According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Mets completed a trade today, sending Neil Walker to the Mets and Jonathon Niese to the Pirates. With the trade, Walker ends his 12 year stay with the organization. Walker was a 2004 first-round draft pick and debuted in 2009. He finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting in 2010, where he hit .296 and hit 12 homers.
Mets and Pirates Complete Trade: Jonathon Niese for Neil Walker
Pittsburgh Pirates President, Frank Coonelly, said this as he was announcing the trade:
“We greatly appreciate Neil and all he has done for our club, both on the field and in our community. “He has always represented his hometown team with a great sense of pride and passion. For that we thank him and wish him and his family nothing but success as he continues his career in New York.”
Pirates General Manager, Neal Huntington, had this to say today before the trade went through:
“Neil obviously has the special trade of being from the hometown. He’s been very open, we’ve been very open that that may change at some point in the future. Is it sometime this offseason? Is it sometime next season? Is it sometime after next season? I think he’s aware that it may come to an end. Both sides have worked hard to try to make it so that it doesn’t come to an end, and we haven’t been able to find that common ground. No one is at fault. We just haven’t been able to find that common ground.”
This past season Walker had hit 16 homers while batting .269/.328/.427 through 543 at-bats, in his career he is batting .272/.338/.431 and has hit 93 home runs in 3063 at-bats. With the trade going through the Pirates will now have a gap to fill in at second base.
Jon Niese is assumed to take a spot in the Pirates rotation. This past year he wasn’t at his best, having a 4.13 ERA while throwing 176.2 innings. From 2012-2014 he had a 3.49 ERA, pitching 521 innings. In 2015, he was slowly pushed aside while the other Mets starting pitchers began to flourish, and was asked to move to the bullpen. Niese is 61-61 through eight seasons as a pitcher, has not pitched over 200 innings in his career, and has not been an All-Star. It is believed that last season he was bothered by injuries and that had impacted his velocity; towards the end of the season his fastball was around 88 miles per hour.
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