With the Pirates season over and done, it’s the time of year where I miss Bucco baseball, and so I look back and old teams, stats, and trades.

In doing so, for reasons I don’t know, the Chris Archer trade popped into my head. The trade often gets remembered as one of the worst in recent memory for the Pirates organization.

A rebuilding team in their first year without stars like Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole that had let a surprisingly successful 2018 season trick them into thinking they were closer than they were.

But while the Chris Archer trade is this crazy enigma in the history of the Pirates franchise. It’s one of those trades that is somehow better, and worse, than you might remember.

To properly review the trade that took place four and a half years ago, we must look at the state of the Pittsburgh Pirates in July of 2018.

I touched on this above, but the Pirates had begun the post-McCutchen era (or so we thought), and along with trading several other key players in exchange for younger players and some utility guys.

But contrary to what many people thought, the Pirates were succeeding in 2018, despite those departures. The Pirates had sported a winning record for a majority of the season, and by the time the trade deadline was rolling around, Pittsburgh was looking like they might be contenders.

The Pirates thought they were, and decided that they wanted to acquire help in the pitching department as they chased a shocking postseason appearance.

It was an incredible story, really. No one had given this team a chance, and yet, here they were. But, the moves they made in acquiring talent at the deadline backfired, in a massive way.

They first traded for Keone Kela of the Texas Rangers. That trade wasn’t bad; the Pirates didn’t feel the effect of giving up Taylor Hearn and Sherton Apostel, and neither became major players for the Rangers.

The second trade, however, was the one for Chris Archer.

Archer had been coming off an All-Star season in 2017, where he led the major leagues in starts, with 34. His ERA was a tick on the high end, hovering just above 4.00 the previous two years, but he had been capable of getting that number as low as 3.23, as he did in 2015, his other All Star year.

He was a reliable arm who you could count on to get a lot of innings, and also a lot of strikeouts, recording a career high 249 in 2017.

Aside from that, Archer was on a vert team-friendly contract for his value on the field, and as we all know, the Pirates love cheap contracts.

The Pirates were very interested, and despite the Tampa Bay Rays being a competitive club, they were willing to move on from the 29 year old.

Despite this, it was a very un-Pirates type move, to be a buyer at the deadline. And perhaps it was this sort of inexperience being in this position that helped lead to this trade.

Archer was 3-5 with a 4.31 ERA in 17 starts when the Pirates acquired him on July 31st, 2018.

In the immediate, the Pirates sent back outfielder Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow, as well as a player to be named later. That man ended up being Shane Baz.

Before we dive into what those players did in Tampa, let’s review what they did in Pittsburgh.

Meadows, a first round pick by the Pirates back in 2013, had made his Major League Baseball debut early on in the 2018 season at 23 years old.

After being called up in mid May, Meadows played in 49 games for the Pirates at the MLB level in 2018. In those games, he slashed .292/.327/.795, with 5 homers and 13 RBIs. It was a small sample size, but he looked like a true major leaguer out there.

It was especially encouraging to see given that his Triple-A numbers from the previous season had left something to be desired.

Tyler Glasnow, meanwhile, was on a recovery path from a harsh start to his major league career. The righty debuted in 2016, but really got time on the mound in 2017, where he started 13 games for the Pirates. During that year, Glasnow sported an abysmal 7.69 ERA and went 2-7.

He struggled with pitch control, walking 44 batters in 62 innings pitched.

The Pirates, recognizing the problems Glasnow was facing, opted to convert him to a relief pitcher when he came back for the 2018 campaign. That season, he appeared in 34 games for the Pirates, this time with a 4.34 ERA in roughly the same number of innings.

Glasnow’s walks dropped while his strikeouts rose, and he appeared to be slowly righting himself in the major leagues. Plus, being only 24 at the time, he had plenty of time to further that progress.

Shane Baz had yet to rise the ranks in the Pirates organization, playing for the rookie league Bristol Pirates at the time he was dealt.

The Pirates stood at 56-52 on July 31st. Little did they know, it was all downhill from here.

Chris Archer’s Pirates debut came three days after the trade, at home vs the. St. Louis Cardinals. He lasted just 4.1 innings, giving up 7 hits and 3 earned runs. Archer struck out 6, but walked 4 and hit a batter, as well as giving up a home run.

Archer recovered somewhat in his second start, earning his first win in Pittsburgh, but largely, was a very unpredictable pitcher for the Pirates.

Some nights he was great, some nights he got lit up.

Archer went 3-3 with a 4.30 ERA in 10 Pirates starts. A lot of his better starts, understandably, came as he spent more and more time in the system. Archer allowed 1 earned run or less in three of his final five starts in 2018, but by the time Archer had seemingly found his footing, it was too late.

The Pirates had collapsed after the trade deadline. Hopes of a playoff appearance sunk as August brought several losing streaks to Pittsburgh. They were able to battle back to a .500 record, and even finished the season with a winning record.

