First off, Neil Walker got called up today as a result of Steve Pearce’s injured ankle.  Pearce will go to the DL, but I expect when he comes off the DL Walker will stay, likely in place of Delwyn Young.

With that out of the way, I’d like to address the issues raised by everyone’s favorite post-gazette blogger about how the Pirates will approach the trading deadline.  He pretty much nails it by saying that Aki, Dotel and Donnely are likely to be shopped given their 1 year contracts.  It’s rather unlikely they will find anyone willing to trade for Aki unless, of course they are willing to eat his entire salary.  Don’t rule that possibility out, but even in that scenario, Iwamura goes from completely “un-tradeable” to “maybe tradeable to a contender looking for a backup infielder” so the return would still be minimal.

The most important part of Smizik’s post though is the futures of Ryan Doumit, Zach Duke and Paul Maholm.  All 3 are veteran’s who are due to make significant money in the next 2 years, and it will be interesting to see how the team handles each situation.  While it’s easy to lump them all together, I’d like to look at each on a case-by-case basis, as I’m sure The Pirates front office will do.

I’ve never been a big Ryan Doumit fan, his walk-off home run on Sunday notwithstanding.  He has a nice bat for the position he plays, but his often nightmare-ish defense combined with his inability to stay on the field has prevented me from ever growing too attached to him.  Catcher defense is a hard thing to measure, so I have a hard time comparing WAR numbers to salary.  For whatever it’s worth, he’s been worth exactly 1 win so far in 2010, which over an entire season more than justifies the $5.1 Million he is due next season.  If there was an adequate replacement available, I’d be all for getting what can be had fro Doumit while he’s healthy and producing.  But I don’t see Erik Kratz and Jason Jaramillo producing enough offensively on an already offensively challenged team to negate the loss of Doumit.  My gut feeling is he stays around til next year, at which point heir apparent Tony Sanchez should be further along in his minor league progression, to the point that his major league potential can be adequately evaluated.

Since Duke and Maholm are very similar pitchers, I’ll just address them together.  Let’s start with the premise that it would make little sense to get rid of both players.  On a winning team, a Pitcher if their ilk is very useful as a back of the rotation guy who gets ground balls in bunches and has a defense that turns them into outs.  Likewise though, I’m not of the opinion that it makes any sense to keep them both long term.  So if we have to pick one, who stays and who goes.

Duke will be in his 3rd arbitration year next year, and has posted seasons of 2.0 and 2.5 WAR in 2008 and 2009 and is on a similar pace in 2010.  That makes him about a 9 million dollar player, and using the standard 40/60/80 scale that means he should get around $7.2 Million in 2011.  After 2011, he will be a free agent.  Maholm will make $5.75 Million next year and the team has an option for 2012 worth 9.75 Million.  Despite what I said earlier about them being very similar players, I prefer Maholm over Duke based on their peripheral numbers.  Since 2007, Maholm has had a betted FIP and xFIP than Duke in every season.  He also has a slightly higher ground ball rate and a slightly better K rate.  In addition to that, since he is under contract rather than going through arbitration, he is a bit more cost controlled than Duke.  All of that makes Maholm the obvious choice to keep around if your only going to keep one.

Tags: Delwyn Young, Neil Walker, Paul Maholm, Ryan Doumit, Steve Pearce, Zach Duke