Former Red Sox Top Prospect Traded At Deadline Earns First Big-League Call-Up

The young slugger hasn't stopped raking since he left town...

Greenville Drive's Nick Yorke fields a ball during practice at Fluor Field on Wednesday. Jm Drive 040622 004 / JOSH MORGAN/The Greenville News / USA TODAY NETWORK

The 2024 Major League Baseball trade deadline will long be seen as a pivot point in this Boston Red Sox season, for better or worse.

In the thick of a playoff hunt, the Red Sox knew they had to "pick a lane." They chose to buy, but perhaps not as aggressively as some would have liked. And since the trades went down, the Red Sox's playoff hopes have all but vanished.

It's easy to harp on trades that obviously didn't work, like acquiring rental relief pitchers Lucas Sims and Luis Garcia, but those moves are already in the past, at least from Boston's perspective. It will be more interesting to see how a more forward-thinking trade the Red Sox made works out long-term.

Boston traded its 2020 first-round draft pick, infielder/oufielder Nick Yorke, to the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for 2018 first-rounder Quinn Priester, a right-handed pitcher. It was a trade that made sense to both sides on the surface--the Red Sox needed pitching; the Pirates needed hitting.

Yorke, however, was having an excellent season in the minors, while Priester had struggled while bouncing between Pittsburgh and Triple-A. And now, it appears Yorke will get the first chance to prove with his play that his side "won" the trade.

According to Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pirates are promoting Yorke to the big leagues ahead of their series with the St. Louis Cardinals. With two weeks left in the season, Yorke should get a decent look against MLB pitching before the season ends.

Yorke has been excellent at the plate all season, especially after he earned a somewhat surprising promotion to Triple-A from the Red Sox. In 78 total Triple-A games, Yorke has a .333/.420/.498 slash line, with eight home runs, 25 doubles, and 45 RBI.

It never seemed like there was a clear lane for Yorke to compete for a starting job in Boston in the near future, with other top infield prospects Marcelo Mayer, Vaughn Grissom, and more recently, Kristian Campbell, ahead of him in the pecking order. Now, he's got a wide-open lane to prove himself.

Yorke was ex-Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom's first-ever draft pick. Both are now gone, but what remains to be seen is whether either will make Boston regret letting them go.

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