Pittsburgh Pirates Reportedly Intrigued By Idea of Reunion with Veteran Infielder
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Frazier, 32, is a veteran of eight years who started his career with the Pirates. He played for Pittsburgh from 2016-2021, making the All-Star Game in 2021. He was traded that season to the San Diego Padres and then ended up in Seattle in 2022 and Baltimore in 2023.
He’s been to the playoffs each of the last three years of his career with those organizations and would bring in some valuable playoff experience to a team looking to get back to October baseball for the first time since 2015.
Lifetime, Frazier is a .269 hitter with 56 homers. His best year was 2021 when he hit .305 overall. He’s coming off a year in which he hit .240 for Baltimore.
A potential acquisition of India seems less likely. Though the Reds are known to be listening to offers on him, it seems odd that they’d trade him within the division, and that the Pirates would want to send valuable prospect capital to a division rival of their own.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have signed veteran infielder Jake Lamb to a minor league deal. He’ll get a chance to compete for a big league job in spring training.
In those 10 seasons, Lamb has played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Oakland Athletics, Chicago White Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels.
Though he’s bounced around quite a bit since 2020, Lamb had a very solid run with the Diamondbacks from 2014-early 2020. Lamb hit 29 homers in 2016 and then popped 30 in 2017, when he made the All-Star team. He also brought in 105 that season. Unfortunately, he’s never been able to come close to replicating those years. His most home runs in any other season is just seven, which he did in 2021.
The Pirates have a lot of infielders on the 40-man roster so it will be stiff competition for Lamb to make the roster. Ji Hwan Bae, Tsung-Che Chenge, Oneil Cruz, Nick Gonzales, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Liover Peguero, Rowdy Tellez, Jared Triolo and Alika Williams are all in front of him right now.
Pittsburgh finished fourth in the National League Central a season ago but appears hellbent on getting better this offseason. They’ve traded for veteran pitcher Marco Gonzales and signed veteran Martin Perez. They also added Tellez and brought back beloved veteran Andrew McCutchen on a one-year deal.
