheating-

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2776159-absolutely-im-all-for-it-mlbs-stars-debate-pitchers-using-pine-tarIf#:~:text=As%20Buster%20Olney%20notes%20via,)%20and%202%2C157%20(2015).

Cole spin rates with Pittsburgh: 2015 = 2157, 2016 = 2178, 2017 = 2163...then goes to Houston and in 2018 the spin rate goes to 2332. Hmmm, the Astros...very interesting.

[Eye Black]

I think everyone expects Taillion to pitch well if he is healthy. Don't really agree that he didn't reach his promise with the Pirates. 191 innnings with a 3.20 ERA, 3.46 FIP and 1.18 WHIP in 2018 is a pretty good showing. Just unfortunate that he had elbow problems after that and needed a second Tommy John surgery.

I wasn’t trying to insinuate it was necessarily the Pirates fault, my point was that they seemingly had high hopes for these guys at one point to become franchise changing players and it just didn’t fully work out.

 

As you mentioned in Taillon’s case it was mostly due to unfortunate injuries. Taillon spent a long time (3-4 years) as a top 20 prospect in baseball, surely some Pirates fans had grander visions of the career he would have for them.

 

Meadows and Glasnow were both considered top 10 prospects in baseball at one point. It was obviously an ill-advised trade as they were still reaching their peaks (which many of us thought at the time).

 

Cole as you point out, had a maybe not-so-magical spin rate increase boost his results.

 

I didn’t mean to paint a picture that any of those players were failures by any means, just that their star impact potential for the Pirates never fully actualized as once hoped.