That's an anecdotal question at this point, because Neal Huntington has set his value at Craig Morton, Gorkys Hernandez, and Jeff Locke. The question that remains: is that enough? McLouth is signed reasonably through 2011 and the Pirates didn't get Tommy Hanson or Jason Heyward in this deal, so immediately, Pirate fans are going to hate it. I can feel the hateful venom pouring out of Pittsburgh as I type this, but is it justified? Should the Pirates care?

Here's what the Pirates traded: a 27-year-old centerfielder with pretty decent power and a .350 OBP. Those are measurables. His defense is pretty hotly contested among Pirate fans, but if Neal Huntington's going around quoting UZR to the press, I doubt the Pirates thought highly of him in that capacity and it's not likely that a lot of front offices did, either. He is a great base runner, but that's even harder to quantify than defense. Nate McLouth is a great player on the Pittsburgh Pirates, but he's only a good player everywhere else. PECOTA only projected him for 21 homers this year. If he drops even five homers like that projection suggests, I think to a lot of people, 2008 becomes somewhat of a fluke and McLouth's trade value drops.

Remember, too, that lots of teams have been interested in McLouth in the past six months or so. I'm guessing a lot of teams made calls to Huntington trying to suggest that McLouth was a complete fluke and he should sell while his value is still high. None of those deals took place, so that suggests (at least to me) that Huntington really likes the package he pulled in from Atlanta tonight. It continues in the direction that the deals last year took the Pirates; it immediately creates more pitching depth at the big league level with Morton and it keeps restacking a depleted minor league system with Hernandez and Locke.

If you're still not buying in to this trade, let me ask you a question. What do you think Freddy Sanchez is worth in a trade right now? And what do you think he would've been worth after his 2006 season? Remember Craig Wilson? What do you think he would've been worth in 2004? And we got who for him in 2006? Shawn Chacon. A player like McLouth, who breaks out later in his career, is always going to have diminishing value as you move away from that breakout. The Pirates got two good prospects and a third potentially useful player for him. That's not an insignificant haul, even if it doesn't include any of the Braves top prospects.

This is certainly a tough pill to swallow as a fan. It sucks to see good players come to Pittsburgh and leave before they win anything. But Huntington and Coonelly have brought a ton of good talent into the system in the past two years, and this trade tonight continues that trend. Just remember where things were when Huntington took over (Andrew McCutchen as the top prospect then Steve Pearce and Neil Walker as the next two) and think about where they are right now with McCutchen, Alvarez, Tabata, Grossman, Morris, Hernandez, Locke, a few other picks from last year, and whoever we draft this year. That's a HUGE improvement. So the Pirates won't finish .500 this year. We knew that would happen. And they'll have the worst losing streak in baseball history. We knew that would happen, too. Both of these things would've happened with McLouth. But trading him now, well, it's all part of the necessary process to stop the losing at some point in the future. As a fan of a team in the position the Pirates are in right now, I'd much rather have a GM focused on the future rather than the present.

Holycrapholycrapholycrapholycrap.

No word on who other than to say it's not Tommy Hanson. Will update as updates come.

UPDATE: I've got names: Charlie Morton, Gorkys Hernandez, and Jeff Locke. And Andrew McCutchen gets the call to Pittsburgh.

UPDATE #2 (aka, the long update): John Sickels had Hernandez and Locke both graded as B-'s before the season started, which would approximately place them around Bryan Morris-level prospects. Locke was a second round pick in 2006 right out of high school and he's still very young. His record was ugly last year, but his peripherals were very nice for a 20-year-old playing in low-A ball. Being a young left-handed starter with a big arm and huge upside, I'm betting he's the player Huntington was after in this deal.

Hernandez is an interesting prospect in the Jose Tabata mold. He was signed by the Tigers out of Venezuela and sent to Atlanta in the Jair Jurrjens/Edgar Renteria trade. He's been pretty aggressively pushed through the minors, as he's in AA at the age of 21, and his numbers are pretty good considering his age at each level. The Tigers and then the Braves were both waiting for him to flash some more power, but he's a great athlete, fast, and good defensively according to this profile, so the Pirates are possibly hoping he'll develop somewhere along the Andrew McCutchen curve.

