It's been less than a year, but by my count, there are eighteen guys on the 40-man roster who weren't with the organization since Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly took over.
Here they are:
Jimmy Barthmaier
Denny Bautista
T.J. Beam
Jason Davis
Phil Dumatrait
Craig Hansen
Jeff Karstens
Ross Ohlendorf
Marino Salas
Ty Taubenheim
Tyler Yates
Raul Chavez
Chris Gomez
Andy LaRoche
Doug Mientkiewicz
Luis Rivas
Jason Michaels
Brandon Moss
Here are the players who have held over:
Ronald Belisario
Sean Burnett
Matt Capps
Dave Davidson
Zach Duke
Tom Gorzelanny
John Grabow
Yoslan Herrera
Paul Maholm
Romulo Sanchez
Ian Snell
John Van Benschoten
Ryan Doumit
Ronny Paulino
Jose Bautista
Brian Bixler
Adam LaRoche
Freddy Sanchez
Jack Wilson
Nate McLouth
Nyjer Morgan
Steve Pearce
I don't have some grand point here; I mostly just want to make a record of the 40-man roster right now to look back at in a year to see whether this amount of player movement continues.
I think it will. There is still a huge number of players on both lists who are basically useless--Belisario, Davis, Taubenheim, Van Benschoten, Herrera, Rivas, Morgan, and probably Davidson, Paulino, Bixler and Burnett as well. My guess is that Huntington will be very active this offseason in finding replacements for many of these players, both in signing players to minor-league deals and acquiring cheap free agents. For example, the Pirates pursued Chad Durbin last offseason but didn't sign him, and now he's posting a 1.77 ERA for the Phillies. The Pirates tried a similar signing with Byung-Hyun Kim that didn't work, but I still bet they're more aggressive with the Durbins of the world in the coming offseason.
Also, the Bucs may trade more veterans, such as Grabow and Wilson, in the offseason, and these trades may be similar to the Nady-Marte deal--they'll look for upside, but they'll also look for quantity, because this season has shown that the Pirates lack depth in a big way. So in a Wilson deal, they might target a young shortstop and a couple more pitchers who are nearly ready. (This is all speculation, by the way.)
The result of all this could is that by this time next year, or even by April, the 40-man roster could be very, very different from the way it looked when Dave Littlefield was fired, with as few as a dozen players remaining.