Ben Cherington wants to approach Major League Baseball’s trade deadline without focusing on improving in one specific area and targeting a certain type of player. Instead, as he’s said on a number of occasions in recent months, the goal is to find ways to help the Pirates get better for a potential run towards a playoff spot.
“I think, as a general default rule as a front office, we want to remain as open-minded as possible,” Cherington said on his weekly radio show on 93.7 The Fan Sunday. “There are different ways to win games. The old adage is ‘a run scored is as valuable as a run prevented,’ and vice versa. We just need to search for ways we can help this 26-man roster be even better as we pass into August. Whatever ways those are, it could come in any form.”
Cherington acknowledged the reality of the team’s struggles to score runs this season. They rank 21st in all of baseball and are among the bottom three National League teams in that specific category. While the club could certainly emphasize the importance of bolstering the lineup with an offensive-minded acquisition, Cherington prefers having that open-minded approach.
“We’re not only focused on offense,” Cherington said. “We’re looking at an entire 26-man roster and asking ourselves, ‘Where are the opportunities to improve this roster in a way that helps us in 2024 and also puts us in a position to keep getting better after 2024?'”
Over the last two weeks, the Pirates have taken significant steps towards becoming buyers at the deadline. Entering Sunday, they were winners of a season-high six consecutive games and eight of their previous 10. They’ve scored the fourth-most runs in baseball (54) and their pitching staff has produced the league’s sixth-lowest team ERA (3.09) over the last 11 games.
Still, Cherington doesn’t believe the club’s recent surge, one that has them sitting a half-game out of a wild card spot in the National League, changes anything in terms of what the deadline preparation has been. He said even before this run, the collective feeling was that this team was capable of improving and making a run.
“We were preparing to be in a position to try to add to the team, to try to help the team get better. That was what our preparation has been going back several weeks now and we felt like we could do that, and that was the goal,” Cherington said. “The preparation and the goals haven’t changed, but it is true, of course the wins matter because it clarifies where you are. Certainly the better we play over the next week will continue to clarify that. What it clarifies is the math, basically. It does help the math look better when we win and that helps clarify, ‘OK, this opportunity or this potential acquisition really could make sense,’ whereas if the math is not as good or not looking as good, well then, in some cases it’s harder to justify things. We still have more to learn, but it’s kind of a tale of two things: It hasn’t changed our outlook on the team, it hasn’t changed our preparation or goals, but the wins do matter in the sense that they clarify for us specific decisions or opportunities that either might make sense or might not make sense.”
Upon the conclusion of the MLB Draft, Cherington said phone calls have already picked up. There is a different dynamic to the trade market with the amount of teams contending for playoff spots, but things can certainly change within the span of a week. Sellers will begin to express their intentions to do so and buyers will work to improve their teams for the stretch run. Cherington said he expects there will be the traditional deals swapping prospects for major-league players, but there could also be situations where contending teams might work with one another, too.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see where it all leads the Pirates, who continue to play quality baseball and could improve even more with a few external additions.
“I’ve said before, we want to find ways to help this team get better,” Cherington said. “It’ll be on us to work as hard as we need to and keep the phone lines open to figure out where those opportunities are.”
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