Pirates land power bat, Astros nab an intriguing arm, Rays add upside in 3-team deal

Trade details: In a three-team trade, the Pittsburgh Pirates acquire 2B Brandon Lowe, OF Jake Mangum and LHP Mason Montgomery, the Houston Astros acquire RHP Mike Burrows and the Tampa Bay Rays acquire OF Jacob Melton and RHP Anderson Brito.

The Rays' busy Friday afternoon extended beyond their deal with the Baltimore Orioles, as they agreed to a three-team trade with the Pirates and Astros in a six-player swap that sent the most famous name, Brandon Lowe, from Tampa Bay to Pittsburgh. The Rays net a prospect and a second-year player and the Astros get a pitcher who might just fit their mold.

The Pirates landed three of the players in the trade, including Lowe, whose 31 homers last year wouldn't just have led the Pirates, but would have accounted for more than 20 percent of the team's total home runs. Lowe should take over in left field for the Pirates, assuming Bryan Reynolds is in right, with Nick Yorke getting a shot at second base and Nick Gonzales going to the bench or elsewhere. The net upgrade in the lineup from Gonzales to Lowe is probably worth two-plus wins on its own.

More importantly, Lowe gives the Pirates a power threat they have lacked for approximately forever years at this point. Only one Pirate hit more than 16 homers last season, and none hit more than 20. Since 2010, the Pirates have had only two players hit more homers in one season than Lowe did last year: Josh Bell in 2019 (37 homers) and Pedro Álvarez in 2013 (36). The two times Lowe has been healthy enough to play a full season, he's topped 30 homers. I might be repeating myself on that point, but Pirates' hitters have set such a low bar to clear that it means that this acquisition might make an enormous difference right away, even with Lowe's somewhat troubling propensity to whiff.

If the Pirates try to put Lowe at second, however, they risk giving back much of that offensive gain, as he was atrocious defensively last year and has never been better than a fringy defender at the keystone.

I kind of hate that the Pirates added outfielder Jake Mangum, though, not because of anything specific to him, but because this is the type of player they have overvalued for ages: He doesn't strike out and has less power than the battery in my Spark guitar tuner (a CR2032, I believe). He's a 55 runner and defender, but doesn't get on base enough to turn that into more than fourth/fifth outfielder status.

Lefty Mason Montgomery is all fastball/slider and gets lefties out while righties take him to town, hitting .321/.409/.505 off him in the majors in 2025. He threw a splitter and a 'gyro' slider in the minors as well as the two pitches he showed in the majors last year. I'd at least like to see the Pirates bring the splitter back and see if he can be a good full-inning reliever, because as-is he's a lefty specialist in a three-batter minimum world where they don't exist anymore.

Oddly enough, there's only one actual prospect among the six in the deal, right-hander Anderson Brito, who goes from Houston to the Rays along with outfielder Jacob Melton, who just graduated from prospect status.

Brito is 5-foot-10 and missed the last three months of the 2025 season with a stress reaction in his throwing shoulder, but he returned to sit 95-98 in the Arizona Fall League with a plus slider/sweeper. There's some effort late in his delivery and he has had trouble throwing strikes, with a 13.4 percent walk rate in the regular season in High A. He's 21 and has thrown barely 100 professional innings, however, so he's also not a finished product. I would start him as long as he's able, with at least 60/40 odds he ends up in the bullpen.

Melton is a super-athletic outfielder whose ceiling is as a platoon player. He struck out a third of the time in his MLB debut this past year, and he has never hit lefties in pro ball. He's a plus runner and 70 defender in center with plus raw power, so there's a path for him to play semi-regularly, and if you squint you might see a Kevin Kiermaier starter kit here.

The Astros get Mike Burrows, a right-hander who'll sit 94-95 and can flash a plus curveball, but who's had a lot of inconsistency and battled injuries, including 2023 Tommy John surgery. He's an interesting project who may be better suited to the Astros' preferred style of pitching. He's already dropped his arm angle a little, and another adjustment there could get him to be more of that lower attack angle, riding fastball type of starter.

I think Burrows is a project for Houston, offering them some of the basic characteristics they like, and that his potential upside is entirely a function of how well he can adapt under their system -- which has had quite a bit of success with other pitchers, too.

I can see the logic here for all three teams. The Pirates gave up a pitching prospect in Burrows who hadn't panned out and hasn't stayed healthy that much to get a difference-making bat in left field in Lowe. This also allows them to start Jhostynxon Garcia, acquired in the Johan Oviedo trade, in Triple A to work on his swing decisions, as their outfield is full right now on paper. If they choose, this could also allow them to move on from the disappointing Gonzales at second base. They also add some bullpen and outfield depth.

The Astros flip a high-variance arm in Brito who's been hurt recently and has high reliever risk, plus an outfielder in Melton who wasn't going to play every day for them, to get a pitcher in Burrows who probably fits their developmental profile.

The Rays move Lowe's $11.5 million salary for next year and get that high-variance arm in Brito, plus the kind of center fielder with power they seem to like in Melton, although I don't think they've done a great job turning any of those types of players into better hitters. If you're inferring that I like Tampa's end of this the least, that's probably right, although I don't hate it by any means -- Lowe didn't really fit for them and it's money they didn't need to spend on him specifically for maybe a 2-WAR season and likely less.

A quick note on a smaller trade that went down on Friday: The Royals picked up Matt Strahm from the Phillies in what I think was just a salary dump, but one that clearly benefits Kansas City.

Strahm has thrown in a lot of high-leverage spots for the Phillies over the last two years, as he was one of their most reliable relievers when it came to working through full innings with left- and right-handed batters. His slider is his best pitch, but his cutter works against hitters on both sides of the plate and he had a slight reverse platoon split this year. Strahm did lose about a mile an hour off his fastball in 2025, his age-34 season, so he might be approaching a cliff, but I'd take him for one year because of the strength of the offspeed stuff and ability to get lefties and righties out, even if perhaps he needs to pitch less frequently while working a little longer in each appearance. Strahm gives the Royals a second quality lefty behind closer Lucas Erceg, and a different look at that.

The Phillies get right-hander Jonathan Bowlan, who gets righties out and gets smoked by lefties. His pitch-mix is four-seamer/sinker/slider -- you could say that sinker is a Bowlan ball -- with some ability to keep hitters from getting the ball in the air too often. He's 29 already and at this point is a specialist reliever, needing another pitch or some other significant adjustment to be more than the last righty on a staff. I wish Bowlan had an option remaining so they could stretch him out a little in Triple A, maybe to eventually use him as a long reliever or spot starter while asking him to use the changeup more, just enough so he isn't so vulnerable to left-handed hitters.