Steve Phillips thought the Braves got the better end of the deal — and he’s never right. Enough said, good job Pirates.

Gorkys and Beans.

haha, gotta love the humor to lighten the mood, i know its making me feel better… Gorkys Park hahahahahaha

Whether you like the deal or not, now we get to see what Cutch can do (finally!).

Don’t be upset cause Charlie shut down your fanpost bout the Pirates, the KC Royals, Starbucks, Seinfeld/Kramer and whatever the hell else you were tryin to say.

Here’s my take on what you were asking there:

Nady/Marte for Ohlendorf, Karstens, D. McCutchen and Tabata: So far, so good from the Pirates’ perspective.

Bay for Andy LaRoche, Moss, Hansen and Bryan Morris: Andy is developing into a real nice player, but the jury is still out at the MLB level on Moss and Hansen, and we’ll need a good bit more time to grade what Morris can/can’t do.

McLouth for the 3 prospects today from the Braves: What I’m reading has me pleased so far in the return for Nate.

“I’m sure the Braves were ready to announce their offer of an additional impact player when NH jumped up and accepted the three stiffs we got without giving the Braves a chance to finish their sentence.”

Bullsh*t.

I like what “Team Coonington” has been doing since they took over late in ’07. Why not try to get with the program and give them support?

i’ve been a pirate fan my whole life, and i’ve stuck by them through all of these losing seasons. But it’s getting near impossible to feel that way. This time last year, we had the best hitting outfield in the majors, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM is gone. Neal Huntington said in one of the article that this was the toughest decision he’s had to make and that “tough decisions will need to be made as we build and sustain a championship-caliber organization.” you can’t make a championship caliber team if you’re trading everyone away for so-so prospects who may or may not make it to the big leagues and be succesful. And as for mccutchen, i’m not doubting he will be a very good baseball player, but when that time comes, are we going to trade him away like we’ve done with everyone else? Who’s next to go? Doumit as soon as he returns from the DL? We were SUPPOSED to be building the organization around him and mclouth. Can’t do that now neil huntington, can you? And the pirates wonder why their attendance keeps going down. there’s barely anyone left to cheer for! all our big names and talent are gone! who’s left? wilson and sanchez? with the way the pirates are going, they will be gone by winter because their contracts are up and there isnt enough room in our miniscule salary. I’m boycotting the pirates for the time being. Enough is enough. Stop trading away players for nothing.

and as for peole saying mclouth isn’t any good? have you ever watched him play?!? He was a gold glove winner last year! the first one we’ve had in years! He had ZERO errors..how many did the rest of the team have? Just because his numbers were slightly down this year doesn’t mean he’s having a bad year. Who knows, maybe he would have had tremendous numbers the second half of the season. Guess we’ll never know now. And he’s only been in the big leagues for a couple full seasons. that’s not enough time to reach your full potential.

I think i speak for a lot of people saying that i am not all that mad that we traded mcLouth, because we have mccuthchen, however i am dissapointed in what we recieved for him. Gorkys is supposed to be the key to the deal, and he is a light hitting OF which we have plenty of. i think we cldve gotten more for mclouth nearer to the dead line

Huntington went on a local sports talk show in Pittsburgh. Bob Pompeani (sp?) hosted. Pompeani was absolutely apoplectic and was ripping the trade and the organization. Made no distinction between the 15 years before the current FO and the guys running the team now. Totally unprofessional.

Huntington explained his rationale beautifully. When asked how he would explain it to the guys in the clubhouse, he reiterated that he was trying to build a long-term winning organization. He was then asked what if the guys in the clubhouse quit on the team. Classic response. “Then we have some other players who won’t be here much longer as well.”

Strongly suggested that Morton would be in the rotation “soon.” Gotta think Snell is gonna follow Gorzo’s career path from last year.

Ron Cook was also on the show. First time I think he has been coherent in thoughtful in my life. He didn’t endorse the trade, but he gave the FO great credit for not accepting mediocrity and making a bold decision. Thought he was right on point.

