{"id":164288,"date":"2025-07-09T22:29:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T22:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/164288\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T22:29:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T22:29:16","slug":"pirates-release-tanner-rainey-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/164288\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Release Tanner Rainey &#8211; MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pirates have released right-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/raineta01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-07-09_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tanner Rainey<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.milb.com\/transactions\/2025-07-08\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">per the MiLB.com transaction log<\/a>. He\u2019d been in Pittsburgh\u2019s bullpen earlier this season but had more recently been pitching in Triple-A Indianapolis after being designated for assignment, passed through waivers and re-signed on a new minor league contract.<\/p>\n<p>Rainey\u2019s time with the Pirates\u2019 big league club earlier this year didn\u2019t go well. He pitched in 11 games but lasted only 7 2\/3 innings while serving up nine runs on seven hits, six walks and a hit batter. He fanned nine of 37 opponents (24.3%). His fastball, which averaged 97 mph as recently as 2022 with the Nationals, sat at 95 mph.<\/p>\n<p>Since being passed through waivers and heading back to Indy, however, Rainey has been outstanding. He\u2019s pitched in eight games and tallied eight shutout frames with nine strikeouts against five walks. It seems odd that he\u2019d be released on the heels of a run like that, but minor league deals for veterans of this nature often contain opt-out dates, upward mobility clauses and language granting the player the right to pursue foreign opportunities. Any of those could be at play with regard to Rainey, who now has a 3.18 ERA, 28.2% strikeout rate and 12.2% walk rate in 17 innings at the Triple-A level this season.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old Rainey was a hard-throwing, at times dominant late-inning arm with the Nationals from 2019-23. Command issues have plagued him throughout his big league tenure, but prior to undergoing Tommy John surgery late in the 2022 season, he sat 97 mph with his heater and fanned nearly one-third of his opponents. Since returning from injury, however, has a 5.43 ERA in 59 2\/3 big league innings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pirates have released right-hander Tanner Rainey, per the MiLB.com transaction log. He\u2019d been in Pittsburgh\u2019s bullpen earlier&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4,10,776,64,4297,2058],"class_list":{"0":"post-164288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-pirates","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","13":"tag-pittsburghpirates","14":"tag-tanner-rainey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114825643209443008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}