Report: Ivan Pineyro is the Pitching Prospect Headed to Cubs in Scott Hairston Deal (UPDATE: It’s Official)

washington nationals logoThe Chicago Cubs will be announcing the Scott Hairston trade later today (presumably in tandem with a roster move), but Jon Heyman is reporting that the pitching prospect the Cubs will be getting in the deal is Ivan Pineyro.

As I’d guessed, the Cubs aren’t getting a top prospect – he looks to be in the 20 to 30 range in the Nationals’ system, at best, which is better than I’d thought the Cubs would do – though he might be something of a “riser.” Pineyro, 21, was recently promoted to High-A after pitching extremely well at A-ball (so well, in fact, that he was named an All-Star). After a mixed 2012 campaign split between rookie ball and short season low-A (weak baseball card stats, but great K/BB), Pineyro is sporting a 3.24 ERA over his 15 starts this season, 13 of which came at low-A. He’s got a fantastic 3.27 K/BB this year, which goes well with his 3.42 for his career.

On paper, I’m loving this guy. He’s 6’1″ and about 200 lbs, so he’s not a huge guy, but plenty big enough to let you dream on him as a future starter. In a system thin on upper level pitching talent, Pineyro could immediately be one of the Cubs’ best 10 or so pitching prospects. Getting that for Scott Hairston, after his slow start, is quite a deal.

I would imagine we’ll hear quite a bit more about him in the coming days, assuming Pineyro is the guy, but the early reaction: this is a great get.

UPDATE: Just to get in a confirmation, Ken Rosenthal says, yeah, it’s Pineyro. Local folks seem to be confirming as well, though they might be just parroting the Heyman report as I was. Either way, I’d say this is the guy. And I like it.

And an UPDATE for officialness: the Cubs have announced the deal. It’s Hairston for Pineyro, with each side getting a PTBNL (according to the Nats’ announcement, anyway). Best guess is that the relative calibers of the PTBNLs will depend on how Hairston does with the Nats. It’s also possible that the PTBNL list from which the Nats get to choose is a lot better than the Cubs, which could pull back the reins on how great this deal looks for the Cubs. I suppose we’ll find out in time. For today, I’m smiling.

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Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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