The callers and e-mailers were almost unanimously negative with many using the tired line that they’ll never go to a game again.

p.s. I’ll be in PNC tomorrow for Cutch’s debut. Can’t wait. A Pens win will top a great day.

almost literally..well ok it’s borrowed wisdom, but then again what isn’t. steve phillips is a moron, but his main criticism was that an active shopping of mcclouth could have yielded more. technically, he’s right – but my friend illustrated a good scenario that lays this trade out pretty well:

i have $1. I’m well aware that it’s only worth $1, but my job is to convince another GM that either a) it’s actually worth more than $1, or b) it will be in short order.

if someone comes up to me, of their own volition, and says “i’ll give you $3 for that dollar”….well hell, ok, i’ll do that.

i certainly could bide my time and see if anyone would be willing to give me more than $3 for my dollar, but then i would run just as much risk of everybody offering me less than $3 for it. we got what we could while we could.

for at least the next six years makes his debut tomorrow. Buckle up.

This could be a defining moment in the Coonington era. It’s one thing to trade away guys who are approaching 30 or past it and have one year on their contract, if that. It’s another thing entirely to trade a solid player for hope and promises. Which, at this point, is all Hernandez, Lock and Morton are.

I think Huntington and, to a lesser extent, Coonnelly have laid their credibility on the line here — their credibility on the “financial flexibility” issue (which I think is a red herring, but I’m in a minority in the public at large, and we just got more financially flexible) and their credibility on the “having a solid plan” issue. Not only did they just get prospects back — they got them for a guy who’s 27, and even if this is as good as Nate gets, this is pretty good. Any team in the league would love to pencil in his present production for awhile.

I realize this isn’t a championship team as assembled, but I don’t know if we got a hell of a lot closer to that with this trade. If that isn’t the result, this is going to be perceived as “same old Pirates, trading away stars for magic beans.” And while I don’t particularly care about that, I do care about the possibility that it’s Same Old Pirates, Lousy Talent Evaluators. There’s just no reason to trade Nate for Projects; that’s ok with Bay and Nady, but not here.

The good news? McCutchen makes his MLB debut in less than 12 hours.

Oh, and I’m calling it now: Huntingdon is out as Pittsburghs’ GM by the end of the 2012 season or earlier.

First and foremost, best to Nate. My second favorite Pirate next to JBay. IMO, the reason Nate’s numbers are down this year is the fact that he did not have that 1st half of the year with 2 of the hottest hitters in the majors (Nady and Bay) in the lineup. Players having that kind of a year will make average to good player stats better. Nate is JBay, 2 years removed on a good team. The Pirates lineup has many holes. The Braves have hitters and I really feel that Nate’s numbers will be as good as last year or better over the next 2 years. Having said that, I feel like many others that no one should be off limits to a good trade. I have said this before that you can have all the great hitters you want, but without good pitching you will not win championships. The Pirates received 2 pitchers out of this deal and time will tell if they are good. Until the minor league black hole is filled from “Littlebrain’s” failures, these kind of trades must be done, no matter how unpopular they will be. This is year 2 of the 5 year plan and if this draft is like last year’s and if we get some top notch players from the DR, we are making huge progress. I have been a Pirate fan since the 70’s and it has been hard to see the Buccos hit bottom and I enjoy seeing the passion on this blog and know that we all do care about having that winning team back in Pittsburgh. I think this path is the correct one. Tough times require tough decisions and the FO is giving it a shot. Good luck and may a pennant belong to the Bucs in 2012.

