Pirates general manager Ben Cherrington told reporters, including Rob Biertempel de The Athleticthat the club has acquired a left-hander Manny Banuelos from the Yankees for cash considerations. No corresponding move would be required, as the Pirates already had a spot open on their 40-man roster.
Banuelos, 31, was in the Yankees system in 2008 when he was just 17 years old. He has long been considered one of the top prospects in the system, appearing on Baseball America’s Top 30 Young Yankees list for seven consecutive years, from 2009 to 2015.
He was traded to Atlanta in 2015. david carpenter y: chasen shreve and made his MLB debut that year, though injuries limited him to just 26 1/3 innings. He then bounced around the minors for several seasons, playing in the Braves, Angels, Dodgers and White Sox systems. The pale sock gave him his second MLB chance when Bañuelos pitched 50 2/3 innings for them in 2019, though he faltered with a 6.93 ERA in that time.
In 2020 and 2021, he took his employee status to another level, signing with the Mariners before joining the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s Fubon Rangers and then the Mexican League’s Sultan of Monterrey.
The Yankees signed him to a minor league contract in January, returning him to the organization where he began his career. Bañuelos pitched well in Triple-A, tossing 30 2/3 innings with a 2.35 ERA, a 24.2% strikeout rate, a 9.7% walk rate and a 45.6% ground ball rate. Based on that great performance, he finally got the call to join the Yankees after so many changes.
He spent just over a month with the Major League team, pitching fairly well over 8 1/3 innings. He has a 2.16 ERA on the season so far, along with a 22.9% strikeout rate, 8.6% walk rate and 62.5% ground ball rate in that small sample. Despite that strong showing, Bañuelos lost his spot on the roster last week, likely due to a lack of options.
Despite his long and winding career, Bañuelos has only accumulated two years of service in the MLB. That makes it a pretty reasonable truck for pirates. If he can maintain any of the promising results that he has shown this year, they could maintain it in the future, when they will no doubt expect to be even more competitive than they are now. He too makes a lot of sense in the short term given the current situation at the club. behind anthony band was recently DFA’d and traded to the Blue Jays on the left Cam Vieaux as the only left-hander in the club’s bullpen. Recently, the team relied on Vio to clean up, as he was sent to pitch the eighth inning on Friday in a 9-1 loss to the club. The Pirates let him take a hairspray to save their remaining arms, as he wound up throwing 56 pitches in one inning of work, allowing eight runs (seven earned). The addition of Banuelos will give them a new arm from the south side to inject into their tag team mix.
