Deal or No Deal: Exactly What Kind of Trading Game Do the Pirates Play?

Since we're approaching the trading deadline, it might be worth discussing different types of trades, and why some made more sense for the Pirates than others.

1) Functional Trades

You have an excess of one type of player and desperately need another type. In the past year, the Pirates had an excess of outfielders and a shortage of starting pitchers.

In this context, the trade of Xavier Nady for a starter (Jeff Karstens), a prospective reliever (Dan McCutchen), and a prospective replacement (Jose Tabata) made sense. (I'm attributing Ross Ohlendorf to Damaso Marte.)

Ditto Nate McLouth for two pitchers (Charlie Morton and Jeff Locke), plus a possible replacement in Gorkys Hernandez.

On a more positive example, the 1971 Pirates traded star outfielder Mattie Alou for star pitcher Nelson Briles and went to the World Series that year.

2) Present vs. Future Trades

A team that is in contention needs peak-level players NOW. Apparently the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants consider themselves in that category.

A team that is out of contention needs prospects and other rookies for the FUTURE. Clearly, the Pirates are in the latter category, meaning that the trades of McLouth and Nady, as well as Jason Bay, for prospects, were of this type.

In fact, the Pirates have quite sensibly used their trades to line up a bunch of players who will be in their fourth to sixth year of major league service in the 2012-2014 time frame.

3) Spec(ulative) Trades

That is when you trade basically equivalent players with another team on the theory that you are smarter than the other guy. The trades of Nyjer Morgan for Lastings Milledge, and the other pair, Sean Burnett for Joel Hanrahan, fall into this category.

As pointed out in previous articles, Burnett for Hanrahan at least had a sound "sabermetric" basis. But what's the point of Morgan for Milledge if it disheartens your team? Any (speculative) gain from a (slightly) better Milledge may well be cancelled out by lost morale.

Then there is another kind of "trade" that don't really merit the name.

4) Dumps

Boston's trade of Manny Ramirez (and prospects) for Jason Bay was of this kind. For the Pirates, if you're sick of Ollie Perez, you throw him into the deal when the New York Mets call and ask if you'd give them reliever Roberto Hernandez for Xavier Nady.

Perez is not missed, especially since he has since been a headache for the Mets this year, and the Pirates got good consideration for Nady. But Perez had a good year in 2007, which was a pitching disaster for the Pirates.

Another trade started out as a "dump" was that of a perfectly serviceable Jose Bautista, which led to the trade of Jason Bay for a Bautista replacement and a Bay replacement, plus two pitchers.

According to FanGraphs, Bautista is equivalent in value (at Toronto) to Brandon Moss, and Andy LaRoche is a "downtrade" from Bay. There has not been any additional compensation in the form of Craig Hansen, and there may never be from Bryan Morris.

Ian Snell was another "misfit" dump, and the Pirates did well to get a "redraw" in the form of three pitching prospects for him (attributing the Mariners' position players to Jack Wilson).

Adam LaRoche, Freddy Sanchez, and Wilson (as well as Bay, above) represented salary "dumps." For them, the Pirates got two possible middle infield replacements for Wilson (and Sanchez) in Ronny Cedeno and Argenis Diaz, a probable first base replacement in Jeff Clement, Tim Alderson, a Phil Hughes-like AA pitching prospect that might replace the "former" Snell, and a lesser pitching prospect, Hunter Strickland.

The three position players and Snell were traded for a possible replacement plus an additional pitching prospect.

Hopefully this brings the process to a merciful end. Catcher Ryan Doumit and starting pitchers Zach Duke and Paul Maholm are about all that's left of the team that started 2008 (except for some relievers).

Any ONE of the above deals might have made sense, except for Jason Bay's (I keep getting back to this point). Even HALF of the trades weren't so bad in combination. But ALL of them together could destroy the structure of the team.

Is this the second coming of the Pirates? Or is it more like "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" (William Butler Yeats)? Only time will tell.