To Pittsburgh’s credit, a winning season given the way the offseason had went was in and of itself, a success story. But it was marred by a desperate leap for the playoffs, only for the team to fall into the ocean instead.

Archer, the team’s prized addition, had been at best, a mixed bag. He did have some quality starts for the Pirates, but the problem had been when those starts happened: too late in the season.

And that reliability in terms of innings also took too long as well. Archer didn’t make it past 5 innings until his sixth start in a Pirates jersey.

Meanwhile, down in Tampa, the seeds of a fleece had already been planted.

Austin Meadows wasn’t utilized by the Rays much down the line in 2018. He appeared in 10 games for Tampa, but was largely kept in Triple-A, where he tore things up.

Meadows slashed a .344/.396/.771 in 27 games with Triple-A Durham, far surpassing his Triple-A Indianapolis numbers from early in the season. He smacked in 10 home runs in Durham and brought in 22 as a whole.

As for Glasnow, the Rays converted him back to a starter, where he took to the mound 11 times to close out the season.

Glasnow went 1-5 after the trade with a 4.20 ERA. That’s not a great number, but to put this in perspective: that’s lower than Archer’s with the Pirates in 2018. Glasnow also had a higher strikeout rate than Archer did, post-trade.

And if things didn’t seem bad enough almost instantly, the Rays finished with a better record than the Pirates. I mentioned that the Pirates were 56-52 when they made the trade, and finished 82-79.

Tampa Bay was 54-53, and finished 90-72. Even more impressive, they did it with a severe lack of starting pitchers.

But despite the disappointing end to the season, Archer had years left on his contract. There was time for him to turn things around, and for the Pirates to show this trade didn’t completely blow up in their face.

But, things got even worse in 2019.

Archer started 23 games that year, sporting an abysmal 3-9 record and a 5.19 ERA. It was the third worst ERA on the team for starting pitchers, and the highest ERA for any Pirates pitcher who started 20+ games.

The Pirates stood one game back of .500 (44-45) at the All Star Game, but suffered a horrific collapse after and finished the year 69-93.

Now in fairness to Archer, he was far from the only pitcher to have problems in Pittsburgh in 2019. No Pirates pitcher who started at least 10+ games had anything less than a 4.91 ERA that season.

But while things looked bad enough just for Archer in Pittsburgh, it would get even worse as Meadows and Glasnow had career years in Tampa Bay.

Austin Meadows had his first full year in the majors in 2019, where he put up a .291/.364/.559 and hit 33 homers.

He led the team in virtually every major category: batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, RBIs, and home runs.

Meanwhile, Tyler Glasnow was dominant on the mound. Granted, he only started 12 games for the Rays in 2019, but he went 6-1 with a 1.78 ERA.

The performances of both Meadows and Glasnow helped propel the Rays into the postseason in 2019, where they won a wild card game and made it to the American League Divisional Series.

The trade was widely seen as a complete and utter failure for the Pirates, rightfully so, just one year later.

Giving up a seemingly star batter in Meadows and a possible ace in Glasnow for Archer, who fell apart as a Pirate.

It was worse than anyone could have predicted for the Pirates after the 2019 campaign, and after not playing in 2020 due to thoracic outlet syndrome, the Pirates declined his club option for 2021, making him a free agent.

Almost comedically, Archer actually returned to the Rays for 2021, but he spent a majority of the season on the injured list, and only played in 6 games for the team that year.

Coming back to rght after the 2019 season, however, this is where the trade turns a little bit. Glasnow has continued to perform well for the Rays; he has a 3.31 ERA for Tampa Bay since 2020.

But Meadows never got back to his 2019 success with the Rays.

Meadows batted just a .228 average over the next two seasons with Tampa Bay. He had an awful 2020 and rebounded in 2021, but even then, he came nowhere near his 2019 season.

In what would be his final season in Tampa in 2021, he went .234/.315/.458, but he still had a ton of power, smashing 27 home runs.

After that season, he was traded to the Detroit Tigers.

The Archer trade was criticized decently because of how good Meadows was a Ray, but that is heavily inflated by a spectacular 2019.

After that, he was a very similar player to current Pirate Jack Suwinski. A great power hitter, but not consistent enough at the plate.

And as for Shane Baz, the 24 year old has 9 MLB starts in his career, going 3-2 with a 4.02 ERA. He suffered several injury hurdles that limited his availability, and at the end of the 2022 season, he had Tommy John surgery, wiping out his entire 2023 year.

It’s not yet clear what exactly he could be for the Rays, and where he could fit in the team’s 2024 lineup. Maybe he succeeds and makes this trade look even worse for Pittsburgh, but on the Baz front, it’s just too early to tell.

(Featured photo of Chris Archer by Gene J. Puskar/AP)