Morton might be plugged into the rotation right away. He's 25 and he's put up great numbers in the International League in the past two seasons. This Scout.com profile describes him as an "enigma" with great stuff that's a bit of a head case. He made 15 not-so-good starts with the Braves last year, but like I said, he seemed to take a step forward in AAA last year and isn't terribly old. He sort of fills the same role that acquiring Karstens, Ohlendorf, and McCutchen did last year, he provides immediate pitching depth that with some coaching could potentially turn out to be something a little more.

I'll write a longer post with some more opinion in it later tonight.

No game tonight on account of rain. Damn, I was looking forward to it, too.

Anyone that's ever hit a home run can tell you: the first one is special. Mine came when I was a 12-year-old catching for Hermitage Kiwanas. We were playing Advanced Auto Body on the American League Field at the Carl Harris Little League Complex in Hermitage in what had been a crazy back-and-forth battle early on. They took a 4-0 lead in the top of the first, we quickly tied, it, and then they scored four more in the top of the second. I stepped to the plate in the bottom of the second with the bases loaded and a pitcher whose name I do honestly remember, but don't want to just toss out in a public forum like this on the mound.

He didn't throw very hard and gave me a perfect pitch that might as well have been on a tee. I took a slight uppercut swing and didn't even feel the ball hit the bat. I knew it was gone. My dad (the coach), later told me that from the dugout, he was sure that I'd hit the ball too high, but I told him I knew differently. We ended up winning the game 14-13 in the bottom of the sixth and I walked in my last two at-bats. During the game, my friends who were playing on other fields came running over to find out if it was true. It's still one of my better memories from my baseball playing career.

The reason that I'm telling the story is because I'm certain that Jason Jaramillo has me trumped. I mean, I'm sure that Jaramillo has hit home runs before, but that first big league homer has gotta be special. And to hit it off of Johan Santana to tie the game? I'm freaking jealous.

The inning after that, Freddy Sanchez, Nate McLouth, and Adam LaRoche rapped three quick hits in succession off of Santana that scored two runs, and that was the ballgame. So we've got a rookie catcher hitting his first homer, and back to back RBI doubles from left-handed hitters off of one of the best lefties in the game. These are the sorts of things that a team needs to take advantage of and tonight, the Pirates did it.

This game was a great example of how improved defense is helping Zach Duke. Brandon Moss made a great running catch at the right field line early in the game, and it was immediately followed by a nice play at third by Andy LaRoche. Duke didn't strike out any hitters in his seven innings, but he scattered eight hits and only allowed one run because of it. Duke made three starts last year without striking out a hitter; he was 0-2 in those starts, never made it past the sixth inning, and had a 6.60 ERA. On top of that, he gave up an unearned run in two of those starts. I don't advocate Duke doing this every time out, but the defense let him get away with it tonight.

The Pirates beat Johan Santana. Holy crap.

Why do all the good pitching matchups fall on nights when the Penguins play? I've got this feeling that this Zach Duke vs. Johan Santana matchup is going to be worth setting the DVR for. The Mets are starting a lineup that's similarly ridiculous to the one they started last night, while Santanta's been one of the best in the NL this year. I'm certainly going to do my best to catch as much of this one as I can.

I know, I know, Woody Paige is a blowhard. But his column in the Denver Post today brought back a rush of bad memories for me.

One of the charges against Tracy in Pittsburgh was that he took too much credit when the team won and blamed the players too much when the Pirates lost.

After the game Sunday, Tracy blamed his starter Jorge De La Rosa for not pitching properly to Gonzalez when he had an 0-2 count, allowing the Padres slugger to homer.

Gonzalez wouldn't have homered if he were standing on first base. Don't give me that old manager's lame excuse of lefty on lefty. Couldn't the Rockies use Gonzalez?

Tracy then blamed his pinch-hitter Smith for not hitting properly when he had a 3-2 count. According to Tracy, the Rockies cannot "do any hitting with the bat on their shoulder."

Is Jim Tracy a bad manager? Well, it's hard as such to say that someone is a bad manager when he's stzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...

I don't think the Pirates will ever have a manager that annoys me more than Tracy did.

Via BBTF

This was the Mets' starting lineup tonight:

1. Luis Castillo, 2B
   
2. Fernando Martinez, LF
3. Daniel Murphy, 1B
4. Gary Sheffield, RF
5. David Wright, 3B
6. Jeremy Reed, CF
7. Wilson Valdez, SS
8. Brian Schneider, C
9. Livian Hernandez, P

This is not a good lineup. Actually, it's a pretty poor one. Gary Sheffield batting cleanup? Daniel Murphy batting third and playing first base? Jeremy Reed and Wilson Valdez? This is a shadow of the lineup that beat the piss out of us in Citi Field last month.

