In the days since the trade deadline there has been loads of analysis, by both local and national media, on the flurry of trades made by the Pirates this year.  I disagree with the “fire sale” label most are applying to the moves, and Jerry Crasnick at espn.com has an excellent article, which among many other things, refutes this fire sale label, but that’s not really the point of this post.  The point I want to make here is that most of the national media don’t seem to understand why the Pirates had to do what they’ve done.

There seem to be 2 prevailing arguments against what Neal Huntington has done since taking the reins as the Pirates GM.  First, people try to make the argument that the players traded were talented enough to be the core of a winning team.  Jay Mariotti writes on fanhouse:

[Neal Huntington's] plan is to rebuild a bad farm system, but in the process, he has traded off a group of respectable, and, in some cases, quality major-leaguers. Bay, McLouth and Morgan would comprise one of the best outfields in the game if still together. Wilson and Sanchez were huge fan favorites and best friends who worked well as a double-play combination. Snell was a 14-game winner at one point.

The problem with this argument is that it is obviously false.  Almost every single players traded was on the Pirates roster in 2007.  That team finished with a record of 68-94.  Same story in 2008, a team that had a record of 48-56 prior to the first major trade, the Xavier Nady trade.  Quite obviosly, using nothing but the team record, the players the Pirates had weren’t enough to win in ‘07 and ‘08, and there was little reason to believe they would be enough to win in’09 or beyond.

While a few of the players traded away were above average major league players, most notably Bay and Sanchez, there wasn’t enough around them to be a winning team.  Furthermore, the minor league system was left so barren by previous administrations, that there was nothing coming up behind them to augment the talent at the major league level.

While were on the subject of the minor league system, lets get to the second argument commonly made against these trades, that the Pirates aren’t getting high end prospects back in these trades.  The problem with this line of reasoning, is that it assumes major league general managers are willing to part with their high end prospects easily.  In this day and age of the over valued prospect, you can only acquire high end prospects by giving up high end players.  As I mentioned before, the only high end players traded away were Sanchez and Bay (some would argue this McLouth here, but that’s a discussion for another day).  In the Sanchez deal, a high end prospect was returned in the form of pitcher Tim Alderson.  Likewise, the Bay deal, while more of a depth move, returned Bryan Morris.  While Morris has struggled with injuries since coming to the Pirates, he was once considered to be a high upside pitching prospect.  When you consider what was given up, I think the prospect return the Bucs received was more than fair.  In addition, it addressed the immediate problem at hand, which was filling the void left in the system by Dave Littlefield and Kevin McClatchy.

The final argument I hear is that until the Pirates can produce their own players, they will never be able to win.  Peter Pascarelli sums this one up well on ESPN’s baseball today podcast on July 31st.

They’ve got to get some stability somewhere.  But they still have to start producing their own players.  To me, that’s the bottom line.   They can’t keep trading for prospects, and hope that a few of them pan out….It’s a vicious cycle.  An unsuccessful small market team continues recycling players.  Until you have some success and until your own system produces it’s own players, your going to see them trade away guys every other year.

I actually agree with this wholeheartedly.  If the Pirates are ever going to win consistently in the long term, they have to be able to draft well, sign players in the international market, and generally do a good job of developing young talent.  The problem here, is that it’s not really a valid argument against making these trades.  To illustrate this, I’m going to come up with a ludicrous example.

Lets say you were a corn farmer who survives by trading your corn for sugar, meat, whatever it is you need to survive, and then selling the excess for money.  Then lets imagine you had a bad crop one year.  It seems quite obvious to me that you would use the money left over from selling last years crop in order to buy the sugar and meat you need.  But it also seems quite obvious to me that if you continue to have bad crops year in and out for a sustained period of time, you won’t ever get rich.

Its a bit of a flawed analogy obviously, but I think its effective despite those flaws.  For the past 16 years, the Pirates have had a lot of bad crops.  If they want to win long term, they need to start having good crops.  But that alone doesn’t mean they should starve this year.

The bottom line is that until some of these prospects pan out (or conversely, don’t pan out), it will be hard to say definitively which of these trades are wins for the bucs and which ones aren’t.  That isn’t going to happen until at least the middle of next year or beyond.  But you really can’t make a logical argument against the strategy that Neal Huntington has taken in trying to rebuild the organization and the arguments that are being made are very easily refuted.

Tags: espn, fire sale, Neal Huntington, trade