Lolley: Timing apparently was right for Pirates

By Dale Lolley

Jan 19, 2018 • 12:33 am

9.1K

I'm shocked the Pirates didn't trade Josh Harrison Wednesday, when news was breaking that the Steelers had fired offensive coordinator Todd Haley.

Why?

Well, it seems their trades of Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole in the past week have been well-timed to coincide with when they would get as little interest as possible from the fan base and local media. After all, why wait until a week the Steelers open the playoffs and then lose a playoff game to move your two biggest pieces?

OK, maybe that was just the timing of it all. But why wait until now, just a few weeks before the team opens spring training, to make the move?

Want to bet it comes down to season ticket sales?

At this point, anyone who was on the fence or thinking about purchasing season tickets had already done so. Christmas is over and anyone thinking the Pirates were going to hold onto McCutchen and Cole and, thus, bought tickets, had done so.

So the time was right to make the move.

This is not to say the moves weren't necessary. The Pirates weren't going to be close to contending this season with McCutchen and Cole on the roster. This team is in need of a makeover with young talent. Whether they acquired the right talent for their two most valuable pieces remains in question. Our Lance Lysowski has done a great job of getting the inside scoop on the players acquired in these moves.

The latest of those can be found here. And he'll continue to find out all about these guys.

Maybe the Pirates will strike gold with one or two of the new guys. Perhaps all will flop. But the chances are at least two or three, if not more, will work their way onto the big league roster this season. And more will be here later.

The problem is, however, will they reach the majors on merit or will they get there because the Pirates don't have any viable big-league players standing in their way?

That was my thought a month or so ago when the Browns fired Sachi Brown as their Executive Vice President of football operations. Soon after Brown was fired, a reporter in Cleveland listed the players acquired in Brown's two drafts with the team and made note that a high percentage of them -- I can't remember how many -- were on the roster and therefore he had acquired NFL talent. Cleveland's record, however, in the past two seasons is 1-31. So did Brown actually acquire NFL talent or was he working for a team so devoid of talent that anyone he acquired was going to make the team?

That's the question that we'll have to ask ourselves about the players acquired by Neal Huntington in the past week once they start reaching the majors. But hey, we've all lived through this before.

And watching the Pirates rebuild with young players is far better than watching the team go through the motions with has-beens and never-was players such as George Hendrick, Doug Frobel and Steve Kemp. Throw in Sixto Lezcano and you have players that were in the starting lineup in the opening series of the 1985 season.

Or how about a lineup that includes Akinori Iwamura, Lastings Milledge and Ronny Cedeno? The Pirates ran those three out on opening day in 2010 with Cedeno batting ninth behind noted slugger Zach Duke.

Both of those teams won just 57 games. The guess here is that this team won't be quite as bad as either of those clubs. At least the Pirates had better hope that is the case.

The Pirates' reward for both of those seasons?

Well, they got the first pick in the 1985 draft and selected Jeff King, a decent, but never great, player who was at least a starter on the team's division winners of the early 1990s. In 2011, they selected Cole first overall.

And so the cycle continues.

WHAT'S BREWING

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VIDEO

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