Fastball

Pittsburgh Pirates Acquire Former Top Prospect in Mini-Trade with New York Yankees

The Pittsburgh Pirates swung a trade for former top prospect Billy McKinney on Thursday.

Brady Farkas

Pittsburgh Pirates Acquire Former Top Prospect in Mini-Trade with New York Yankees
Pittsburgh Pirates Acquire Former Top Prospect in Mini-Trade with New York Yankees /
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On Thursday night, the Pittsburgh Pirates completed a mini-trade with the New York Yankees.

In the deal, Pittsburgh acquired outfielder Billy McKinney, a former top prospect.

Per Jack Curry of the YES Network:

The Yankees have traded outfielder Billy McKinney to the Pirates for cash considerations. McKinney had signed a minor league deal with the Yankees last week.

The 29-year-old Texas native was a former first-round pick of the Oakland Athletics in 2013. He made his debut with the Yankees in 2018 and has played for New York, the Toronto Blue Jays, Milwaukee Brewers, New York Mets, and Los Angeles Dodgers.

He's never been more than a part-time player in the big leagues, but he did play a career-high 116 games in 2021 with the Brewers, Mets and Dodgers.

Lifetime, he's a .209 hitter with a .284 on-base percentage. He hit six home runs this past season for the Yankees.

With Pittsburgh, he'll enter into the mix as a depth outfielder who could challenge for a bench role. At this point, McKinney is not on the 40-man roster for Pittsburgh. The Pirates have Henry Davis, Connor Joe, Josh Palacios, Bryan Reynolds, Canaan Smith-Njigba and Jack Suwinski as outfielders on the 40-man roster, so it's certainly going to be a tough climb for him to jump over multiple of those players.

Back in 2016, McKinney was ranked the No. 88 prospect in baseball by MLB.com.

The Pirates finished fourth in the National League Central in the 2023 season while the Yankees finished fourth in the American League East.

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Brady Farkas
BRADY FARKAS

Brady Farkas is a baseball writer for Fastball on Sports Illustrated/FanNation and the host of 'The Payoff Pitch' podcast which can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Videos on baseball also posted to YouTube. Brady has spent nearly a decade in sports talk radio and is a graduate of Oswego State University. You can follow him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady. 

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