{"id":530328,"date":"2026-01-21T04:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T04:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/530328\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T04:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T04:48:18","slug":"pirates-cut-ties-with-former-1st-round-pick-after-2-seasons-in-mlb-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/530328\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates cut ties with former 1st-round pick after 2 seasons in MLB"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pirates cut ties with former 1st-round pick after 2 seasons in MLB<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> gave Alika Williams a couple chances, but in the end, he never broke through.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Now, they’re cutting ties with him.<\/p>\n

The Pirates released Williams on Tuesday, according to Pittsburgh baseball writer John Dreker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Williams becomes a free agent, and he’ll look to latch on with a new organization.<\/p>\n

He was originally a first-round pick by the Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> in the 2020 MLB Draft out of Arizona State.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Carlos Beltran has contentious hat decision for Hall of Fame<\/a><\/p>\n

Williams came to the Pirates in a 2023 trade straight up for Robert Stephenson.<\/p>\n

He then appeared in 46 MLB games for the Pirates in 2023 and another 37 games in 2024.<\/p>\n

Across those two stints, Williams hit just .202 with a .529 OPS.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Williams spent the entire 2025 campaign at Triple-A Indianapolis. There, he batted .268 with 11 doubles, three triples, nine home runs and 42 RBI for a .722 OPS.<\/p>\n

A natural shortstop who can play all over the infield, Williams will turn 27 years old in March.<\/p>\n

He has enough experience and versatility to land a minor league contract somewhere.<\/p>\n

It’ll take some work, and potential improvement with the bat, for Williams to get another crack at the major leagues, though.<\/p>\n

With the Pirates continuing to improve their lineup, and top prospect Konnor Griffin on the way, it wasn’t likely Williams would’ve seen the majors anytime soon in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pirates cut ties with former 1st-round pick after 2 seasons in MLB originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[23605,5,325,4,10,776,64,4297,9393,68],"class_list":["post-530328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-alika-williams","tag-baseball","tag-carlos-beltran","tag-mlb","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-robert-stephenson","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115931283716281365","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530328","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=530328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}