Active Roster Dreaming

There has been lots of talk on Bucs Dugout about bad personnel decisions by Dave Littlefield, so I thought it would be interesting to put together a theoretical active roster. This consists of players that have been with the Pirates in the past (or present) and are currently on 40-man MLB rosters. It was both a fun and painful exercise.

This definitely requires a community effort, because it is difficult to track every player that has gone through the system. My crack at a 25-man team is below. Note that I acknowledged trades that netted certain players -- so, for example, I had to choose between Xavier Nady and Oliver Perez, since they were traded for each other.

LINEUP
CF Gary Matthews
2B Freddy Sanchez
RF Jason Bay
LF Barry Bonds
3B Aramis Ramirez
1B Adam LaRoche
C Ryan Doumit
SS Jack Wilson

BENCH
INF Ty Wigginton
INF Jeff Keppinger
INF/OF Jose Bautista
OF Jose Guillen
OF Kenny Lofton
C David Ross

ROTATION
RHP Chris Young
LHP Tom Gorzelanny
RHP Ian Snell
LHP Oliver Perez
RHP Bronson Arroyo

BULLPEN
RHP Matt Capps
RHP Leo Nunez
LHP Paul Maholm
RHP Salomon Torres
LHP John Grabow
LHP Damaso Marte

The strength of the pitching staff is somewhat exciting -- which goes to show what having Chris Young would mean to the Pirates. The offense, while markedly better, would likely still fall short of championship-caliber. This reaffirms the fact that the quality of hitters throughout the system has been mediocre, at best, for many years. Still, it would have been interesting to have several of these players take the field together.

Feel free to make edits -- many are likely necessary. For instance, I'm not sure if the bullpen needs three LHP. Or if Doumit should be the starting catcher. And having Jack Wilson at SS makes me cringe, so I need help there.

Of course, if this exercise was done for every other MLB team, I have no doubt that our theoretical 25-man roster would finish with another 67-95 record. Yet another indictment of team management.