Pirates Trade Former Rounders With Red Sox, Add Two Left-handed Relievers

The Pirates have made three trades in the past two days. Yesterday, they traded post-hype prospects with the Red Sox — struggling right-handed pitcher Quinn Priester for Triple-A 2B/LF Nick Yorke — and added veteran southpaw Jalen Beeks from the Rockies in exchange for minor leaguer Luis Peralta. Then earlier today, Pittsburgh acquired 29-year-old Josh Walker from the Mets for DSL pitcher Nicolas Carreno.

The Pirates’ first trade involved two legendary players. Both Quinn Priester (2019) and Nick Yorke (2020) were first-round picks out of high school and are still in their early twenties. At 6-foot-3, Priester’s prototypical size, mid-90s fastball, and incredible curveball were his pre-draft calling cards. At the time Yorke was a tough eval due to COVID and injuries, and was an amazing starter that year.

Priester pitched very well in the minors but ran into unsettled trouble in his two major league seasons (6.46 ERA, 94 career innings) because his fastball didn’t play. He has lost velocity compared to his peak, when he sits at 94-97 mph, but his sinking fastball also performs below its velocity due to poor efficiency and hit angle. His hitter has put up a .284/.351/.493 line this year, and while he has a few other pitches (slider/cutter and changeup), his curveball remains the only exception. However, because the big-arcing curveball is easy to see in his hand, Priester is forced to emphasize it.

He is now a restoration type project. During Craig Breslow’s first tenure as Boston’s baseball executive, many of the organization’s prospects improved very quickly. Many of them have made significant changes to their delivery and changed the angle at which their pitches approach the plate. It’s possible the BoSox believe Priester is a player for something like this, or that his stuff might play better in the bullpen. At least the Red Sox needed a healthy starter to choose from right now because other 40-man starters Brandon Walter and Luis Perales are in the IL and, although he’s been better of late, Wikelman Gonzalez is walking more hitters in Double-A. to be encouraged by a good conscience. This trade fits the current need of the Red Sox, and they have five more years of Priester’s team control to try to highlight his talent in some way.

The Red Sox also cleared what (initially) may have been the only 40-man position in the league by trading Eddinson Paulino in the Danny Jansen trade, and now Yorke, a key addition to Pittsburgh’s 40-man roster. man this offseason if he doesn’t start within a year. Yorke spent 2024 split between Double- and Triple-A and was hitting .278/.363/.422 combined at the time of the trade. He’s had injury issues (shoulder surgery in high school, toe, back, and wrist surgery as a pro) but has been a hit when he’s been healthy over the past half-decade, including in Triple-A. He has a chance to get a big league look soon and is exactly what the Pirates needed: a good young hitter who can help an offense that has not done well right away.

Yorke’s batting hands are excellent, and his right-handed cut looks good despite his average bat speed. He doesn’t have great upper hand power and swing loft, but he consistently hits the ball hard, with a 46% strikeout rate on the season.

Yorke’s hitting style is all about making hard line drive connections back to the center of the diamond. He probably won’t hit many home runs and instead will hit a ton of singles and sprinkle in doubles – quality contact from foul line to foul line. When you start factoring Yorke’s defense into his report, the lack of dominant power makes his overall profile feel strange. He is not a very good defensive second baseman and is the type of player who is often replaced by a better player late in the game. He also played left field and did so with increasing frequency in the weeks leading up to the trade. Where Yorke plays on defense doesn’t really matter to the Pirates, though, because they need someone, anyone to have an OBP over .300 soon. Yorke should compete for playing time almost immediately, especially with second baseman Nick Gonzales now sidelined with a groin injury.

One odd and specific thing to highlight about Yorke is that he has an extreme reverse split. There isn’t a good online resource for minor league breakdowns, so I turned to what Synergy has on tape of Yorke throughout his professional career, including things like broadcasting Grapefruit League games. The good-hitting Yorke is hitting .284/.368/.456 against righties and .220/.293/.305 against lefties as a pro. His contact rates are about the same for both, so it’s not like Yorke isn’t sensitive to the swing and throws out a ton against lefties, or anything like that. He struggles to pull fastballs in general (he crushes breaking balls), but this is especially true of leftballs. He’s hitting .150 (!) in his career against left-handed fastballs, which he tends to swing inside a lot. His hands just don’t work in line with the plane of lefty balls at all, and maybe this is a bigger red flag than I realize right now. Yorke projects to be a nice part-time 2B/LF (and maybe 1B eventually, too) who bounces back impressively in a large part of the team role thanks to his unusual splits.

As for the rest of the team’s trade yesterday, Beeks is a rental with an agreement of $ 1.67 million. He’s having a decent season where he’s setting his career high in getting innings as a reliever. He sports a 4.74 ERA, an 18% strikeout rate, and an 8.5% walk rate; and Colorado was throwing more fastballs and cutters than ever before in his career as his use of the changeup has been bolstered. His numbers against lefties are quite strong – 24% K rate, 9.5% BB rate – and he ranks third on the Pirates behind Aroldis Chapman, who I think is still traded, and newly acquired Josh Walker.

In exchange for Beeks the Rockies got Peralta, a 5-foot-11, 23-year-old lefty with an excellent slider. He was moved to the bullpen this season and averaged 15 strikeouts in nine innings at Pittsburgh’s High-A affiliate in the first half of the season before being promoted to Double-A Altoona a few weeks ago. Peralta has a loose delivery and a three-quarter arm hole that gives rise/run motion to his 94 mph fastball. His low 80s slider is really bad despite the lack of spin (we’re talking 2,100 rpm, below average) and plays like a strike-getter and finishing pitch. Peralta will likely be added to the 40-man during the offseason and is likely to appear in Colorado at some point next season in the left center field role.

Walker, who was added to Pittsburgh today, is a 6-foot-6 lefty who graduated as a rookie this season at age 29. A recent Division II success story, he bounced around the minors in 2021, pitching in Triple-A on occasion. for the next few years, and started with the Mets in ’23 before an oblique strain sent him to IL for 60 days. He bounced back and forth from Triple-A Syracuse to the majors several times in 2024. Still with a nice frame, Walker has a solid overhand delivery that produces depth on a nice curveball despite its many shortcomings. It’s a bad enough pitch to play as a backfoot weapon against righties, as well as left-handed capacity. He also had a bit of a velo uptick in early 2024, and his ability to consistently get his heater at the top of the zone has helped him get a chase rate north of 40% this year. He looks like a cool average guy. The acquisition of Beeks and Walker is believed to be a precursor to the Chapman trade.

In exchange for Walker, the Mets also brought back 18-year-old Nicolas Carreno from Venezuela. Carreno is a lightning-quick, 5-foot-10 kid who sits 95 and has a potentially good slider. He’s hitting and walking a lot of batters in his second DSL season.