The Pittsburgh Pirates pulled off a surprising trade just before Tuesday’s deadline, acquiring pitcher Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays for top prospects Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow. Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan confirmed the deal was completed and reported the impressive return for Tampa Bay. Sources: The Rays will be getting Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow back in the deal for Chris Archer. @JimBowdenGM first mentioned them as possibilities. — Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 31, 2018 [Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are open: Sign up now for free] Momentum toward a deal started picking up over the weekend when it became clear Tampa Bay was more open to trading Archer. The asking price remained high, but the Pirates met it. Archer, 29, was among the few true frontline pitchers available. Making him more appealing to inquiring teams is the fact he’s under control for another three seasons and will cost only $27.5 million. The Rays realized teams will pay more for more control, so it made sense for them to dive in. Archer isn’t having his strongest season. He finished April with a 6.61 ERA, but has since lowered that to 4.31. Through 17 starts, he’s posted 102 strikeouts over 96 innings. He also missed five weeks with an abdominal muscle issue, but has been remarkably durable over his career. He made at least 32 starts every season between 2014 and 2017. Does Chris Archer make sense for the Pirates? For Archer, this feels like a lateral move to what many would consider the National League’s version of the Rays. From Pittsburgh’s standpoint, it fills the void atop their rotation following the offseason trade of Gerrit Cole to Houston. Another key for Pittsburgh is control and affordability. Archer is set to make $7.6 million next season, which is quite a bargain for a No. 1 or No. 2 starter. Archer then has team options for $9 million in 2020 and $11 million in 2021, meaning Pittsburgh could retain him for more than three seasons at a great rate even for them. Story continues The cost was steep. Both Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow were considered top prospects before graduating to the big leagues. With Pittsburgh not seemingly positioned to seriously contend this season, it’s easy to question why they would part with two potential building blocks now. In Archer, they clearly feel they’ve added a foundation in which that building will be constructed. Whether it works out will be determined in the years ahead. Tampa Bay Rays trade ace Chris Archer to the Pirates. (AP) What does this trade mean for the Rays? The Rays get younger and deeper with this deal, and of course the payroll gets a little lighter too. It’s the same pattern we’re used to with the Rays, who now only have $10 million committed to their payroll next season. The Rays' payroll commitments for next year now stand at ~$10M. That's $8.167M for Kiermaier, $2M they're still paying Longoria. Everyone else is in arb, or pre-arb. LOL. — Andrew Stoeten (@AndrewStoeten) July 31, 2018 Archer is certainly one of the biggest names they’ve dealt. The big return helps justify it in this case. Meadows, 23, might be the top prospect to be moved at this deadline. He spent some time in Pittsburgh earlier this season, hitting .292/.327/.468 slash over 165 plate appearances. His power game hasn’t developed yet, but Meadows has impressed with his ability to use the entire field and handle both right-handed and left-handed pitching. He figures to be a Rays regular right away. Glasnow, 25, hasn’t quite turned the corner yet in his development. He’s a big talent with a good mix of pitches and an aggressive approach. However, his command has let him down at times. He’s yet to receive a real chance to start consistently in the big leagues. That opportunity might be what finally helps him get over the hump. More from Yahoo Sports: • Jeff Passan: Astros reveal their character in trade for closer Roberto Osuna • 49ers’ Richard Sherman rips Jerry Jones and his ‘plantation mentality’ • College hoops scandal is far from over: 5 pressing questions • Pat Forde: 40 things to know about the college football schedule<doc-sep>The Pittsburgh Pirates have consummated what seems like a yearly flirtation with acquiring Chris Archer . After a dizzying deadline day that saw a steady buildup of rumors that swelled and crested like a beautiful, crystalline wave of goodness, the Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays. I’m told the Pirates have a deal in place to acquire Chris Archer. — Stephen J. Nesbitt (@stephenjnesbitt) July 31, 2018 To say this is a stunning development would be to understate just how much of a monumental shift this move is. General manager Neal Huntington has seemingly wiped away his well-earned reputation for prospect hoarding. Bucs Dugout will update this post as news of the package going to Tampa becomes available. UPDATE - The pieces are starting to come in<doc-sep>It’s unclear how good Chris Archer actually is. It’s unclear how good Austin Meadows actually is. And it’s unclear how good Tyler Glasnow actually is. But put those three names together and the Rays and Pirates have consummated the most fascinating deal of the MLB trade deadline. Let’s start with Archer, the Rays’ longtime ace, who is finally leaving Tampa Bay after years of trade speculation. He’s on one of the most team-friendly (or, for Archer, least player-friendly) contracts in the majors, and Pittsburgh will gain club control for the next three seasons for just $27.5 million. He’ll help with the Pirates’ current playoff push, and he’ll help in the future — but perhaps not by nearly as much as his reputation implies. Since the start of 2016, over the course of 498 1/3 innings, Archer has amassed a collective 99 ERA+, meaning his ERA has been 1 percent worse than average. Out of 108 pitchers with 300-plus innings pitched in that span, Archer ranks 70th; for comparison, new teammate Iván Nova, who embodies back-end competence but nothing greater, has a perfectly league-average 100 ERA+ in that span. More advanced stats agree that