Ben Cherington may still have a way to patch the Pittsburgh Pirates’ bullpen, but the damage from letting it get this bad is already done.
The Pirates are sitting on one of the most attractive trade chips before the draft: the No. 34 overall pick. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel reported that Pittsburgh has been shopping the selection for about a month, and at least six teams have tried to get it. The price tag, according to McDaniel, is a quality Major League reliever.
That’s the kind of arm the Pirates need, and have needed for a while.
Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays moved the No. 37 pick to land Bryan Baker, a controllable reliever who now has 25 saves and a 1.73 ERA in 2026. Baker is under team control for two more seasons. That’s the level of return Cherington is being asked to chase now, only with a better pick in hand.
If he can turn No. 34 into a late-inning reliever with multiple years of control, that would be a real win. For a small-market club trying to stay in the race, trading draft capital for immediate bullpen help can make a lot of sense. But a smart deal now doesn’t erase the bigger problem: the Pirates should never have reached this point.
They came into the season with postseason expectations and a pitching staff that was supposed to carry them there. Instead, the bullpen was built with almost no room for things to go wrong.
Injuries and regression hit, and there was no trustworthy backup plan waiting behind them. Don Kelly has been forced to keep turning to shaky options, leaning on the same relievers in too many high-pressure spots while games that should have been there to win slipped away.
Cherington has had years to stock the organization with more pitching depth. He knew the bullpen didn’t have proven late-inning certainty.
He knew a team trying to contend couldn’t spend months testing relievers in leverage situations. Still, he waited until the unit was actively costing the Pirates games before moving toward a real fix.
Now the pressure is on. McDaniel reported that other teams expect the pick to be dealt before the draft, and Cherington has to show he can turn it into the kind of reliever who can change the shape of Pittsburgh’s season.
Even then, the trade would only slow the bleeding. It wouldn’t undo the fact that he let the wound get this deep in the first place.
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