All that for that?
Yep, it appears so.
After one of the worst trades in Pirates history, Chris Archer will return to his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays, Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported on Tuesday night.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan was first with the details of the free-agent signing — one year, $6.5 million.
And thus completes the coda on a Pirates nightmare that started back on July 31, 2018, when the Pirates acquired Archer from Tampa for Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows and Shane Baz.
The three have enjoyed sizable success in Tampa, helping the Rays chart a path to the 2020 World Series, their first in a dozen years, while Archer was a colossal disappointment with the Pirates.
In 33 starts over two seasons, Archer had a 4.92 ERA and went 6-12. His 2019 was arguably the worst of his career, when Archer went 3-9 with a career-high 5.19 ERA and allowed 25 home runs in 23 starts.
Archer’s season was cut short because of biceps tendinitis, and he missed all of 2020 after undergoing surgery to alleviate issues stemming from thoracic outlet syndrome.
The Pirates declined Archer’s $11 million option on Oct. 31, 2020, making the 32-year-old a free agent after buying him out for $250,000. There remained some faint hope that Archer might return to Pittsburgh, though his deal with the Rays more than snuffed out that possibility.
Despite the obvious frustration (and embarrassment) for the Pirates, the deal makes plenty of sense for Archer, who’s looking for a bounce-back year. Archer, who’s 60-80 with a 3.86 ERA in 210 starts, was a two-time All-Star in Tampa and lives in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Archer enjoyed three consecutive 200-strikeout seasons from 2015-17, making 101 starts and whiffing no fewer than 233 during his best years in Tampa. The right-hander was worth a total of 10.5 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) during a four-season stretch starting in 2013, though he totaled just 1.3 during his time in Pittsburgh.
With the Pirates’ move to decline Archer’s option and him signing with his former team, Pittsburgh effectively handed the Rays three of its top prospects free of charge. The move helped Tampa thrive, and it undoubtedly set the Pirates back several years.
The lessons the Pirates should take out of the Archer trade are several, but the biggest one should be the gigantic need to properly develop their own prospects. No way, no how should those three players have even been traded. If this process was effective, they should have been building blocks for the future.
Secondly, the Pirates did Archer no favors by either encouraging or allowing him to conform to their way of pitching — no more four-seamers up in the zone and Archer’s terrific slider off of that. Archer threw sinkers, a pitch he struggled to command.
The results were plenty predictable. Whenever Archer threw sinkers, they got smacked. Only once he returned to his roots in the second half of 2019 did Archer even look like an effective pitcher. Of course, then he got hurt.
After general manager Ben Cherington took over, a big focal point for him has been establishing a player-centric culture. Another way to put it: The Pirates swore they would no longer try to pound square pegs into round holes. They would play to players’ strengths.
This past season saw the team’s pitching program creep into 2021, with a greater emphasis on spin pitches and the type of stuff that made Archer effective. Sinker-usage, meanwhile, dwindled. The move was too little, too late, but it should — along with the other stuff — prevent something this awful from happening again.
Oh, and for anyone wondering: The Pirates and Rays will not meet during the regular season, though Pittsburgh’s third game of its spring training slate will be March 1 — at home against Archer’s new/old team.
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: February 2, 2021, 11:06 p.m.
