This was a pleasant surprise for me to see when I woke up Saturday morning. There was a little more to the trade than the fact that Pittsburgh just didn’t want him anymore. Obviously you wouldn’t deal a guy in the division to a team just barely trailing you in the standings if there wasn’t more to it than that. Richard has been rehabbing from an injury and trying to make a comeback. He signed a minor league deal this off-season with the Pirates, and that contact had some verbiage to it that caused the trade.
Nathan Baird has more:
Earlier this week, an “upward mobility clause” in Richard’s contract went into effect.