Tellez hit .300 in August but only .116 in 43 September at-bats.
Only six games remain in the 2024 MLB season, and the Pittsburgh Pirates are well out of a playoff chase. For non-playoff teams, September is a microcosm for playing young and talented guys who are looking for an opportunity to break through at the Major League level.
That hasn’t fully been the case for the Pirates. Billy Cook and Nick Yorke are now in Pittsburgh; both didn’t happen until halfway through September. Yorke had to wait until Sept. 16 to make his debut. While Cook and Yorke received the call to the big leagues, Liver Peguero and Joshua Palacios waited for their phones to ring again. Their ringers went off on Tuesday, which resulted in notable Pirates moves.
The Pirates have designated first baseman Rowdy Tellez and outfielder Michael A. Taylor for assignment in the final week of the season. Tellez and Taylor are out, Peguero and Palacios are in. It’s not surprising that the Pirates moved on from two struggling hitters, but they cut ties with Tellez and Taylor with SIX GAMES left instead of a month ago when they were under .500 and out of the race.
I just don’t get it. Why now? Even though moving off Tellez and Taylor would have made more sense when rosters expanded and no need to keep them around on expiring contracts, it may ultimately have to do with the almighty dollar.
Ethan Hullihen, a Pirates fan who keeps track of the financials around the team, noted back in December that one of Tellez’s incentives includes a $200,000 bonus for recording 425 plate appearances. Tellez owns 421. He’s four short – basically one game’s worth – from collecting another $200k.
It’s pure speculation on Pirates Twitter’s part, and we don’t know the true reason behind the timing of these transactions. It’s not like people are attempting to fit a square peg into a round hole. Who knows what is true or not, but it’s a valid argument.
Tellez. 29, slashed .243/.299/.392 with a .891 OPS in 131 games, his lone season as a Pirate. He totaled 18 doubles, 13 home runs, and 56 RBIs during his Bucco career, but his most memorable moments came on the mound, all for the wrong reasons. He hit .300 in August. but significantly struggled in September, hitting only .116 in 43 at-bats.
Tellez pitched three times in 10 days for the Pirates as the wheels fell off after the trade deadline. He gave up two runs in 2.2 innings and was funny for one outing, but became the third position player in Pirates history to pitch in one season, a sign of everything that went wrong for the 2024 club. All came during the Derek Shelton era.
Taylor, 33, hit 20 home runs in Kansas City last season. He hit five in 113 games as a Pirate. A .193 hitter signed for $4 million in spring training, Taylor became one of the Pirates’ worst hitters and struck out 105 times. His monthly splits were startling. Taylor hit .226 in April, a mere .125 in May, .147 in June, a respectable .263 in July, but fell apart again with a .153 and .200 average over the last two months.
He drove in 21 runs in 300 plate appearances and owned 12 stolen bases. Was Taylor around to help Oneil Cruz learn the outfield? I heard that wasn’t the case.
Before Tuesday’s game, Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked Derek Shelton about the ongoing speculation. Shelton denied the reasoning and stated, “it did not factor into the decision at all.” The roster moves were more in line with the end of the minor league season.
The oddity of the entire situation is the timing. Doing this now makes no sense. It should have happened months ago, let alone when the Pirates were out of it. Tellez rode a hot June and July into a full season of mediocrity. Taylor played well defensively but owns by far the worst OPS in all of baseball (.543), if qualified.
Pittsburgh hosts the NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers to begin the final series of 2024 at PNC Park before playing the Yankees in New York to put a bow on this failure of a season filled with disappointments, bullpen meltdowns, poor decision-making, a concerning lack of offense, and a team on pace for the same amount of wins with Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, and Cruz added to the roster. That’s not good enough and is one of the first of many dominoes that will likely drop over the next few weeks into October and November.