Trade Deadline Open Thread

As many of you know, I live on the West Coast and don't have a 9-to-5 job, which means I wake up far later than most of you. I'll obviously be available to update well before the deadline today, but if a trade happens earlier in the day I may not be there right away. You can chat about any early moves in this thread or in the diaries.

In the meantime, Dejan Kovacevic and Rob Rossi have some trade information. One part of Rossi's piece is pretty jaw-dropping:

Whoa. That is true, but only in the case of veterans that no one really wants, like Jeromy Burnitz and Joe Randa. Littlefield has, by some accounts, kept himself from making trades by insisting that Burnitz be involved, so he'd surely pass through waivers. Obviously, the problem with this is that Littlefield is only really likely to get talent if he trades desirable players, and those players won't go through waivers. If Littlefield doesn't make any trades by tomorrow afternoon - well, I'm running out of words to describe how stupid that would be. There is absolutely no long-term benefit to holding on to Craig Wilson and Kip Wells into August unless you're planning to keep them, offer them arbitration and collect draft picks. I don't think the Pirates will do that. And there is no long-term benefit at all to keeping Roberto Hernandez or Damaso Marte after tomorrow. They won't clear waivers, so they'll hardly have any trade value after today.

From the Kovacevic article, I have to wonder how Littlefield can keep a straight face when he asks for top prospects for his players when he says stuff like this about them:

Littlefield must really think the people he's trading with are idiots. Why would anyone trade a top prospect or an "extra piece"? If he's going to persist with this idiotic strategy of asking, for example, for a Major-League-Ready® starting pitcher and a position prospect for two months' worth of a bench player, he should at least do himself the favor of shutting his trap when Kovacevic's tape recorder is around.