Hu is at best a utility man. Young can’t beat out Kemp, Ethier or anybody else. He is a good 4th outfielder. The Pirates should be able to do a helluva lot better than this if someone wants Wilson, a good defensive shortstop who can swing the bat a little and “only” makes $7-8 million!!!

Gunner, you have hit the mark. Hu doesn’t look like more than a Raphael Belliard. We cannot get rid of Jack Wilson just to move him. If our pitchers———the one’s who took us to last place and the only ones capable of bringing us back to being a creditable major league team———are to improve and eventually flourish, we have to have a shortstop with above average range and arm. We CANNOT give up 4-out innings with a pitch-to-contact young pitching staff!! We won’t improve at all with Raphael Belliard/Chin-Lung Hu at short.

Now if the Dodgers want to throw Kemp into that trade, call me back!

I hope they can do better for Jack. I agree we need a strong defensive SS for our pitchers. But what do we need more OFs for? Kemp looks like he is a decent player but we are loaded with OFs right now.

Hu doesn’t look like he’d be any better other than probably a minor defensive upgrade. We need something useful to trade Jack. I’d flip if we got Kemp. I still think he has 30 HR power. I’d like it if we got McDonald back straight up for Jack. He could be a useful starter. We can never have enough #3 starter types. Seriously.

for McDonald. There would have to be somebody else pretty good in the deal.

Wilson turns 31 in December and has a career .687 OPS. I am not sure how anyone thinks he is even worth Hu straight up.

I would be disgusted if we made this trade. Hu had vision problems this year, which explains some of the bad offense. He might not ever be a good hitter, but he can certainly be as good as Jack Wilson. And he makes the minimum. I wouldn’t trade him straight up for Wilson. There are other crappy veteran SS’s we can sign without giving up prospects. I think you guys are way overvaluing him, Wilson’s hardly worth anything except salary relief.

And even suggesting Kemp is laughable. Colletti is an idiot, but no one’s dumb enough to make that trade. Kemp’s already better and cheaper than Wilson with the potential to be a superstar. In fact, there’s not a guy on the Pirates worth Kemp straight up right now, except MAYBE Doumit. So please, stop with those kind of rumors. Doesn’t it get tiring hearing Yankee fans wanting McClouth/McCutchen for Melky Cabrera? Because thats more likely to happen than a Kemp/Wilson deal.

If you guys get Hu, Young, plus another good prospect, you can laugh all the way to the bank, because you just robbed the Dodgers, without a doubt.

is more important than his OPS-all things considered-and I think it would be a mistake to trade him if we don’t get a decent MLB-ready shortstop in a return package.

If you have a SS who plays excellent defense and can rake, sure that’s better, but how many of those guys are there at any given time in the majors?

The Pirates can’t get one better than Jack Wilson right now.

It’s been pointed out that Wilson’s contract for 2009 and the option for 2010 are very affordable by current baseball salary standards. Accordingly, is there some legitimate reason to trade him for a couple of bums other than to dump salary?

Question for the members who are more informed about minor league prospects:

Do you rate Hu’s skills more highly than you did Brent Lillibridge’s two years ago?

How about now since Lillibridge has had a couple cups of coffee with the Braves?

Even if you have a very bad team, I think it’s important to have a solid defensive SS for the development of the pitchers, and simply to allow fans to see fundamentally-sound baseball from the position.

Trade Wilson for Hu and some AAAA player and then watch the SS position get mangled throughout the 2009 season by Hu, Cruz, Bixler etc. Then the same people who are so much in favor of getting rid of Wilson will whine and cry about how stupid Coonelly and Huntington are and demand their heads.