The New York Mets were aggressive in their pursuit of starting pitching this offseason, landing Freddy Peralta. A new report shows that the Mets also made their rounds in other avenues over the past few months.
According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, the Mets explored plenty in the starter market, including extensive discussions with the Pittsburgh Pirates involving multiple arms.
“The Mets were all over the starter market,” he reported. “They checked on Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, but got indications it might take their five best prospects and thought even for the majors’ best pitcher it was too much.”
“They felt they were the runners-up to the Cubs to acquire Miami’s Edward Cabrera and were among the 8–10 teams trying for Ryan Weathers, who went from the Marlins to the Yankees. They talked to the Pirates extensively about Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler and Johan Oviedo (who was traded to Boston),” he added.
Braxton Ashcraft and Bubba Chandler are two of the Pirates’ most intriguing young pitchers, while Johan Oviedo, before being traded to Boston, was a more immediate rotation option. The Mets’ interest in that is intriguing for a few reasons, but not moving on from them shows the Pirates have some level of interest in really building this thing up over the next few years with young starters.
From the Pirates’ perspective, those conversations reinforce how highly the organization views its pitching pipeline, and why it was unwilling to move controllable arms even when engaged with a win-now club like New York, which also has a nice farm system.
Pittsburgh has quietly built one of the better collections of young pitching in baseball, and if the offense can get going, it’ll be one of the more intriguing teams in baseball.
For a Pirates team still in between rebuilding and trying to win, these talks show where they stand. Rather than moving young pitching for prospects, Pittsburgh wants to build its rotation behind Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, and the next wave that includes Ashcraft and Chandler.
Hopefully, it’ll work out in the near future, and we can see these young studs get going on the bump.