The handwringing over the Pirates offense is officially full-blown. And you know what, it should be. It's been documented enough places I don't need to recap it here. The Bucs' offense is historically bad. As I've been saying for a few weeks now, it's amazing this team is remotely close to .500. All credit goes to the pitching staff, which has been nearly as good as the offense has been bad.

It's also been pointed out that the Bucs don't have any offensive answers at Class AAA or even AA. In Indianapolis, there's hope that one day Starling Marte will be a successful major-leaguer. Unfortunately, that day isn't yet upon us. The same may be said of Jordy Mercer and Chase d'Arnaud, but they are both already 25. They're more likely to be utility infielders in the end. In Altoona, only two players with more than 65 at-bats have an OPS over .700. There are some players who might develop into quality major-leaguers, but that will take at least a few years.

So the cupboard is bare. What to do? The media has been loudly demanding that Neal Huntington make a trade. It's an easy argument to rile the fanbase. When you can say 'I don't know what's out there, that's the GMs job,' or 'It's preposterous to say a trade can't get done in May,' you have a pretty unassailable pulpit. And there is a certain degree of truth in each statement. But I have to give Neal Huntington some benefit of the doubt here. He watches the games; he knows what is going on. I feel I can say with almost 100 percent certainty that he has been on the phone at least canvassing the waters of what is available in the trade market. At the same time, it makes no sense for him to publicly respond to any of this in the media. So stones are cast and he basically has to take the hits because this is the team he assembled to represent the Pittsburgh Pirates.

So let's take a look at the reality of today's situation.

First, are the Pirates contenders? I don't think so. I said before the season they would win 69 games and I still think that's going to be close. I strongly believe one additional bat in the lineup will do very little to change the outcome of the season.

Can they be contenders? Of course. Any team that pitches they way the Pirates have has a chance. If the staff continues to be brilliant, the Pirates have a chance to compete. So the $64,000 question is, can the Pirates make the current team better without sacrificing the longer-term plan?

Critics of Neal Huntington, and that list is certainly growing, rightly point to the complete lack of development of position players and scoff at the idea of a long-term plan. The pitching is never likely to be much better than it has been for the past 45 games, so make a move, they argue. It's not an unreasonable position.

Here is the problem. The Pirates have virtually no assets with which to make a season-altering move. I'm going to leave Jameson Taillon and Gerrit Cole out of the discussion. It's fine for the Pirates to have two players off limits and those two probably should be, with the usual caveats. So let me list all the players in the organization from Class AA up who will bring back a front-line major league player(s).

Andrew McCutchen, Joel Hanrahan and James McDonald.

That's the list. It doesn't mean a bunch of other players aren't valuable. Marte would bring a lot back. Charlie Morton would fetch something. There is some value in the bullpen. But today, a quality, team-altering, plug-and-play major league starter isn't coming back for anyone but the three above.

Let's look at it more closely. Obviously, to improve the offense, the team would have to trade pitching. As terrible as Neal Huntington has been at signing free agent position players, he has been fantastic at acquiring pitching. The Pirates have pitching, but what will it bring back? This is the hard part, because the truthful answer is that we don't know. We can speculate, and that's what makes it entertaining, but it's hard to pinpoint value and need.

And that's the May vs. July problem. If you look at today's standings there are probably five teams that are realistically out of contention. That means most teams still think their off-season plan applies and aren't ready to make dramatic changes. In July, when 65 percent of the script is written, wants and needs are much more easily and clearly defined. So yes, it is much harder to get trades done now. It smacks of desperation. That doesn't mean a trade shouldn't be made, it means that it's a seller's market and the desperate team (the buyer) is less likely to get equal value since most teams aren't necessarily looking to sell.

Back to the pitching and what to trade. As great as the Pirates pitching has been, I'm not sure the individual components will bring back more than what might be lost. Let's look at the starters:

James McDonald: An emerging pitcher around whom the team should probably build its rotation.

A.J. Burnett: 35, under contract for next year. Very limited market this past offseason, which is why he's a Pirate.

