National League team claims Marlon Byrd

An NL team has claimed Marlon Byrd, Jon Heyman reports. There's been some discussion on Twitter about the Pirates being a good fit, and certainly they would be, but I don't think there's any way Byrd would fall all the way to the Bucs. Byrd only makes $700,000, so it would make sense for pretty much any contending team to claim him, and it wouldn't make any sense if the Reds, who have priority on the Pirates, didn't. This is the problem with August trading for teams in the Pirates' position -- the only players who get to the teams with good records are guys who either have impossible contracts or wouldn't really help much.

I'd love to be wrong about Byrd getting through, though. He's in the midst of a huge year, and he could potentially provide a nice upgrade in the outfield. It's a shame that the Mets didn't really seem interested in trading him at the July deadline.