The Pittsburgh Pirates Way: Taking a Chance on Other Team's Second-Tier Players

The Pittsburgh Pirates have made a practice of trading for "second tier" players that others don't want. This has actually worked to their advantage when these players turned out to be about as good as the first stringers.

It started with the trade of Xavier Nady (and Damasco Marte) to the New York Yankees in the summer of 2008. The price for Marte might have been Jeff Karstens and Dan McCutchen, so we can attribute Ohlendorf and Tabata to Nady.

Neither Karstens nor Ohlendorf were regarded as anything more than "replacement" players by Yankee fans. They were overshadowed by more obvious stars like Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes.

Karstens fit that mold, although he was a better fifth starter than Matt Morris, Tom Gorzelanny, or even Ian Snell that the Pirates fielded.

But Ohlendorf is now on his way to the front of the Pirates rotation, after having tweaked his delivery to make his pitches more deceptive. Meanwhile, Chamberlain and Hughes, the erstwhile stars, are now competing for fifth starter and "set-up" reliever positions with the Yankees.

The Braves wouldn't give up their star rookie pitcher, Tommy Hanson, for Nate McLouth. But they were willing to part with second stringer Charlie Morton, a hard thrower with control problems, plus two other players, Gorkys Hernandez and Jeff Locke.

Morton was as good a pitcher as Hanson, well "almost." In 2009, Morton's home field ERA (3.10) was actually a tad better than Hanson's (3.13). Ditto for Morton's daytime ERA, 3.42 versus 3.47.

Morton's high ERA (in night and away games) actually stemmed from rare encounters like his celebrated one-inning, 10-run, 90.00 ERA loss to the Chicago Cubs. But you can only lose one game at a time: a one-inning 10-0 loss is really no worse than a nine-inning 1-0 loss.

So someone who "kitchen sinks" a large number of his deficits in his worst outing(s) and pitches well the rest of the time isn't all bad. Yes, the man still has control problems, which is why he is still not as good as Hanson overall.

But he is as good as Hanson on a day when he doesn't have them. And contributions from the two other players may later balance the scales.

The last "second" that the Pirates dealt for was the Tampa Bay Ray's second baseman Akinori Iwamura. He was "stuck" behind a genuinely good player, Carl Crawford. And Iwamura was injured for most of 2009. But that meant that he came at a cut price that filled the Pirates' budget.

He is "cheaper" than trade-away, Freddie Sanchez, who is a better player but older and also prone to injury. And while we didn't like the trades, Iwamura could be better than Sanchez in a given year.

Meaning that the REAL reason we didn't like the trade of Sanchez was because of his "citizenship" on the field, and his civic role off the field that Iwamura might not match. We believe that Pirates' management should have given some consideration to "A.B" (after baseball) issues in this regard.