Well that sure turned out to be a pointless waste of Ron Uviedo, didn't it? When the Pirates made the weird prospect-for-veteran deal that brought Eveland to Pittsburgh just a few weeks ago, Neal Huntington actually cited "years of control" as one of the reason they made the move. That is, Eveland wasn't supposed to be just a stopgap, but someone who could be kept around for several years if things went well. Well, after just 9 2/3 innings, the Pirates have resigned themselves to losing him if someone else decides to claim him. It's probably not a huge deal, but Bucs fans will have every right to be angry at Huntington if Uviedo turns out to be any good. Right now this just looks like bizarre, Littlefield-esque roster management.
So why did the Pirates do all this? Dejan Kovacevic reports that one reason for getting rid of Uviedo in the first place has to do with the fact that the Pirates have a ton of prospects they'll have to protect on the roster after the season, but what if Uviedo had been lights out the rest of the season? He was already in Class AA, so it isn't much of a stretch to think that in two months he could have been at least as helpful as Eveland at the major league level anyway. Dumping him for a player they didn't really want was premature, regardless of the roster crunch that could happen five months from now. (About which Tim has more detail, and thanks to BigB2323 for pointing that out. Basically, the Bucs will have to protect Starling Marte, Rudy Owens, Jeff Locke, Nate Adcock, Diego Moreno, Daniel Moskos and perhaps Brian Friday. However, there's also a ton of waste already on the 40-man roster that will likely come off. So for the Pirates to decide that Uviedo wasn't going to make the cut five months from now and that's that seems strange, to say the least.)