If you purchased a fixer-upper, would you put new double-paned, super-insulated windows into sagging window frames or would you fix the wall first? Would you consider the resplendent brass faucets a useless luxury for a dented aluminum sink in a rotting counter top? Might you sell the hot tub to pay for a shower insert that would prevent further molding?
This is the situation facing the management, specifically the president and general manager, of the Pittsburgh Pirates. They will never make the playoffs with this team, notwithstanding two or three decent 31-year-old players. The Jack Wilsons and Freddy Sanchezes (Sanchezs? Sanchezs'? Sanchemen?) might help the Pirates win 70 games this year, but they're not going to contribute to the plan for a winning team in 2012.
So when you hear sports talk radio dingoes braying about the Pirates selling off their best parts, remember that Frank Coonelly (president) and Neal Huntington (GM) are trying to develop a franchise, not win 70 games this year. That fans in the Steel City haven't had a rootable ballclub for 17 seasons is immaterial to Coonelly and Huntington, who joined the club after the '07 campaign. Their job is to tear down the dilapidated eyesore and construct something habitable, and that's not going to happen this year or next.
Whether the Pirates have reeled in any usable parts from their offloads of Xavier Nady, Nate McLouth, Ian Snell, Tom Gorzellany, Adam Laroche, Wilson and Sanchez in the last two years is another matter. Huntington has snagged his trading partner's top three prospect in almost none of the deals. But as a scout with the Indians he helped recruit a constellation of stars (that has largely failed to produce) in Cleveland.
Time will tell whether the trades the Pirates have made were the right ones. But we already know that trading guys at the top of their value for young players is a strategy for future success, and that's the only kind of success Pirate fans can hope to have.
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