Listen to Mike Waterloo on Sports Zone, Saturdays at 11AM, on WTYM AM 1380 radio.
At 4 p.m. Wednesday, the weeks full of rumors and speculation would come to an end. In many baseball fan’s minds, the MLB trade deadline is the most exciting day of the year. Regardless of which team you like, you want to see who they will get to improve their club as a buyer or a seller. For the Pirates, the team with baseball’s best record, they were in full buy mode. The only thing is, they left with no upgrade at the deadline.
There was no Bud Norris, Nate Schierholtz, David DeJesus, Jeff Samardzija, Mark Trumbo, Alex Rios or even Giancarlo Stanton (for those who thought that was actually a possibility). Instead, the Pirates kept its roster as it was. While they could have used an upgrade at first or right field, I can’t blame them for not making a move.
The market was a seller’s market and the price for everyone was sky high. Why do you think that Norris, Jason Maxwell and Ian Kennedy were the only relatively common names heard? The teams that were out of it wanted the world. Even General Manager Neal Huntington said that the team was willing to do something ‘stupid’ but not something ‘insane’ during the trade talks. In fact, he said he made some offers that made him uncomfortable.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, it was a weak market and the price was too high. Oh, for you Huntington haters, check out what the other teams did. That’s right, nothing.