GM Ben Cherington says Pirates haven't made 'a single move ... for financial consideration'

Despite trading All-Star first baseman Josh Bell on Christmas Eve and Opening Day starter Joe Musgrove on Monday for prospects, Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Ben Cherington insisted he hasn’t made “a single move this offseason for any financial consideration.”

Instead, Cherington finally allowed that the Pirates are rebuilding, even if he still refuses to use that word. He is in the throes of tearing down a team that finished 19-41 last summer, the worst record in baseball and fifth-worst winning percentage (.317) in franchise history.

“Coming into the offseason, there was no need to move money,” Cherington said Tuesday on a video conference call with Pittsburgh reporters. “We could have just kept the same roster and gone into 2021. There was no need to move payroll for the sake of moving payroll. There was no request to do that. We could have kept the same payroll.”

By sending Musgrove to San Diego only three days after he avoided arbitration by signing for $4.45 million, the Pirates reduced their payroll to a projected $43.55 million for the 2021 season. Only right fielder Gregory Polanco ($11.6 million) and second baseman Adam Frazier ($4.3 million) are set to make more than $3 million this season.

Cherington calls it “committing to young talent.” He said the Pirates remain receptive to making more trades before the start of spring training next month at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla.

“We’re going to continue to keep the phone on, so to speak,” Cherington said, “both for calls coming in from teams who might be interested in our players and if we see opportunities that fit, as I said before, building a talent base that we need to build to win here in Pittsburgh. We’re going to be open to that.”

Cherington said the Pirates also are looking to add players to the major league roster through trades or free agency, with pitching the primary target but also an eye on outfielders and catchers.

The Bell and Musgrove trades brought back seven prospects: five pitchers, an outfielder and a catcher. Of those, only starting pitcher Wil Crowe (Washington) and reliever David Bednar of Mars (San Diego) have any major-league experience. The other prospects they acquired in the trades — center fielder Hudson Head, catcher Endy Rodriguez and pitchers Omar Cruz, Drake Fellows and Eddy Yean — are young, high-ceiling prospects who are still years away.

“We don’t set out to just bring in teenagers,” Cherington said. “That’s not the goal when we talk about trades and when we’re looking at players. We’re trying to incorporate every piece of information, including the risk. Certainly, the younger they are, the further away they are. That does represent some risk, no doubt. There’s risk. There’s talent. There’s taking a subjective evaluation on the scouting side. There’s performance analysis. There’s character. There’s health. There’s just general outside, relative to that risk. We try to bake all that together into a stew and see where it leads us.”

Cherington believes the Pirates have strengthened their minor league system through the trades of Bell and Musgrove, last January’s Starling Marte deal, the MLB Draft in June and international free-agent signings. Baseball America ranked four Pirates among the top 100 prospects, although the highest-rated, Ke’Bryan Hayes, is expected to start at third base and will graduate from that status this season.

“We think it’s improved over the last year,” Cherington said of the Pirates farm system. “We’ve been able to add talent. We think some of those players have improved, to us. That’s the part that’s harder to measure given the year we’ve gone through. Simple way to say it is that four in the top 100 is not enough. We need more than that. We need to just keep going.”