And they went out and proceeded to go out and beat the crap out of Ian Snell for the first three innings tonight, tossing five runs up on the board before I even really got settled in front of the TV. He looked exasperated, Bob Walk and Greg Brown were taking him to task, and it looked like there was a rather unfriendly run-in between he and Jack Wilson in the dugout (there was nothing physical, it just looked like Jack said something that Ian didn't particularly like). I haven't been able to sit down and really watch a Pirate game in almost a week, and by the bottom of the second, I was already looking for other things to do. Not a great start.

Still, the Pirates kept things interesting with Andy LaRoche's two-run "triple" (in quotes because it was a double misplayed by Reed in center), bringing the game to withing 5-3 in the fourth. That allowed the stage to be set for the five-run rally in the bottom of the eighth that featured another big hit from Andy LaRoche, more bad defense from guys that wouldn't normally be playing for the Mets (an error by Valdez and a stupid throw that allowed runners to advance by Reed), and we get our final score.

I'm not trying to undermine what the Pirates did tonight; a comeback from a five-run deficit is always a good thing. Ian Snell got through three scoreless innings after his bad start and the bullpen (lead by Steven Jackson's first big league apperance) allowed just two base runners in the next three innings. It was certainly a good win. It just wouldn't have been possible with Reyes and Beltran and Delgado in the lineup.

It seems like besides the two series against the Nats and Rockies, we've been playing just bad enough to lose two out of three games to pretty much everyone we play. This dates back to the eight-game losing streak of about a month ago, which was puncuated with a sweep at the hands of the Mets.

Of course, it's that very same Mets team that's rolling in to PNC tonight, so this is a nice test of which Pirates (the .500 in April Pirates, the dismal eight-game losing streak Pirates, or the somewhere in between team that we've seen since then) are closest to the real Pirates. Livian Hernandez gets the start for the Mets, and if we lose three of four games to Brian Moehler, Mike Hampton, and Hernandez, I'm going to be pretty disheartened.

Ian Snell starts for the Pirates, and I'm sure that whatever happens on the mound tonight won't be his fault. He might get lit up by the Mets, but it'll only be because the umpire squeezed him or because the catcher (Robinzon Diaz is noticeably not catching tonight) called a bad game, or possibly because he didn't make a proper offering to Zeus prior to the start of the game. Ian Snell doesn't pitch poorly; other people cause his ERA to rise for him. But yeah, if he throws a good game, that'll totally be all him. I mean, look at all the obstacles he has to overcome to pitch well.

I have very little to say about the Pirates/Astros series from this weekend other than that battering Wandy Rodriguez, who's been spectacular this year, sandwiched around getting dominated by Brian Moehler and Mike Hampton pretty much sums up how frustrating it is to watch our offense so far this year. There's potential, but it's incredibly inconsistent. I'm not expecting the Pirates to have the best offense in the league, but only scoring two earned runs against Moehler and Hampton is bad.

I spend the weekend in Baltimore with a couple of friends from high school, mostly hoping to watch Nolan Reimold play for the Orioles. This managed to coincide with Matt Wieters first weekend in Baltimore. I've tried to not mention the Wieters debacle here too much because it's in the past, but man, I was jealous of Orioles' fans this weekend. My friend and I got to Saturday's game a little late (and left a little early to watch hockey, but that's neither here nor there) and there was a line that had to be a thousand people long, just waiting to get in and get a glimpse of the best hitting prospect in baseball. This was after a sellout on Friday night and on Sunday, I could already see a crowd building up around the stadium when I left the city. The excitement over Wieters' arrival was palpable.

He didn't disappoint on Saturday, either. He launched a triple into the left-center notch in his first at-bat and hit a ground-rule double in his second at bat that (seriously) might've been the hardest hit ball I've ever seen hit in person. It didn't ever get more than 20 feet off the ground and more or less skimmed off of the grass and just kept on lasering over the fence. It was unreal. In the stands at Camden, it felt like four of every five fans was either wearing a Wieters, Adam Jones, or Nick Markakis shirt. With those three coupled with Reimold, who's killed the ball since his recall, they've got an amazing young core of hitters in Baltimore right now. I hope that's how I feel about the Pirates in a year when McCutchen, Alvarez, and Tabata are making their way to Pittsburgh.