Pittsburgh Fans Swindled Again by Pirates

The fans of Pittsburgh have again tried to support their Pirates. Once more they've been forced to walk the plank. The Pirates are at it again. I'm sure they have some magic number of seats they have to sell for the season before they get the green light but they just eclipsed it.

This was disappointing to see this evening. I'm not a Pirates fan, but I am a big MLB fan. Seeing a competitive Pirates and Blue Jays teams the first few months was refreshing; its good to have some change every once in a while.

I was visiting a friend about a month ago and flew in and out of Pittsburgh on my way to WV. The local sports talk was so optimistic about the Pirates and the way things were going now.  Once again that optimism was thrown under a bus.

All this did was remind me of a preseason baseball article I read around 10 years ago.
The gist of the article was a funny "day by day" run through of the season. In reality it was 50 or so dates scattered throughout the season. Each month one of the entries was a Pirates reference. An example would be

"May 20: despite being only six games out of first, the Pirates have declared this a lost season and traded away XXXXXXX" (whoever their one all star was at the time).

Each month the selling of players got worse while the Pirates' record got better. By September it was something to the effect of

"September 20: Despite being up 10 games with 11 to go and starting a full lineup of fans drawn from stands, the Pirates declare the season a loss and forfeit their remaining games"

This was already a running joke by the late 90s. Nothing has changed. The Pirates are like the red headed step child of Pittsburgh. The Steelers are perennial playoff and Super Bowl contenders. The Penguins are in the Stanley Cub finals again.

Then there's those scruffy Pirates. Longest losing streak in the MLB and this trade certainly does not bode well for this to be the year to end it.

A quote from MLB.com by Braves GM Frank Wren

"It's hard to find guys that can run and throw and field and hit and hit for power. They're tough to find and tough to acquire."

Meanwhile also from MLB.com Pirates GM Neal Huntington had this to say

"This is one of those decisions that is not an easy one, that you spend a lot of time contemplating, because Nate McLouth is the type of person and the type of player that we would ideally try to build around"

So instead of actually building around this five tool guy, lets trade him for cents on the dollar. What logic. Makes you wonder how pro franchises like this even stay in business. The only reason they would do this is if the franchise is happy to take the money from the every day people of Pittsburgh and put zero effort into building a winner.

For all we know these prospects they acquired will end their careers as all-stars, with the buccos track record, I doubt it. Of course, all that would mean is a quick ticket out of Pittsburgh.