Erik Bedard: Injury-prone, having not completed his last four seasons. Limited return. July trade highly likely.

Charlie Morton: Erratic history. Probably more upside than trade value, based on limited major-league success.

Jeff Karstens: Hurt. No trade value at the moment.

Kevin Correia: Free agent at season's end. No trade value.

Brad Lincoln: Maybe the most interesting name. Seems to have taken a big step forward this season. Can start, but has been electric out of bullpen. Cheap. Certainly should be made available, but he's unproven, with value all on the come, so it's hard to think he brings back much.

As for relievers, we have seen the market pay up for closers in the offseason, but so far not in-season, even with many closers injured. Every team has looked internally for answers. That doesn't bode well for the Pirates, because it clearly is a position of strength.

Joel Hanrahan: Dominating closer. Should bring back major-league talent.

Jason Grilli: 30 strikeouts in 17 innings this season. Stuff has been almost a filthy as Hanrahan's, but he's 35 and is a free agent at the end of the season. Some trade value.

Juan Cruz: Has been effective, but command is always an issue. Little market in offseason. No trade value.

Chris Resop: No trade value.

Evan Meek: No trade value.

Tony Watson and Jared Hughes: Young, effective and cheap. Probably more valuable to Pirates than on the trade market. Small chips.

In Indianapolis:

None of Jeff Locke, Rudy Owens or Justin Wilson is going to bring back a major-league-ready player. With scouts viewing their current ceilings as back-of-the-rotation starters, there won't be demand. Every team feels they can develop these types on their own in their system. Certainly Owens has reestablished himself as a prospect with his good start, but it's hard to see him bringing much value until he succeeds at the major-league level.

What the Pirates do have in Indy is a ton of journeyman depth. Jo-Jo Reyes, Daniel Cabrera, Doug Slaten (who has a June 1 promote or grant FA date) and Tim Wood have all been very successful in AAA. Unfortunately, none has been able to generate that success in the majors, and are all trying to resurrect their careers.

There it is. I'd assume everyone except Andrew McCutchen, and possibly James McDonald, is available right now and the Pirates' brain trust is in a board room searching for answers. The reality is the Pirates have a few pieces to offer to get quality in return. These are undoubtedly tough times for Neil Huntington, but it's the team he's assembled. Can he find a dance partner and make a bold, season-changing trade to impact the lineup? And should he? If you think the hitting will regress to the mean, won't the pitching most likely do so as well? How Huntington goes about overseeing it for the next two to three months will probably play a defining role in whether he gets to oversee it for the next two to three years.

Oh, and fire the hitting coach. Sure, the blame doesn't rest squarely on Gregg Ritchie, but his position is "hitting coach." Time for a new voice.

It appears Jeff Inman is taking Duke Welker's place as the reliever on the Curve roster with great stuff and confusing stats, as Welker has been promoted to Class AAA. Like Inman, Welker has a great fastball (Welker's is probably better than Inman's) and a good ground-ball rate, but he's never really had the strikeout rate to match. This year he has 19 strikeouts in 23.1 innings for the Curve.

Welker is on the 40-man roster, and there's been some speculation about the possibility of him coming off. I didn't think that was very likely before, given that the Pirates have a fair amount of chaff on the 40-man (heck, there's chaff on the 25-man roster), and given that when the Bucs put a reliever on the 40-man roster without there being obvious stats to back it up, there's usually a good reason why (see the examples of Ronald Belisario and Chris Leroux).

Pirates Prospects reports. I doubt Inman has moved to the non-prospect stage where the Pirates will just bounce him between levels willy-nilly, so my guess here is that the Pirates want to move Inman up and see what they have, since he'll be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft after the season, and teams love to take live arms in the Rule 5 Draft and stick them in their bullpens.

Inman has excellent stuff, but he's hardly pitched at all, mostly because of elbow problems. When he has pitched, he's posted very strange numbers for someone who's supposed to be a power pitcher, generally doing a good job keeping runs off the board (thanks to a high ground-ball rate) but striking out very few batters. In any case, he's still an interesting pitcher, and he's 24; Class AA would seem to be a good place for him. Now let's see if he can stay healthy.