Morton = JVB

A team like the Pirates can only get talent by trading for it or drafting it, some of you act like we can trade our crap for other teams best players and have turned this team around in a hurry. it doesn’t work like that. What was our record last year with the best hitting outfield in the league? Crap, and they were either going to leave or get old before we had anything coming up behind them. This is team is a long way off from winning, it takes so much to win consistently, even when your top prospects make it, you have to have even more behind them for injuries to fill holes and keep moving, we had nothing, NOTHING in the minors to build with in the future, So we traded Nate, he’s an average player and we got 3 prospects for him just because every team had to have an all-star and he was ours. We stink and moves like this have to be made, trade everyone you can get something for, we still need a lot more talent in the organization and are a long way off from winning, don’t be mad or sad, be glad our FO is not sitting their like DL and thinking we have what it takes to put a winning team out there, they realize we are far off and are doing what they think needs to be done, it’s more than what has happened the past 15 years and I, for one, am glad to see moves like this realized.

and a healthy Ryan Doumit to win this year, and very probably for a couple more, so continuing to build an organization deep in talent at all positions is essential to getting this team back on top and win a World Series.

Stick to the status quo and pursue the Drive For 75 this year, and perhaps .500 in 2010.

Why settle for the above? We should be striving to have the best team in a few years in MLB.

I think we made significant strides last year with the first good draft in years-how good remains to be seen of course-the renewed interest in pursuing talent in Latin America, and a commitment to having everyone on the same page in the organization in terms of player development.

I certainly hope that we add a bunch more high-end talent through the draft next week and Latin America signings later in the summer.

Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly have done nothing so far to give me the impression they are not committed to winning. They inherited an organization in ruins, and it will take more than another year or two to truly rebuild it for a sustained run of success.

I’m sorry to see Nate McLouth go to Atlanta. I really am. I thought he was a better player for the PBC the past few years than the numbers say. I think Atlanta fans will be happy with him at the plate and in the field, not to mention his outstanding baserunning.

As for the return the Pirates got for Nate, I’ll say it again: Throw around whatever numbers you like to “prove” one way or the other whether it was a good deal or not. But all I know is that, with two of the guys at least a couple of years removed from even appearing in the bigs, we will probably have to wait til at least 2011 to start finding out what we really got and who the “winner” of the deal is. (The same holds true for the big trades last summer. We don’t know how good Tabata, D. Cutch, and Bryan Morris will be, and we’re just starting to reap the rewards of what Ohlendorf, Karstens, Moss, and Andy LaRoche can do. Of course Hansen doesn’t look promising at all anymore.)

I look forward to Andrew McCutchen’s debut in Pittsburgh and will cheer for Nate McLouth in Atlanta as long as we’re not playing them.

This trade may work out, but when will the cycle end? At what point do you stop trading your best talent and go after it with the guys you got? The Buccos are 24-28 without their swtich-hitting clean-up catcher. They’re battling. But they won’t any more. It’s tank city from here on out. No one in that clubhouse feels safe.

I remember a 25 (25!) year old slugging 3rd baseman who got traded to the Cubbies in 2003 for…wait for it…Jose Hernandez, Matt Bruback, and Bobby Hill. Who? Oh yeah, they are all out of the Pirates’ organization. I suffered through Joe Randa at 3rd when the Buccos could have had Aramis Ramirez. And guess what the then GM said (it sounds similar to what you’re hearing now) – “We need more players. We need prospects. We need some flexibility.” I also remember our current GM stating that Nate was part of our core when he signed him to a contract extension. Really? There’s a vote of confidence for all of the other players.

It’s the same old story. Get some prospects that cost less, and if they ever develop, trade them for more prospects. Some say that the Pirates are suckers, but the real suckers are us – the fans. We keep supporting this club, hoping the years of futility will end, but it won’t. If you can make money putting a sub-par team on the field – why not do it? Why cut into your profits just to win a few more games?

I’m excited that Cutch is up – I live in Indy and see him regularly – and he is the real deal. But when his contract is up in a few years, don’t think for an instant the Pirates won’t trade him for Johnny Flashinthepan, Javier Nobody, and a schmuck to be named later.

Pretty soon, i won’t have to read “McClouth” every f@#$ing day.

