Yankees, Mariners among teams allegedly interested in trading for Pirates All-Star Bryan Reynolds

A few Major League Baseball teams are looking for a center fielder. Their eyes are locking on Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star Bryan Reynolds.

According to Jon Morosi of the MLB Network, a significant market is building for Reynolds, with the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners in front of the pack.

#Pirates All-Star CF Bryan Reynolds is drawing significant interest in the trade market, with the #Yankees and #Mariners among potential suitors, but the team feels no pressure to move him. He won’t be a free agent until after 2025, and an extension remains possible. @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) November 11, 2021

Reynolds had a .302/.390/.522 slash line in 2021. He added 24 homers, 35 doubles, eight triples and 90 RBIs in his third MLB season. The Pirates have four years of team control before he becomes a free agent in 2026.

A normal team wouldn’t consider trading Reynolds. In fact, a normal team may be considering when it should work out a long-term extension for him.

But this isn’t a normal team. This isn’t a normal fan base.

This team is more concerned about maintaining a profitable bottom line than it cares about winning.

The fan base has been brainwashed to always care about prospects in the system more than it cares about players at the major league level.

As Morosi pointed out, the Pirates don’t have to listen to these offers. Nor should they. If they don’t keep a player like Reynolds, who would they ever keep?

But these are the Pirates we’re talking about. A franchise that — at every turn — will swap out “team control” for “cost certainty.”

It’s because minor league prospects are always going to cost less than All-Stars at the big league level. Even if you need that kind of player to occasionally — you know — win games.

Pfft! Who cares about that? Reynolds clearly isn’t selling tickets. But the perpetual cycle of prospect acquisition sells false hope.

False hope that some magical day, in some magical year to be determined, at some magical point in the future, this massive collection of young prospects will coalesce all at once to get the Pirates to the promised land.

It’s always easier to advance that narrative with rosters at three levels of minor league baseball — with players the public has never seen play — than it is with guys who have been thrown together with an insufficient supporting cast en route to 100 losses in Pittsburgh.

Doesn’t it just feel like yesterday that Reynolds and Kyle Crick were going to justify the Andrew McCutchen trade? And Joe Musgrove, Jason Martin, Colin Moran and Michael Feliz were going to justify the Gerrit Cole deal?

And drafted players such as Tyler Glasnow, Jameson Taillon, Austin Meadows, Shane Baz, Cole Tucker, Mitch Keller, Will Craig and Kevin Newman were all going to establish themselves as everyday players who were going to join those guys and make this team into a playoff contender again?

But shame on me. Here I am, convicting the Pirates of something they haven’t done yet. Reynolds hasn’t been traded, and there’s no proof that he will be.

Unfortunately, with the Pirates being who they are as a franchise, when you see a little smoke, you always assume there’s a fire. I’ve seen their rosters burned to the ground too many times to count over the past 30 years to ignore that tweet from Morosi.

Hopefully, this fire gets extinguished before the flames get fanned.

On a team such as the Yankees, Reynolds might be good enough to help them get them beyond clubs such as the Rays, Red Sox and Astros.

I’m not naive enough to think Reynolds is good enough to turn the Pirates into a pennant winner by himself. So, dealing him would make sense from that perspective. In theory. If a haul of prospects comes back in return.

In theory.

However, to make that theory work, whichever player among that batch who becomes the next Bryan Reynolds first is going to have to stay in Pittsburgh beyond his mid-20s.

And I’m also not naive enough to believe that’s ever going to happen.