Prospect Flashback: Midre Cummings

Following their second straight NLCS choke, the front office of the Pirates and their fan base knew that the window of opportunity was about to close.  Rather then allowing John Smiley to walk away as a free agent with nothing to show for him, the then general manager Ted Simmons made a bold move to trade one of their star pitchers in the spring of ‘92 to the Twins for two highly regarded prospects.  One of them being left handed pitcher Denny Neagle, who was a talented Triple A pitcher who was coming off a good year and was expected to contribute almost immediately, the other being OF Midre Cummings who was virtually unknown to fans.

Despite being an unknown to most casual fans, Cummings as a 20 year old was coming off a season where he won a Midwest League batting title and was soon expected to take over the reigns for Barry Bonds.  Cummings wasted very little time showing the Pirates what they had gotten.  During that ‘92 campaign with the Salem Buccaneers he went on to bat .305 with 14 home runs, 23 steals and an OPS of .834.  It looked like he was well on his way to becoming the next great outfielder for Pittsburgh based on that season.  The ‘93 season saw him split time between Double A Carolina and Triple A Buffalo where he combined to hit 15 home runs and bat .286.  He even got a brief cup of coffee with the team but was over matched in his 36 at bats, hitting .111 but he did show some ability to draw a walk.  Unfortunately for him, it didn’t get much better for him over the coming years, 1994-1996 saw him split time between Triple A and the Big League Club.  The best season he had during that run was in 1995 where he hit .243 with 2 homeruns.  The Pirates gave him another 52 games to get things worked out.  With other talented young outfielders on their way up, the Pirates simply lost patience with the 25 year old and lost him on waivers to the Phillies.

Things didn’t seem to get any better for him, as he bounced around from team to team in 2001 where he found himself being a valuable pinch hitter for the Arizona Diamondbacks on their run to the World Series.  He went on to score the tying run for Arizona in the deciding game of Series.  That pretty much ended up being the high point of his career.

As unpopular as the Smiley trade ended up being with fans, knowing what was about to happen to the team I’m sure they would have made the move again.  Being able to get a young, toolsy outfielder and a potential front line pitcher for a player who is going to be a free agent at the end of the year is the type of move a team like the Pirates needs to make.  Grant you, Cummings didn’t go on to be the next Bonds or Van Slyke but he was the type of talent that the organization needed.  Though more often then not in recent years, these kind of deals always seem to backfire on the Bucs.  Hopefully they are finally turning a corner where we won’t always talk about deals like this being the norm, maybe something more like a rarity.

Major League Stats:

G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
460	1113	136	286	60	8	22	124	9	6	94	200	.257	.318	.385	703