pick up Khalil Greene.

Why not see if the Dodgers would take Jack Flash and 2nd half LaRoche for say a Hu and Loney.

According to Wikipedia site, Delwyn Young will have elbow surgery during the offseason and is expected to be ready in 2009. Damaged goods????

The Pirates should look at what they are offering before being too critical of the prospects with Detroit. I don’t think we should expect much for a 31 year old short stop who rarely hits for more than .270, little power and $7.5M salary. Whoever eventually takes over had better have some power. The days of SS being strictly glove men are over.

If this is the return, then hang on to him. If Detroit and/or LA (or anyone else needing a SS) are in a pennant race in July, they’ll probably be willing to give up more at the deadline, particularly since Wilson would only be due about $2.5M or so by then.

How many shortstops out there are better all-around players than Jack Wilson?

We could keep Jack at an affordable price for the next two years, including his option.

Hopefully one of our minor leaguers will be ready for the job come 2011.

Who should we use if Jack goes? Bixler? Cruz? Hu or some other fringe prospect received in a trade? Trade for Brent Lillibridge because we lost so much when we sent him to the Braves? Get Sammy Khalifa out of a senior league?

There is no reason to trade Jack Wilson unless the Bucs can get at least a couple guys they think would actually help the big league club over the next few years.

Since the above is probably not going to happen, let’s keep him instead of just dumping salary.

“Whoever eventually takes over had better have some power. The days of SS being strictly glove men are over.”

No, first and foremost, the 2009 Pirates need a SS who can pick it. Solid offensive production would simply be a bonus.

"If all the Pirates can get back from Wilson is role players, they should keep him. "

It’s only because I read Chuck Klosterman’s essay on “Advancement” last night while trying to go to sleep that I wil make the allusion, not caring whether anyone else gets it for these few lines, but suspecting that someone will, that I will say: Charlie, this post is Advanced.

I mean, I agree with you: If all we get is role players for Jack, then Jesus, God, no, we shoudln’t even be thinking about picking up the phone when caller ID shows a Detroit or LA area code. WE DON’T NEED TO TRADE JACK UNLESS IT MAKES THE TEAM BETTER. Yeah, even if he has another great offensive season (by his standards), it doesn’t put us in the running next year, but still: he’s holding down the fort as a major league shortstop. The most important IF position, esp with our pitching. You don’t part with a known commodity just because.

So, we agree.

But why do we agree now? Why did we not agree about Xavier Nady? Maybe it’s not appropriate to say “all other things being equal,” because they never are, but all other things being equal, are you OK trading X and Marte for fringe players, but not Jack? I mean, that seems nuts. Because fringe players are what Jack is likely to fetch. Low OPS+, arguably injury prone, not young… even with a reasonable salary, I’m going to be careful what I give up for him. Even with his good defense, he’s worth a few wins.

We have traded better players, or more promising players, than Jack for fringe players. We do it regularly. When it was Dl making the trades, we could write it off to lousy talent eval; at the 2008 deadline, we wrote it off to the market being the market. (This analysis considers Tabata an unproven commodity as of yet, but it hopes like hell he’s half what he’s been made out to be.) I think there’s a pretty strong argument that Nady, Marte and Bay went for fringe players. At best.

I guess, at the end of all this, I’m just wondering why, when you’ve never been even close to being a Jack Wilson fan, are you down on trading HIM for peanuts, when you were all but explcitly for trading X for whatever we could get, and not much bent out of shape at the return for JBay. I mean, I wasn’t either, but I sure had my questions once our return actually took the field.

But trade him to Detroit they have better prospects and on top of that they have the prospects the pirates need……..the la trade sucks and the propects we would get in return are not worth it

“But I disagree with you about offensive production being a bonus. If the Bucs are going to improve we need a SS with potential to be a derek jeter or a dustin pedroia.”

Obviously we all want a star shortstop with all-around ability but, seeing as how those kind of guys are few and far between at the MLB level and out of our budget range, and the fact that we don’t have a prospect in our system who looks like a future standout SS, the most important thing IMO is to have a quality defensive SS in 2009-something that might be available for a year or two in a Wilson trade return.

If we go through 2009 with a combination of SSs playing Luis Rivas-caliber defense, the people on this site will go crazy.

seems to rest almost entirely on his “good defense.” Is he really still any good? bb-ref shows pretty much old-school and largely discredited fielding stats but FWIW in a half season Jack had the best RF and F% of his career. Anybody have access to Zone ratings or other info that might offer evidence for him still being a top-flight defensive SS?

BTW, while I was on there I noticed he hasn’t played more than 131 games since 2005. It would seem we’re going to be seeing a lot of Bixler anyway.

According to this site:
http://tigers-thoughts.blogspot.com/2008/01/keeping-jeff-larish-in-perspective.html

26 year old 1st baseman that the Pirates have been scouting, which possibly Detroit has decided to throw in the deal for Jack Flash. I thought we had a left handed 1st baseman that hits about 260 with twenty something HRs, albeit in a half a season!

There’s nothing wrong with getting back a younger, cheaper Jack Wilson. In fact, this would be tremendous. If we could get a cheap young player like Hu or Iorg that can put up similar numbers and not sacrafice much defense this would allow us to spend on other positions when the team deems itself competitive.

Why keep Jack for the sake of keeping Jack? The money we save on him, as well as last years trades could allow us to make a big play for a free agent in 2 years, in addition to a couple cheaper role players.

It’s time to sat sayonara, and take the best deal available.

the potential value of getting rid of Jack’s contract. If the money saved just goes into the owners pocket, then yeah, of course there is no value in that from our perspective. But if it is used to draft and sign high-upside amatuers, it seems to me that that has far more potential value than paying Wilson $7.5 million per year to play SS for a team with no chance of being competitive. For instance, I bet only a small fraction of that amount would have been enough to sign that 2nd round pitcher we couldn’t sign.

Alternatively the money saved on Wilson could be used in contracts for Doumit, McLouth or Maholm. If all we can get is a good field no hit SS for Jack that will be fine as long as the money saved is used to invest in a Pirate team with the potential to contend. With an offensive core of Doumit, McClouth, Alvarez, Cutch and Tabata we’ll be able to put up some runs and it should be easy to find a couple of bench bats that will that will hit for that SS when he comes up in crucial siturations.