Keith Law: Pirates Would 'Listen' To Andrew McCutchen Offers

Keith Law from FWIWville:

On Rumor Central, for all you brand-new Insiders: I heard the Pirates would at least listen on Andrew McCutchen ... I rarely post rumors, & wouldn't have posted this one if I didn't believe this was serious.

I've never known the Pirates' front office to ever consider anyone to be "untouchable," so I'm going to treat this as something ado about very little until there's a little more smoke under it. I'm sure they'd be willing to trade him if the right deal came along, but I'm also sure that their price for McCutchen is incredibly high, so until the Bucs are in serious discussions with someone, it's not really worth worrying about. But people are going to be talking about this, so if you want to discuss it here, have at it.

My personal take is that if McCutchen is unwilling to sign an extension, then it certainly wouldn't be ridiculous for the Pirates to consider trading him. It's increasingly looking like there won't be a particularly strong core in Pittsburgh until Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon arrive, if they ever do (which isn't to the front office's credit, obviously), and the surest way to ensure that core is as strong as possible is to trade McCutchen for younger players. The Bucs would have at least another year before that became a pressing consideration, though, and it would be depressing to think too much about it now.

UPDATE: This.

UPDATE: Dejan Kovacevic says there's nothing to this at all.

UPDATE: Once more, for emphasis!

Let me skip past the newspaper-ese and spell this out a different way: If you just had the conversation I just had, you wouldn’t give another second of thought to McCutchen being traded.