GM Ben Cherington says Pirates 'right in the middle' of trade talks to upgrade offense

As Ben Cherington expressed his belief in the Pittsburgh Pirates in one breath, the general manager addressed their need for offensive improvement in another while talking about the July 30 trade deadline.

What Cherington wanted to make clear Wednesday morning is that he won’t be making deals in reaction to Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, when the Pirates failed to provide run support for Paul Skenes despite another sensational start by the rookie phenom.

“I’m sure it triggered some people,” Cherington said. “But, no, because we’ve been experiencing this thing all year. We started this process several weeks ago, knew where we were as a team, knew how we were going to approach the deadline. As we’ve gotten closer to the deadline, it really has become just looking at the roster broadly, how can we improve it more than any particular spot? A single game can’t push us off that. There have been some really good baseball games played here the last few days. Last night was one of them. Unfortunately we lost it. Just about continuing to find ways to get better.”

The Pirates (51-50) remain in playoff contention entering Wednesday’s series finale against the St. Louis Cardinals, trailing the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers by seven games but only 1 ½ games back in wild card standings.

Cherington said the Pirates are actively speaking to the other 29 major league teams about potential deals, whether that’s in the traditional prospects-for-major leaguers form or by swapping majors leaguers with fellow contenders to address their respective needs. He didn’t rule out the possibility of the Pirates being both buyers and sellers.

“So you have a relatively small amount of true sellers and clearly available players — and a lot of teams in the middle who may be trying to do a little bit of both, who may be trying to help themselves but not wanting to take off the major league team in a way that hurts,” Cherington said. “I think it’s going to be really interesting. We’re right in the middle of it. We’re talking to every team. We’re going to keep working at it. We want to find a way to improve the team. Hard to predict how that’s going to play out. But we’ll keep working at it.”

Cherington also emphasized that there are trades the Pirates could have already made and trades they could make at the moment but that they “haven’t yet found the match that makes sense for us.”

The next week should crystallize their vision, with a center fielder or corner outfielder the most glaring needs but also the potential for upgrades at first base, second base, catcher and in the bullpen.

“While it’s true, if you look at our team in terms of how we rank inside the league, we’ve been a little better on run prevention than we have on scoring. That’s a fact. So it makes sense that we would like to improve scoring, like to improve offense,” Cherington said. “Given the dynamic that we’re seeing in the trade market — and not just the supply-and-demand thing, but in particular the positions players that are more likely available — it’s just a smaller pool than it is in many years.

“There are players out there who would help our offense, no question. We’re thinking about and talking about players like that. But there are also players we have to look carefully and say, ‘Is this actually going to help us? Is this actually better?’”