Eric Byrnes

First John Perrotto drops his name, and now Dejan Kovacevic does. There's probably a reason why.

In case you're not convinced that replacing Craig Wilson with Byrnes is a horrible idea, look at Byrnes' numbers last year. He has a worse track record than Wilson for his career and even is older than Wilson.

Byrnes' upside may be a little bit better than his statistics indicate. He's been a relatively streaky player throughout his career, and that has led Baseball Prospectus to speculate in one of its annuals that Byrnes played part of 2003 with some sort of lingering injury. (Check out his 2003 monthly splits.) Since then, Byrnes ludicrously declared himself fit to play after viewing his own X-rays, leading me to wonder if his desire to stay out on the field despite health problems is hurting his production. If the Pirates think they can control that, they might think Byrnes has some upside.

I'm just thinking out loud here about what reasons the Pirates might have for thinking Byrnes might be better than Wilson. That's the only decent one I can think of. Then there are the unbelievably silly ones, such as that Byrnes is speedy and that he looks intense. That's all I've got. This is another bad idea waiting to happen.