Pirates trade for John Bowker

The Pirates have traded for 1B/OF John Bowker, who will head to Indianapolis, CSN Bay Area's Alex Pavlovic tweets.

John Bowker is no longer with Giants. Was traded to Pittsburgh's Triple-A team (in Indianapolis) earlier this week.

— Alex Pavlovic (@AlexPavlovic) June 11, 2015

Now here's a blast from the past. This is the second time the Giants have traded Bowker to the Pirates. The first time was in 2010, when the Bucs acquired Bowker and Joe Martinez for Javier Lopez. Lopez didn't have a ton of value to the Pirates at the time, but the deal worked brilliantly for San Francisco -- Lopez is still in their bullpen.

At the time, Bowker had a terrific Triple-A track record, and I hoped he'd get more of a shot in the big leagues. The Pirates didn't give him much of one, though, even though they were a bad team at the time, and eventually shipped him to the Phillies. He then played in Japan and Mexico for a few years before returning to the States this season. Now he's 31 and has a .676 Triple-A OPS, so I expect he'll just provide depth. There's no word on the Giants' return in this deal, but they'll likely just receive cash considerations.