I think he's played 1B a small handful of times, not sure about the minors. To me, it'd be worth broaching with him in a conversation for next year's role, though I wonder how things will unfold. From his perspective, he's been given some minor looks and I guess he's playing a fair bit now in some kind of audition for next year, but otherwise it's mostly been the same situation for him since coming over.
From the Pirates, I think they need to look bigger than Andujar, even in terms of a part-time role, which is why I'm hesitant to even pencil him into maintaining a 40-man roster spot at the moment. I think it's worth doing so if possible, since you never know what might happen between now and spring training, and Andujar has flashed the tools and a high degree of success in MLB before, so it's not out of the question that he'd have a very productive MLB season or two at some point.
In general, I think trading is going to be the place we can bring in some upgrades for next year. I have trouble seeing even modest spending on pitching in free agency, but I hope I am wrong. Montgomery is going to get a huge haul, especially if he performs in the playoffs, but if we could land him on a Walker/Taillon type deal (which would blow other Pirates FA deals out of the water), that would be amazing. It'd be worth going over that, too, and the payroll "flexibility" should be present to have a very highly paid pitcher who would kind of chance the equation. I think Giolito will be less sought after but still accomplish something similar, as having 3 guys who can cover 180 innings will have some trickle effects.
For me, if Chicago wanted to move on from Cease and was interested in Suwinski as a high ceiling starting point of a return, I'd be willing to go down that road. Cease can be very volatile, but I think he's still capable of the FOR-type performance and he's about to finish up a third straight season of shouldering a lot of innings. I think a lot of people have soured on Suwinski (myself included), but he's still somewhat risky to trade, because if he can have everything start to click, he goes from nice enough strong side platoon player to a genuine constant threat. It's so hard to figure out what direction Chicago is headed in, but off the top of my head, this is the biggest swing that could be possible for the team in terms of a trade. Much more likely that it will need to be a more minor deal.
Maybe the Mets would be willing to trade Quintana if they truly want to take a step back financially next year, but their direction is also a little bit hard to figure out.
