5 teams that should trade for Pirates outfielder Bryan Reynolds
The Pittsburgh Pirates have fallen back into the depths of despair, one that Pirates fans are all too familiar with. From 1993 through 2012, the club never even finished above .500, let alone made the playoffs. They won an NL Wild Card spot in 2013-2015 but never advanced past the NLDS. Since then, the Pirates have had one season with a winning record (2018) and finished in fourth or fifth place in all but one season (2016).
In the last three seasons, they have lost 100, 101, and 41 games (in the 60-game 2020 season, or equivalent to 111 losses in a 162-game season).
Part of the reason why the Pirates have been such a woeful team is their lack of payroll. From 2015 through 2017, their average payroll was $95.27 million. That number was still in the bottom third of the league. But in 2021 and 2022, their payroll has been $100.95 million … combined between the two seasons. That low payroll and a slew of bad draft picks have hampered the franchise, by and large, for 30 years.
Things don’t look to be changing on the payroll front any time soon as the club has not spent a lot this offseason and they have not been able to come to a contract agreement with their All-Star outfielder Bryan Reynolds. As a result, he has requested a trade from the club.
Reynolds, 28, has three years left until free agency and in the last two years, he has averaged 152 games a season with 26 home runs, 76 RBI, 27 doubles, a .283/.368/.492 slash line, an OPS+ of 136, and a combined rWAR of 8.9.
With that kind of production, there will be a lot of teams that will be interested in Reynolds but only a few teams have the prospects to be able to get Reynolds as well as the need for an outfielder.