Archer is better than that statistic suggests, but his DRA — a Baseball Prospectus ERA estimator that accounts for a variety of external factors when judging pitchers, like catcher framing and opponent quality — has grown worse every year since 2015, too, and there are legitimate question marks about his peripherals even beyond what he’s displayed during this frustrating, injury-interrupted season. He’s essentially a two-pitch pitcher, throwing his fastball and slider a combined 87 percent of the time this season, which has consistently limited his ability to retire opposite-handed hitters; he has struggled to finish innings with men on base; and since the start of last year, he’s allowed the highest hard-contact rate and lowest soft-contact rate of any qualified starter. Bad luck is a useful explanation for statistical struggles for most talented pitchers, but it’s not bad luck if a pitcher just gets pounded game after game. Archer runs high strikeout and low walk rates and has all the sorts of loud skills a pitcher could want, yet he’s already — surprisingly — going to turn 30 in two months, and he’s now three full seasons removed from his last stint as a veritable awards contender. Yet he’s not the only member of this trade whose valuation has declined in recent years; the players going to Tampa Bay fit that profile, too. Meadows peaked as the sport’s no. 6 prospect before last season, but he’s essentially stalled since. In roughly a full season’s worth of Triple-A at-bats, the oft-injured outfielder had just a .701 OPS, and after a hot first 11 games in the majors this season, he’s hit .239/.293/.327, with four times as many strikeouts as walks. Glasnow, too, has lost a portion of his prospect luster, after thundering onto MLB’s top-10 prospect lists before both the 2016 and 2017 seasons. In the majors, though, the 6-foot-8 fireballer with a trebuchet for an arm has proved irrepressibly wild, with high walk totals every season: Since the start of 2016, more than 400 pitchers have thrown at least 100 innings, and Glasnow has the group’s second-highest walk rate. Still, Meadows is just 23 years old, Glasnow 24, and each boasts a half-decade or more of team control. This is a typical Rays move, as they shuffle established major leaguers for yet more youngsters with upside — Tampa Bay’s full reported return is Meadows and Glasnow plus a player to be named later — and trading for prospects with a “post-hype” tinge makes sense if Tampa thinks their flaws are fixable. The Pirates’ perspective is less crystalline. Pittsburgh has parlayed a 16–9 July record into actual contention and sits 3.5 games back of a wild-card spot. Given the relative weakness of their roster and crowd of teams surrounding them in the race, their playoff odds this year are still low (13.1 percent at FanGraphs, though that number will rise with the addition of Archer) — but that’s OK, at least on the surface, because Archer offers years of control and, importantly for Pittsburgh, years of cheap control. The logic falters, though, when this trade is considered in context, as the latest link in a chain of rather inexplicable moves. Pittsburgh traded Gerrit Cole in the offseason, receiving a light package from Houston in return that included zero top prospects and has brought Pittsburgh a total of 0.8 WAR this year. Joe Musgrove has shown flashes as a mid-rotation starter, but third baseman Colin Moran has been a slightly-below-league-average hitter and abysmal defender, and Michael Feliz has an ERA north of 5 in relief. Again, those players offer years of cheap control, and Pittsburgh’s version of Cole wasn’t the Cy Young–contender version to which he’s blossomed in Houston, but that deal looked bad for Pittsburgh at the time, and Tuesday’s trade seemingly compounds that frustration. Archer is durable and reliably decent, at a minimum, and removed from the horrors of the AL East, he might well reclaim his dominance from earlier this decade. But six months ago, the Pirates traded an ace-potential pitcher for an unsatisfying group of prospects; today, they exchanged better prospects for a probably worse pitcher. One wonders whether, had the Pirates made neither noteworthy move, they would have been in better shape for both the rest of 2018 and beyond.<doc-sep>
For years, Rays starting pitcher Chris Archer had been a constant in terms of the rumor mill. Much of that was just that other teams wanted to pry him from the Rays instead of the Rays shopping him, but this time it turned out different. Archer has finally been dealt, and it's to the surprise-buyer Pittsburgh Pirates. Archer, 29, is 3-5 with a 4.31 ERA (93 ERA+), 1.39 WHIP and 102 strikeouts in 96 innings. Archer is a big name, but he's only been around league average in run prevention since the start of the 2016 season (4.10 ERA, 99 ERA+). He's still a big strikeouts guy, and durability is major plus here, as he's worked at least 194 innings in each of the last four seasons. Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage has a track record of success in working with guys acquired from outside the organization. The league switch is a plus as well. Further, Archer isn't just a rental piece here. He works well for the Pirates because he's cheap and under team control for several seasons. 2019: $7,666,667 2020: $9 million club option 2021: $11 million club option Per Jim Bowden of CBS Sports HQ, Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow are headed back to Tampa Bay. There's also a player to be named later included in the package. Meadows, 23, has played all three outfield positions this year. Most of his work in the minors came in center. In 165 plate appearances as a rookie this season, he's hitting .292/.327/.468 (115 OPS+) with eight doubles, two triples, five homers and four steals. Baseball America pegged him as the 44th-best prospect in baseball entering the year. Glasnow is a 24-year-old right-handed pitcher. In 141 1/3 career big-league innings, he's pitched to a 5.79 ERA, 4.90 FIP and 1.71 WHIP. This season, he's at a 4.34 ERA along with 72 strikeouts in 56 innings. Walks are an issue, though, as he's offered 5.8 free passes per nine innings through his career.