The Pirates Traded for Four Relievers in Three Days, Then Released Their $12 Million Hitter
Between Saturday and Wednesday, Pittsburgh rebuilt the part of its roster that had cost it games all summer and cut loose the offseason signing that was supposed to fix the other part. Here is what the club actually did, and what it gave up.
Anyone who watched the Pirates this summer knows the shape of the thing. A starter hands over a one-run lead in the seventh. Somebody warms. The lead is gone by the time the inning ends. It happened often enough that it stopped feeling like variance and started feeling like the roster.
Pittsburgh relievers went into deadline week with a 4.34 ERA, 22nd among the 30 major league bullpens. General manager Ben Cherington spent the following five days doing something about it, and then doing something about the lineup too.
Four arms in three days
The first move landed Saturday, August 1, before the deadline crowd got going. The Pirates acquired right-hander Camilo Doval and cash from the Yankees for catcher Omar Alfonzo and outfielder Luis Cruz, both minor leaguers.
Doval is 28 and has 109 career saves in 138 chances, most of them with San Francisco, where he was a National League All-Star in 2023 and led the league with 39 saves. He was not that pitcher in New York. He carried a 4.54 ERA over 39 2/3 innings this season with 18 walks against 39 strikeouts. What he still has is velocity, a cutter that runs to 101 miles per hour, and a ground-ball rate above 57 percent. His expected ERA, which accounts for how hard hitters actually made contact, sits at 3.61.
Then came Monday, August 3, and the six o'clock deadline. The Pirates made three more trades inside a few hours.
They got left-hander Luke Weaver from the Mets for infield prospect Sammy Stafura. Weaver was the best reliever moved at this deadline by most accounts. He had a 1.84 ERA in 42 outings for New York, 45 strikeouts against 11 walks, and opponents hitting .162 with a 0.82 WHIP. Jason Mackey of the Post-Gazette noted that Weaver had allowed one earned run in his previous 30 appearances and that right-handed hitters were batting .099 against him.
They got right-hander Kirby Yates from the Angels for minor league righty Kyle Robinson, a deal Colin Beazley of the Post-Gazette reported the return on. Yates is 39, missed the first month with left knee inflammation, and has a 3.95 ERA with 36 strikeouts since coming back.
And they got right-hander Lake Bachar from the Marlins for three minor leaguers: pitcher Brandan Bidois, infielder Hyun Seung Lee and outfielder Brian Sanchez. Bachar is 31, has a 3.84 ERA across 38 appearances, and has struck out 61 in 58 2/3 innings. He is under club control for another three and a half years.
Weaver, Yates and Bachar all joined the active roster Tuesday in Milwaukee.
What it cost, and what it did not
None of the seven players Pittsburgh sent out was among the organization's top handful of prospects. Stafura was the most valuable piece and ranked around ninth in the system. Cruz was pitching in the Dominican Summer League. The Pirates are deep at catcher, which made Alfonzo expendable.
The Mets included roughly $2.12 million in cash for this season and $6 million for next, which leaves the Pirates paying Weaver something close to the league minimum in 2026 and around $5 million in 2027. The Yankees covered all but about $750,000 of what remained on Doval's salary this year. Doval is arbitration eligible in 2027, so he is not a rental either.
Pittsburgh acquired the deadline's top relief arm and a former All-Star closer, kept both for next season, and is paying less for the pair this year than it was paying its designated hitter.
At last summer's deadline the Pirates sold two-time All-Star closer David Bednar to the Yankees. At this one they bought a reliever from the Yankees, and two more from clubs going nowhere.
What Cherington did not get was a bat. The club had been looking for a right-handed hitting outfielder and came away without one. It also came away without a starter, which matters more than it did a week ago because Mitch Keller's season is over.
The other move
On Wednesday morning in Milwaukee, the Pirates released Marcell Ozuna.
Ozuna signed in February for one year and $12 million, a $10.5 million salary plus a $1.5 million buyout on a mutual option for 2027. For a club that does not spend on free agents, it was the splurge of the offseason, made after Pittsburgh missed on other targets. The idea was to balance a left-handed heavy lineup with a right-handed bat that had hit 39 home runs as recently as 2024.
It did not work. Ozuna hit .203 with a .286 on-base percentage and a .327 slugging mark across 70 games, eight home runs and 29 RBIs, striking out 80 times in 280 plate appearances. By weighted runs created, he produced at 31 percent below league average. He offered nothing defensively and nothing on the bases, which meant the bat had to carry the roster spot by itself.
Manager Don Kelly, speaking before Wednesday's game, said Ozuna "didn't have a season that he would like" and that the club wanted to open the designated hitter spot up so it could rotate players through it. Cherington, asked what went wrong, said "the part on the field just didn't work out." Both men had defended Ozuna publicly for months. Kelly called it "a tough spot, and hate to go through it."
Switch-hitter Ronny Simon was called up from Triple-A Indianapolis to take the roster spot. He is 26 and was hitting .330 with an .889 OPS, seven home runs and 33 stolen bases in 99 games there. The same day, left-hander Evan Sisk came off the injured list and reliever Wilber Dotel was optioned to Indianapolis.
Forty-six games
Wednesday night in Milwaukee showed what the four trades did not fix.
The Brewers won 4-2 for their second straight over Pittsburgh. Paul Skenes took the loss, walking four and giving up three runs in the fourth. The new relievers were not the reason: Bachar worked two innings and allowed a solo home run, and Sisk, in his first outing since coming off the injured list, struck out two in a scoreless inning.
The Pirates got three hits. Brewers starter Kyle Harrison struck out 10 in five innings, and four Milwaukee relievers finished it without allowing another baserunner to score. Endy Rodriguez's two-run home run in the seventh was the whole Pittsburgh offense. Ronny Simon, called up that morning to replace Ozuna, started at second base and went hitless with a walk.
That is where the standings are the reason all of this happened in one week rather than over an offseason.
Pittsburgh is 57-59, fourth in a National League Central that Milwaukee has effectively already won at 71-43. The wild card is the only path, and the Pirates are four games behind Arizona for the third and final spot, with San Diego and Miami both ahead of them in line.
Forty-six games remain. The Pirates have not played in October since 2015, the longest active postseason drought in the National League.
The bullpen that failed them for four months has been replaced almost wholesale. Weaver, Doval, Yates and Bachar now sit alongside Gregory Soto, Mason Montgomery and Sisk, which is a deeper and more experienced group than the one that opened the season. Whether that is enough is a question the next seven weeks will answer, and it will be answered against a schedule that includes a lot of teams with more talent.
A franchise that spent a decade being the seller at this time of year spent five days in August buying, and then ate $10.5 million to clear a spot for a 26-year-old whose contract it had to select out of Indianapolis. Whatever else that is, it is not the Pirates being careful.
Photo: Nick Koehler
Sources: Major League Baseball transaction announcements, August 1, 3 and 5, 2026; MLB.com reporting by Jason Mackey and Mark Feinsand; ESPN; The Associated Press; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporting by Jason Mackey and Colin Beazley; The Athletic reporting by Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon; MLB Trade Rumors; MLB Pipeline prospect rankings; Baseball Reference and FanGraphs statistics through August 4, 2026
