When the Pittsburgh Pirates conducted their sale at last year’s trade deadline, their collection of new assets was boosted by a relatively unknown catcher by the name of Rafael Flores Jr.
Flores, 24 at the time of the trade, had played just 10 games for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees when he was sent to the Pirates. ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the baseball insider of all baseball insiders, described Flores as a batter who “tore up” Double-A, and as someone who is a “top-shelf framer and regarded as a big league-ready catcher.”
It was all very exciting language, but vibes weren’t necessarily sky-high after the eighth-ranked prospect in the Yankees’ system was the headliner for Pittsburgh’s closer, David Bednar. Not only was Bednar recovering from an awful start to the season (one that saw him optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis) and therefore traded on the cheap, his departure marked another year where the Pirates were out of the playoff race by summer and forced to abandon hopes until the following spring.
Unfortunately for Flores, he sort of became the face of an unpopular trade in another punted year of Pirates baseball. And although he did not arrive in New York alone, his fellow acquisitions in Edgleen Perez and Brian Sanchez were 19 and 20, respectively, at the time. If the Bednar trade was to provide any meaningful impact to the roster in the Paul Skenes window, it was up to Flores.
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