Pirates reportedly tried to trade Luis Heredia and draft pick for Bud Norris

I feel guilty linking to this, but it sure is interesting. Some of the Astros' internal communications have been leaked, and Neal Huntington is all over them, trying to trade for Bud Norris near last season's deadline and apparently being awfully willing to part with interesting young players to do it.

[Pirates GM Neal Huntington] said he would not include Polanco in any Norris deal. [Luhnow] asked for Glasnow + Heredia or Glasnow + Kingham and NH said no. NH said he was willing to add to Heredia. NH said he would also consider adding to Heredia with pick 73. JL said that Glasnow had to be the headliner and we were looking for.

At one point, the communications say flat-out that the Pirates offered Luis Heredia and this year's No. 73 pick (the one the Pirates used on Trey Supak) for Norris, and the Astros turned them down. What you think of that probably turns on your opinion of Luis Heredia. There are good reasons to be skeptical of him at this point, but I would have been pretty upset with that trade -- Norris is a back-end guy who wasn't a huge upgrade on what the Pirates already had last year.

Last July, Jeff Passan wrote that trading Tyler Glasnow for Norris "made sense"; I thought that was ridiculous and didn't make sense whatsoever, but maybe Passan had a source in the Astros organization on that one, because the Astros repeatedly say here that Neal Huntington might have been willing to consider dealing Glasnow.

Anyway, the Astros ended up trading Norris to the Orioles for L.J. Hoes, pitching prospect Josh Hader, and the No. 37 overall pick. That's not a bad return for Norris, but if the Pirates were in any way willing to part with Glasnow, I'd say the Astros missed out.