We’ve got about six hours until this afternoon’s trade deadline, and I think the safest bet might be that the Pirates are done. They’ve already addressed their infield/bench depth situation with Aramis Ramirez, they’ve made one trade that upgrades their bullpen with Joakim Soria, and they’ve made a third move that might do the same in Joe Blanton, depending on how charitable you are towards the Pirates’ pitcher-reclaiming skills.
There are two places left that the Pirates could obviously stand to upgrade; first base, and their starting rotation. Pedro Alvarez’s bat has come alive some recently, but his defense is abysmal. He almost certainly needs a platoon partner, and the club would probably be better off by simply finding someone better than him to play first base. I don’t know if either will happen; the Brewers want to move Adam Lind, who makes sense for the Pirates, but I haven’t heard the Pirates attached to that name. The Indians could move Carlos Santana, but the same applies (and he’s a bit of a project to boot). The Red Sox would likely love for the Pirates to take Mike Napoli off of their hands, and he would at least solve the platoon problem if nothing else. Napoli strikes me as a move that could be made in August, though, because no one is going to claim even the last quarter of that salary through waivers. There hasn’t been much news at all on the Lind front since Brandon Moss went to the Cardinals, so all we can do is sit back and wait here.
The starting pitching is a little bit more murky of a situation. Charlie Morton and AJ Burnett have pitched poorly lately, but some of Morton’s struggles are tied to a poor defense behind him, and Burnett has had rough patches of a few ugly starts before. I wrote this at the break, but the Pirate rotation was fine as it was in the first half, it’s just not clear how much we should count on it being that way in the second half. Obviously the early second half returns are not great here. Starting pitching will likely be expensive for the Pirates, as a David Price rental brought a really nice prospect back for the Tigers and Mike Leake (Mike Leake!) got the Giants top prospect in return. The Pirates won’t be looking to rent here, because they have rotation issues next year as well as this year. That means Tyson Ross or Carlos Carrasco, both of whom would likely demand a huge prospect ransom in a trade. I think the Pirates could get away with either guy without giving up Tyler Glasnow, but it’s not apparent to me who would be left if that’s the route they go.
To this point, the Pirates name has not come up in connection with Ross or Carrasco. That doesn’t mean they’re not interested, of course, but given Neal Huntington’s comments about starting pitching last night, I’m not sure I’d get my hopes up for them to make a move on either guy today. Obviously that statement leaves him some wiggle room, and it came while AJ Burnett was detonating on the mound in Cincinnati. My guess, though, is that the Pirates are hoping that their revamped bullpen can shorten the game enough that they can make up for any sort of short-comings in the rotation. I’m as skeptical of that plan as I am of Joe Blanton, but then, it’s just speculation at this point. We’ll have to wait and see.
“Wait and see” is the organizing statement of the day for Pirate fans, I think. As I wrote yesterday, the Pirates don’t need to do much of anything right now. They could still stand to improve, and I think most Pirate fans would like to see them improve a little bit more. They’ve been quiet, but then, they seemed quiet yesterday until the Soria move came together inside of about 30 minutes. We’ll know for sure in a few hours, I guess. I’ll do my best to keep the site updated with any news I can find today.
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