I thought the Mariners were going to be selling at the trading deadline. It looks like I was wrong.
The Pittsburgh Pirates acquire Jeff Clement, shortstop Ronny Cedeno and right-handed pitchers Aaron Pribanic, Brett Lorin and Nathan Adcock from the Seattle Mariners organization in exchange for shortstop Jack Wilson and right-handed pitcher Ian Snell.
Wilson’s a scrub so this is basically a trade for Snell who has talent and could benefit from that ballpark and outfield defense.
Not sure what the Pirates will do with Clement since they have a good catcher already in Ryan Doumit. He’ll probably play first base or the outfield.
Speaking of the Pirates they traded Freddy Sanchez to the Giants for Tim Alderson. Link
This season the Pittsburgh Pirates have traded away Nate McLouth, Nyjer Morgan, Jack Wilson, Adam Laroche, Freddy Sanchez, and Ian Snell. I like what they’re doing. They’re tearing it all down. This is how you rebuild. They lost with these guys. At the very least they can lose without them. And if these prospects work out they’ll win without them.
Scrub or no, Pittsburgh fans can’t say enough about Wilson. Yeah, he’s 31 or so years old, but the guy is rock solid on defense. His 2004 season may have been a fluke, but I’m happier with Wilson at SS than Cedeno.
I haven’t seen Snell pitch, so I have no clue what we’re getting here. Is he a flyball pitcher?
Baseball America had Tim Alderson the 45th best prospect in baseball in their top 100 list, and he was considered the Giants’ 4th best prospect.
That’s a very good haul for a what’s essentially just a salary dump.
The Wilson/Snell trade was good for the Pirates too, I think - Cedeno and Wilson are both scrubs, so there’s no point in talking about them…Clement and Snell both still have some upside, need new starts, and are clearly the centerpieces…but Brett Lorin’s a pretty good prospect to get back as filler - 2.44 ERA in single A with a strikeout per inning, always very good to hear.
Pirates are rebuilding, Marlins-style.
…except the Marlins traded away very good players for blue chipper prospects.
The Pirates are trading away okay players for okay prospects…much less exciting.
I think it was good they traded Wilson and Sanchez, as much praise as those guys get, I think they are very overrated, although they were a nice dbl play duo. I think they made out very well in the Snell/Wilson trade especially, getting Clement and a few minor league arms, there’s a good chance at least one of those arms will contribute something in the majors.
Snell has always had really good potential but can’t seem to get it together it seems. I read a while ago that he was pitching absolutely lights out in the minors after they sent him down a month or so ago, with something like a 0.60 ERA in 6 starts, so who knows maybe he has finally found something, the Mariners win this trade if he has. I’m guessing the Mariners scouts saw that they could get Snell to start pitching to his potential.
They did good to get Alderson from the Giants as well. He’s a potential #3 - #4 starter, with great command and a plus curveball, supposedly if he can add a couple of mph to his fastball he can be a #2 - #3.
Completely agree with matrix9280 in that the Pirates need to blow up their team and start from scratch. Other than McLouth I’ve liked everything they’ve done for the most part. I think I’ve also read about their (new?) manager vowing to blow the team up and completely rebuild, I like the idea.
I got to see the Royals lose to the O’s today. It was actually really fun. I got drunk and saw Zack Grienke get fucked up in the beginning and then start to own until the 6th.
The O’s just kept fouling off his pitches. He had like 100 by the fifth. Even then he was still smoking 95 mph fastballs easy. Then the royals bullpin came in and blew it. Adam Jones was great.
I bought this hilarious shirt and wore it during the game. I got it a size or two too big like a black person because I just can’t wear tight ass shirts. I guess my white sweat glands just reject them and try to eat through them at the arm pits. ( GROSSSSSSSS )
Camden Yards is really really nice. It was raining for awhile, but it all cleared up and was beautiful. The tickets were cheap because the team is ass and the view was beautiful from the third base line.
The left field crowd was chanting David DeJesus’ name for the entire 8th inning. They even started to spell out his name. It was quite hilarious.
While you can’t rebuild what hasn’t been built you can damage the foundation with bad moves. You can make it worse though by making poor decisions and trades which the Pirates have done in the past. I and a lot of people feel that times are changing for the better with the Pirates.
They’re a bad team and they’ll likely continue to be a bad team in the short term but now they have some hope. Now they have a ton of prospects with which they can see if they’ll stick or not. They have money to sign draft picks. When you’re a small-market team that’s all you can ask for.
You guys are going weird places with this metaphor - they are rebuilding their crappy team with poor minor league depth into a good team with good players and good prospects…that is what rebuilding means.
The challenge with small market teams is that they need to have a much higher success rate with prospects than other teams - it’s not enough just to get one or two great prospects (ie. Jason Bay, Nate McLouth) at a time…you need a whole team to come together before any of your core guys hits arbitration, a window of like two years.
And then if you don’t win, then your core guys get too expensive and you need to trade them away for prospects and start the process again.
This is where Pittsburgh is right now. They didn’t win with the guys they had, so you roll the dice on as many possible prospects you can get, because they’re not going to get better through free agency. Hope one major league talent in McLouth turns into three major league talents, and etc.
You got a taste of REAL baseball, American League style, where we have real hitters hit instead of some pussy pitchers.
Although sometimes I wonder if the overall higher quality of competition in the AL is worth the price of never being able to see the miracle that is seeing a pitcher hit a homer against another pitcher…it’s like seeing Matt Bonner or Anthony Johnson throw it down, just mind-blowing to watch.
I keep hearing that Camden Yards and PNC Park are great stadiums. I think I’m going to jump on the Pirates bandwagon (years and years) in advance, start checking out some games at PNC Park and take some pictures so that I can go like “See! I was a huge fan already before the back-to-back-to-back championships!”
From what I’ve heard they are. Camden Yards, when it was built, was supposively the revolution in baseball stadiums. Too bad it’s basically Yankee Stadium II when the Yankees play there. Marlins’ new digs will have a roof, so it’s automatically 100 times better than Dolphin Stadium for baseball.
On the other end, Tropicana Field. Only stadium with catwalk assist.
I was making fun of the Royals DH with his BA of .216 and right as I said it he smacked a HR. He raised his BA to .219 right before my very eyes in an act of statistical pride.
Camden Yards was indeed great. It’s very tiny, so you can hear chants and stuff real easy throughout the whole stadium. It’s also pretty nice how they don’t play music for EVERYTHING that happens in the game, like Fouls and what not. It’s in a great location too. Not at the end of the city in a giant parking lot like Citizen’s Bank Park.
I was saddened by the lack of booing though. I guess that is ingrained my Philly Phan brain. I mean if a man dropped an easy foul ball, he needs to get booed. That is just how is works.
I am happy that the Phillies got Cliff Lee without giving up Drabek, Happ, or Brown. Now the Phillies should just trade for Halladay anyway and win as much as possible now.
I’d go to Pirates games if they weren’t 4 hours away. My grandma’s house is right near pittsburgh in the mountains. It’s like bizarro world there. They drink Pop. POP?!?!
nice shirt!!! Yeah I love Camden hopin to get there soon once I start gettin paid at the new job. Would hate to go a season w/o gettin to the park. I thought Tillman did okay aside from the longballs. Hopefully it was just some debut jitters cause his AAA numbers are very good.
I’m by no means a Red Sox fan, but whoever has this list needs to stop being a little bitch and releasing names one by one. Release the whole thing and man up about about who you are, or shut the fuck up.