You make good points and I like your optimism. The Nady trade was much easier to swallow than the Bay trade though, IMO. These prospects are all young and promising but at the same time I pose my question from earlier in this trade again: best case scenario for any of these guys, are the Pirates really going to find an adequate replacement for Bay that will produce the same numbers or better and will they be able to afford him once he does? Basically, will you find a better value than Bay for $6M? The point is we didn't get any impact prospects in either of these deals. There isn't one guy you can immediately throw in the middle of the order and see what happens. That's what you expect when you deal a guy like Bay. Also, it hurts to give up on our surprisingly potent offense that's something like 5th or 6th in runs produced. Sure, everybody knows our pitching is horrific but at least we were swinging the bats well and staying alive. Flirting with a few games below .500 is like winning the lottery to a Pirates fan. Anything is better than the 90-100 losses a year we're used to. Oh well, we'll see what happens. Losing Bay was a kick between the legs but i'm trusting Huntington and hoping for the best. Injecting eight quality prospects into your system is something any team would be excited about. Let's just hope we're done with the Ryan Vogelsongs of the world.
I think LaRoches upside is comparable to Bay's value at his peak. Plus the team saves 6 million now and whatever salary increase Bay would have gotten in the future.
I hope so. I will say that I haven't forgot how the Pirates even acquired Bay in the first place since they traded Brian Giles (productive, fan favorite) for Bay and Oliver Perez. So in that sense, i'm definitely willing to be patient and give these prospects a chance to prove themselves despite my immediate knee-jerk-reaction to hate this trade.
Might I add the timing sucks too. I absolutely detest anything that is the Chicago Cubs so basically we traded away everybody just in time for us to get fed to the Wolves against the Cubs.
...the good thing about the pirates is "There's always next year". Recent history has shown that the pirate prospects don't pan out, but they were also being evaluated by a complete moron (Dave Littlefield). Hopefully, these guys turn out better. The pirates are going all in on rebuilding, thats for sure.
Manny's contract expires after this season. So he'll come off their payroll, and they'll have available funds for 2010 to go after Lebron
I think it's kind of cool that the LaRoche's are playing together. They're a (kind of) local bunch, I believe. They did have a house in Tomball. My grandma lived next door to them (which was quite a ways away), and used to house sit when Dave was on road trips. That's actually where I learned to swim...in their pool. That's my two cents.
