Much agreed. However, let us not be too harsh on Nate, I think he’s a great player. If anything he was showing that last year was not a fluke, and while his batting average was down a bit, his stats were all pretty much in line with last year—a few less doubles. There’s no reason to believe he won’t rack up more doubles and bring up his average to the familiar .275 region over the rest of the season. Thanks Nate!

Nate is not someone who you build around, but he is a solid major league player. He is the type of solid professional we hope to have acquired that will help us contend in ’11.

The Pirates actually tagged McClouth as a “cornerstone” piece of the rebuilding process. For that reason alone I think that age is a major factor in this deal. If your core prospects are all low to mid 20’s and all in the outfield, I do not believe that a 30 year old average centerfielder is a piece of the future and therefore a tradeable commodity at peak value (which is right around now).

As far as the pitchers in return, we cannot forecast who will or will not be part of the core in the future, but both of these pitchers have large upside with one being major league ready. Locke is a lefty with nasty stuff who is in high A ball now. Based on his development, he may be looking at cracking the major league club around 2011 or 2012. As far as Morton, most people close to the team think he is ready now (ala McCutchen). With a year and a half under his belt by 2011, he could be a major piece of this team moving forward.

As far as Karstens, that trade was made out of necessity due to the depleted minor leagues left over from the Bonifay/Littlefield era. While I agree that an “innings eater” is not a cornerstone piece, it was necessary to get us through this year. If you take Ollie and Karstens away, you have a sub standard Gorzo who needed his minor league time over the past year to get his stuff straight. You would have then thrust a Virgil Vasquez into the rotation and its not like he is lighting up Indy right now. The return in that trade netted us a 4 and 5 starter with the 4 starter having upside and the 5 being an innings eater on a team with no better option until the McClouth trade (Morton).

In conclusion, 1986 called and they loved the trade.

So fixed…..thanks nitpicky :)

I think fans still want to know whether this trade was money related, and who can blame us fans for that? Personally, I don’t think it was money related because he was only making $1.5M-$2M this year, somewhere in that range. By baseball’s standards today, that’s chump change. But we will see. NH also selected a “cheaper” player today with the Pirates No. 1 draft pick, a move seen as a way for the team to save money. I totally understand the fans’ frustration. Obviously, I’m a fan myself. If the Pirates take that money that they saved by selecting Tony Sanchez and put it towards signing elite Dominican prospect Miguel Sano, then I think that will show that Huntington had a strict draft plan and that the draft, as well as the McLouth trade, were not money driven. If they make no attempt to sign Sano, then the draft and the trade were all about the money. So before telling everybody to get over the trade, let’s wait and see what happens.

Look at it in a vacuum. If any other team makes this trade it is hailed as a good baseball move. We here in Pittsburgh overvalued a good player because he was the “face” of rebuilding the franchise along with Maholm and Doumit. We traded him at his highest value. There is no way in hell this was a salary dump. If you want to look at a salary dump, look back to 2001 and Jason Schmidt and then to 2003 and Aramis Ramirez. 1.5 million is transactional money in the MLB no matter what team.

If you look at the signing of Sanchez, there is nothing to get excited about in the draft. So we drafted him 20 spots early. Would you rather have taken a flyer on an overvalued high schooler? Let’s wait and see if we pick up Sano. If so, this whole argument is moot anyway.

Bottom line – there is no way all these moves are a conspiracy for the Pirates to save money. Every other thing this organization has done since the Coonley/NH regime speaks otherwise based on 1.5 years of precident. Save the conspiracy theories for JFK.