Flip This House
The trade of Denny Neagle would be just one of the many moves the Pirates would make during their run of awful baseball. It would also be one of the very few to work out well for them.
It wasn’t just the baseball played on the field that made the Pirates bad, but the moves made in the front office.
The year after they acquired Schmidt was their best season by far since 1992.
That year, 1997, saw them finish second in the division and just two wins away from an 81-81 record—what could have been their saving grace from these 16-straight losing seasons.
They were led by Kendall, Martin, Kevin Young, Tony Womack, and 21-year old Jose Guillen on offense. The pitching had a very respectable 4.28 ERA, with no starting pitcher older than 27.
Sure, Neagle went 20-5 for the Braves, and they made an awful offseason trade of leading hitter Jeff King for one year of Joe Randa, but they did finish in second-place, and they had a young, up-and-coming squad.
Except that the moves didn’t stop there.
In 1998, the wheels fell off, and the Pirates slipped back to sixth in the division. Despite getting good production from Kendall, Young, Womack, Jose Guillen, the debut of Aramis Ramirez, and having a team ERA of 3.91, they won just 69 games.
Before the 1999 season, they had traded Tony Womack to the Arizona Diamondbacks. While Womack isn’t a superstar, he did steal 118 bases for the Bucs in his two years as starter, and he went on to win a World Series with the D’Backs. The Pirates couldn’t replace Womack, and they started five different players in the next six years.
Those second basemen were baseball “legends” Warren Morris, Pat Meares, Pokey Reese, Jeff Reboulet, and Jose Castillo.
Near the trade deadline in 1998, they sent Esteban Loaiza to Texas for Morris and Todd Van Poppel.
In the offseason, they sent Lieber, a reliable innings-eater, to the Chicago Cubs for utility player Brant Brown. He played for the Pirates for one year.
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