Should The Pirates Be Buyers?

It's very early to write a post like this, and I'm sure I will have better posts on this subject in the future, but for now I just want to say a few quick things.

The Pirates are in a division race right now. Now a division race is pretty meaningless when we haven't even reached the all-star break yet. However, this is new to Pirates fans, we haven't been in any kind of race since 1992, so there is going to be a ton of talk about it.

The question is if the Pirates should go out and get a major league bat to help the offense and help the team make a push for the playoffs. It's pretty easy to see that this lineup wouldn't really match up well with any other playoff teams, and it could cost us seriously important wins down the stretch and cost us a playoff berth.

The thing is that nobody expected the Pirates to compete this year. Despite that, people did expect us to compete in 2012 and/or 2013 with the prospects we have on the way up. We have seen a couple of those prospects (Chase d'Arnaud and Alex Presley) and they have played well so far, but this team still looks like it will be much better in 2013 than it does right now. That said, you certainly don't want to make a trade this year that will make the possible 2013 team worse. Obviously the Pirates want to take this chance seriously and do everything they can to get into the playoffs, but there still has to be consideration for the future.

Our farm system is by no means loaded, and every piece is very valuable. If a team would offer the Pirates a big league bat that could help the team immediately, they would be foolish not to consider it, but they would also be foolish to give up too much to get it. You can't hold on to players you get in trades for very long without putting serious money into them, and that's not the game the Pirates are trying to play these days.

Don't get me wrong, I would certainly be open to giving up some prospects or even major league players to get a better bat, because I realize that this lineup isn't good enough to make a serious run with. It will get significantly better if Pedro Alvarez comes back and starts performing to his potential, but even then it wouldn't be an awesome lineup. There's not a real clear look at the market right now, and it will get clearer as July rolls along, but names like Hunter Pence, Carlos Pena, Carlos Lee, and even Aramis Ramirez have popped up. I would be pretty surprised if the Pirates brought in any of those guys, but the Pirates haven't been shy to surprise people this year.

Again, July 5th is way too early to seriously talk about this stuff, but it's fun to think about as a 20-year old Pirate fan that has never seen this team compete for anything while I was potty-trained (I was a late bloomer, shut up).

Keep coming back to the "Mc" Effect, I'll have much more on this kind of stuff in coming weeks. Let's Go Bucs.