This article (which I found on Ben Badler's Twitter) is only tangentially Pirates-related, but it's extremely rare to hear a ballplayer be this frank, and it concerns a trade the Pirates made recently, so I think it's worthy of inclusion here.
Basically, the backstory here is that Billy Rowell was the Orioles' first-round pick in 2006. He hit pretty well his first couple years, then stalled out badly in Class A+ and failed to progress. That probably made the Orioles really frustrated with him. This year, they had him in Class AA, where he hit very badly. Then he got hurt, and when he returned, the Orioles sent him to the GCL for a rehab assignment. Then they didn't call up back up to Class AA Bowie, he says, because they sent Aaron Baker there.
"I was supposed to go to Florida for two weeks according to (director of player development) John Stockstill. Two weeks in Florida and then come back to Bowie. That was the plan. I was good (healthy) after two weeks, then they brought up the guy they traded for Derrek Lee - what's his name, Baker?
"They bring him up and he gets dominated in Double-A. The game was way too fast for him. You know what I mean? They bring him up so it looks like the Derrek Lee trade was a good trade and they diss the guy they gave $2 million to. It's cool, it's their business. But I don't feel like it was carried out in the right manner."
Baker was awful in a tiny sample in Bowie, hitting .196/.188/.239.