After post-trade deadline collapse, Bryan De La Cruz non-tendered by Pirates

One year removed from being the everyday left fielder for the postseason-bound Miami Marlins, Bryan De La Cruz is a free agent. De La Cruz was non-tendered by the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday. Although the move had cost-saving benefits for his new club, it was ultimately a simple baseball decision, a reluctant admission that he isn't who they thought he was.

On the surface, the Marlins didn't get much in return for DLC when they shipped him to Pittsburgh minutes before the July 30 trade deadline. Neither RHP Jun-Seok Shim nor INF/C Garret Forrester have changed that perception yet.

As it turns out, waiting any longer to make a deal would've meant settling for nothing. De La Cruz was eligible for arbitration entering the 2025 season and projected by MLB Trade Rumors for a $4M salary. The Pirates were fully aware of that when they acquired him. By declining to tender him a contract, it implies none of the MLB teams felt he was worth that modest amount, either.

To refresh your memory, De La Cruz led the Marlins in plate appearances (626), hits (149) and runs batted in (78) during the 2023 season. Through July, he was on track for a comparable performance this year—a few more strikeouts and less batted ball luck, but he had been demonstrating the ability to hit home runs to all fields. By wRC+, the 27-year-old was actually two points ahead of his old pace.

"He has real physical ability, big power, solid defender in the corners," Pirates general manager Ben Cherington told reporters (h/t Greg Macafee, DK Pittsburgh Sports). "He’s someone that even going back to when he was acquired by the Marlins from Houston, we had had our eyes on. We’ve got some personal relationships, people that know him. He was a target."

It would seem Cherington's scouting report was a bit outdated. Yes, De La Cruz used to be a solid defender when his MLB career began, but he had been an outright liability on that side of the ball in recent years, hence why he received half of his pre-trade playing time as Miami's designated hitter. He needed to meaningfully contribute on offense to justify an everyday lineup spot. Still, nobody could've foreseen his production at the plate cratering to this extent.

From July 30 onward, De La Cruz accrued -1.1 fWAR. He ranked 544th out of the 545 position players who appeared in MLB games during that span. The Pirates had the National League's worst post-trade deadline winning percentage and plummeted out of the playoff race.

De La Cruz's unwillingness to take walks became highly problematic. He had only four bases on balls as a Pirate, two of those coming during the final week of the season when the team's fate was already sealed. 

Let's get even more granular. Something that went under the radar even before the trade was the deterioration of De La Cruz's two-strike approach. The far-right column in the table below shows that he was considerably better than league average in those situations from 2021-2023 (a 100 sOPS+ represents league average). Not the case in 2024—he wasn't much of a threat to make contact, and when he did, it was rarely quality contact.

De La Cruz's August/September tailspin looks to have been more psychological than physical. The Pirates clearly lack confidence in being able to straighten him out, but so do the other MLB teams to varying extents, otherwise one of them would have traded for him prior to Friday.

I would guess that DLC gets a one-year, $2M-ish major league deal for his age-28 season. Although the Marlins could have part-time reps available in the DH and left field spots as currently constructed, a reunion is very unlikely.