Dejan's blog entry on Drew Sutton strikes me as a bit much:

But speaking only for myself and only for now, I’d criticize the Pirates primarily if they again failed to identify someone who could have helped their offense.

Especially now.

Check this article in the Tampa Bay Times right after Sutton’s arrival. Look at manager Joe Maddon’s quote down below about how he and the Rays’ scouts liked Sutton "for a while."

I’d trust the Rays’ evaluators more than the Pirates, to put it kindly.

But again, let’s see how it plays out. Sutton is 28, hasn’t had great numbers in the minors, and it’s been three or four years since anyone saw him as having impact potential. And there is the matter of the player to be named.

The last paragraph sums up the situation much better than the first four, I think. As Dejan notes elsewhere in the article, it's common courtesy to trade minor-league veterans if a major-league spot opens for them in another organization. The Pirates, of course, traded Sutton to the Rays, and he promptly went 4-for-8 for them. That means almost nothing. There isn't a whole lot in Sutton's statistical record that suggests he can really help them much. (And the Joe Maddon quote doesn't tell me a whole lot; what's Maddon supposed to say?)

Who knows what will happen, but in all likelihood, Sutton will eventually go back to being the same AAAA player he's been for years. And if he doesn't, the Pirates won't have been the only team who will have failed to see it -- there's also the Astros, Reds, Indians, Red Sox and Braves, who all let him slip through their fingers in the last four seasons.

The Sutton situation was weird in that the Pirates acquired and then traded him so quickly, but in all other respects, it was a routine minor-league transaction. I know any trade involving a hitter is likely to get a great deal of scrutiny right now, but ... yeah, really that's all there is to it. Losing out on Sutton wasn't a problem. It's just a minor distraction.

Four games in the farm system today (or 4.5 for anybody who noticed the Pirates' lineup today), with Indianapolis off and Altoona playing a doubleheader:

-P- Altoona's seven-game winning streak went by the boards as Harrisburg took two from the Curve. In game one, the Curve hitters actually did a decent job against Daniel Rosenbaum, who came into the game with the second-lowest ERA in the minors. Altoona got three runs off him to increase his ERA from 0.62 to 0.99, but they still lost, 5-3. Phil Irwin allowed all five runs over six innings on seven hits. He walked none and fanned six. Brock Holt and supersub Kelson Brown each went 2-4, and Miles Durham and Quincy Latimore each went 2-3. Altoona dropped game two by a 3-2 score, with Brandon Cumpton giving up the three runs in six innings on five hits and a walk, while fanning five. Most of the offense came from Latimore, who went 4-6 with two doubles and his third HR on the day. Robbie Grossman saw only pinch-running duty in game one, then went 0-3 with a walk in game two. He's now hitless in his last 24 ABs. Jarek Cunningham went 0-6 with a walk in the two games.

-P- Bradenton beat Lakeland, 6-1, as Gerrit Cole threw five shutout innings. He allowed four hits and two walks, and fanned three. The Marauders had only four hits, but were aided by six walks. Nobody did much to speak of on offense, except that Gift Ngoepe and Evan Chambers each drew two walks. In fact, it's generally tough to find much to say about Bradenton except when Cole or Jameson Taillon pitches, as the Marauders have a thoroughly uninteresting team, or in some cases ostensibly interesting players having thoroughly uninteresting seasons.

-P- West Virginia got back to its losing ways, getting shut out by Lexington, 4-0. The most positive development was Robby Rowland--the pitcher the Pirates acquired for Brett Lorin--making his first start. He went four innings and allowed two runs, one earned, on four hits and no walks, with three Ks. Rowland had a disastrous season last year in the rookie-level Pioneer League, so this was a surprisingly good start, especially given the fiasco that's been the Power's pitching this year. The West Virginia offense did nothing to speak of. Alen Hanson went 0-2 with two walks and no (i.e., zero) errors. And, no, he wasn't the DH. In fact, with the Power's defense, I'm half expecting their DH to get charged with an error at some point.