My family is from Pittsburgh so I root for the Pirates when they aren’t playing my home town Nats, and I’ll tell you I like this deal for them. I think McLouth is a great complimentary player but he’s not a star. This isn’t like they traded away a David Wright or an Evan Longoria. McLouth is 27 he’s not really gonna get much better and in fact will probably fall more in the .825 OPS range. Also remember he would have had to move to the corner spot decreasing some of his value.

I think the Pirates got some legitimate prospects. Two top 10 guys from the Braves isn’t nothing. Plus Charlie Morton can help the team now. Anyways you guys can check out the rest of my thoughts at http://steveospeak.blogspot.com/

for whoever asked where I got that the pirates were building the franchise around McLouth and Doumit, I was right when I said that. I remember hearing that when the pirates signed both of them in the off-season, and It was said again in this article from the Trib, posted this afternoon

You got two of Atlanta’s Top 10 prospects for McLouth.

Atlanta has one of the deeper farm systems in baseball, yet the Buccos were able to pry two of their better prospects away in this deal.

Yes, McLouth is relatively young and on the cheap. He’s also reached his ceiling in terms of talent and isn’t going to get much better than he already is. As is, he’s a good #2-#3 OF. Not exactly a guy you build around.

The Pirates made out fairly well in this deal, in my opinion.

As for Bay, you faced one of three options..

A) Trade him while his value was high

B) Wait until the following season and hope that he can command more then (considering what Atlanta traded to recieve Mark Teixeria and what they got in return when they traded him to the Angels, that’s not likely)

C) Keep him and lose him in two years for nothing.

It’s never fun to trade your best player. However, when you get a decent haul in return, the deal is easier to stomach.

ESPN Chat with Keith Law

    Jim (CT): I know you are going to talk draft, but can you give us a quick opinion on the McLouth to Atlanta deal?

    Keith Law: (1:09 PM ET ) Like it a lot for Pittsburgh – Morton could go right in their rotation, Gorkys is a ++ defender with a chance to hit (he hasn’t been good this year but he’s also 21 in AA), Locke is a high-upside LHP with three pitches who has shown good feel and command in the past. That’s a lot of talent – and difficult-to-get talent, since players up the middle and LHP are hard to acquire in trade or free agency – for a guy who is, what, an average outfielder? Fringe-average? Since 6/1/08 McLouth has hit .256/.327/.447 if you exclude his 7 IBB, and he’s not good in CF.

For what it’s worth, since my wife is a lifelong Braves fan (though to her credit the Pirates are her second team), I’ve watched them closely for four seasons now. Charlie Morton was brought up prematurely owing to injuries to their starters. When he was on, though, he had some electric stuff. Hard sink and fine movement. If Kerrigan can build on the confidence he appears to have gained in AAA, this could be a real good deal. I agree with Law’s assessment in general. As much as I’ve grown to like McLouth, I am not blind to his limitations. He will have less help to his left in Atlanta, especially if Diaz is in that spot. Offensively, some of those home runs at PNC will become long outs in Turner Field. We won’t know how this projects for a while, but at this point I am optimistic. McCutchen’s start today didn’t hurt, to be sure. This is a long road back, and we are two more drafts and a few trades away from getting a sense of whether this organization will take five or ten more years to be restored to competitiveness. We have lost with all of these guys, and we’ll lose some more without them. For a while yet.

McLouth was the face of the sad Pittsburgh franchise. I have followed this team for forty-six years, but the last sixteen have been quite disgusting. McLouth was a home grown product who out worked all who stood in his path until he made the starting lineup for good. His struggles personify the city itself. No one cares about the Pirates. They are the butt of ridicule year-in and year-out. They are mostly ignored unless some sarcastic comments are tossed their way by the snide national media when they are not beating us over the head with the Red Sox Nation or A-Rod or Manny ad nauseum. If we Bucco fans choose to mourn the “passing” of McLouth, please respect that right. We have almost no good news to revel in, so when the best player we had is given away it is understandable that we are deeply hurt.