“We finished in last place with you. We can finish in last place without you.”
For half a century, that iconic quote from Branch Rickey, one that eventually led to his trading Ralph Kiner to the Cubs in 1953, stood the test of time as, one, the most nonsensical justification for a bad trade in the Pirates' history and, two, the worst actual trade.
And by half a century, I mean exactly half a century. Again to the Cubs.
In 2003, under pressure from Major League Baseball to address a nosediving debt-to-equity ratio, the Pirates' ownership -- controlled at the time by woefully undercapitalized Kevin McClatchy -- brazenly dumped their young cleanup hitter, Aramis Ramirez, along with still-effective veteran Kenny Lofton to the Cubs, for a big empty bag of Bobby Hill and a few balls.
I'm not qualified to evaluate which trade was less popular, as Kiner was well before my time, but I'll try.
My late dad used to tell stories about sticking around at Forbes Field through all of Kiner's at-bats, no matter how far behind those pathetic Pirates were trailing. And once Kiner was gone, by all accounts, the fan base went ballistic. The Pirates were already atrocious, they'd already gone nearly three decades without a championship -- back when that was the measure for misery, right? -- and they'd just been robbed of the one reason to buy a ticket because, as the public correctly perceived, Rickey really had no use for paying Kiner markedly more than other players.
And yeah, the Pirates got worse, and everyone got even angrier.
I did experience how angry everyone was over Ramirez. It had a lot to do with baseball -- those Pirates could really hit, and the loss was really felt -- but it had more to do with PNC Park having been built just a couple years earlier, partly through state taxes, amid the promise that the payroll would rise and keep more good players from leaving Pittsburgh. So it was as much about socioeconomics as it was about sports, which only seemed to light people up that much more.
Which brings me, of course, to Chris Archer.
In the weirdest way.
Because this trade in 2018 was almost universally applauded, particularly in Pittsburgh. And anyone who claims otherwise, beyond a select handful of diehards who dug into deeper metrics or had an uncommon valuation on the prospects heading out, is a billion percent guilty of revisionist history.
Not going to lie here: I didn't rip it, either. Not right away. Not a couple weeks later, after I'd gotten back from an overseas vacation and had time to absorb it. As you can read in those two column links, I was mostly tepid about Archer while also acknowledging that Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz might well come back to haunt. But I also accepted, as so many did, that it was ... well, it was welcome to see the Pirates, for once, be the aggressors.
They'd won 16 of 21. They were hitting, but they weren't pitching. And, as ever under Neal Huntington and Kyle Stark, every pitcher they'd promote from Indianapolis would get shelled. The timing, purely within the moment, understandably seemed ideal.
Yet I'm convinced this was the far bigger element: It was the trade deadline. That's become a more visible, more followed event than ever. And all through that afternoon, Archer was all the fuss. "The top target," the ESPN announcers were saying. "Everyone wants Archer." "Where will Archer land?" Hours and hours of this, on top of the every-millisecond social media hype. Emotions were high.
Once the Pirates' name popped into the mix, the immediate local reaction was ... there'd be no chance. None. This was just another faux attempt for PR purposes, to make their fans believe they were finally serious about adding rather than subtracting, to try to erase some of the sting from the meager offseason of 2016.
And then ... they got him!
They really, really got him!
Most Pittsburghers, I've no doubt, had no idea who Archer, an American League lifer, was. Nor did they likely care. They just knew that everyone was talking about him all day, that he should've gone to the Yankees or Dodgers or whoever, and instead he was coming to PNC Park. He was coming to their team. The team nobody anywhere in baseball ever talks about.
For a day, the Pirates were players. They weren't oh-by-the-way supporting cast at the deadline. They were players, man. Actual players.
A handful from Twitter that day:
This. This is called commitment to winning. Kudos. 👏👏👏👏👏
— Molly Ann ❤️🇺🇸 (@MollyAnn714) July 31, 2018
Great trade guys! Meadows and Glasnow are busts anyway
— extend KB cowards (@Hoodie_Rizzo) May 18, 2019
Finally some signs of actually wanting to win!!!?
— Duane (@duane_pomaibo) July 31, 2018
Just WOW I never thought it would happen but I'm so glad it did!!!
— Chris M. Craig (@Agent_Double0) July 31, 2018
Needless to say, it didn't last. At all.
Within a month, Archer had already set the template of seldom surviving the fifth inning, giving up home runs by the barrage, and failing to stay healthy. At the same time, down in St. Petersburg, Meadows and Glasnow were instantly rising up under smarter supervision, while Baz was unleashing 100-mph heat in the low minors ... with all three openly raving about the instruction they should've been receiving in Pittsburgh.
No one really needs the detailed data, do they?
It was the wrong move at the wrong time, made for all the wrong reasons: The GM, Huntington, who'd taken so much pride in avoiding emotion, fell prey to precisely that. A GM who'd willfully isolated himself within his own front-office structure -- it was just him and Stark by that stage -- had no one to check him. The faux-militant assistant GM, Stark, couldn't bring himself to accept that the development system he oversaw could've failed Meadows and Glasnow as terribly as they did. The team president, Frank Coonelly, who'd wind up crowing publicly about the trade, was clueless as ever. The owner, Bob Nutting, who'd long since handed these individuals far too much autonomy, struck a similar note. And even at field level, a manager, Clint Hurdle, who'd allowed a short-term fire and that same angst from 2016 to blind him to the long-term damage, pushed as hard as anyone.
There isn't one individual at fault here. It was everyone. It usually is with a cluster of this colossal magnitude.
And no, nothing tops it.
Maybe not in our city's history.
The NFL doesn't see anywhere near as many trades, and most of the Steelers' duds have been minor, a draft pick for a stinker, a soon-washed-up backup, that sort of thing. Their worst move of any kind, without question, was cuttingJohnny Unitas, still arguably the greatest quarterback who ever lived, in 1955. But that's obviously not a trade.
The NHL sees tons of trades, and the Penguins have had their share of stinkers even in the era of five Stanley Cups. Chief among them, as any longtime local puckhead can reflexively identify, was Craig Patrick in 1996 giving up eventual 869-point producer Markus Naslund to the Canucks for tough guy Alek Stojanov, whose career was cut short by a serious car accident a year later. But Patrick's in the Hall of Fame for a reason, and it's that he knew how to build champions. That edition of the Penguins was oozing skill and, in a time when toughness still mattered, he was focused solely on that roster that spring.
Anyone got anything else comparable?
Jaromir Jagr? Jose Bautista? Antonio Brown?
Nah, me neither. Which leaves all 134 years of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club's existence and, within that, Kiner, Ramirez and now Archer.
I'll take Archer. Not because he was lost for any potential 2020 season yesterday to surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. Not because he'll never again pitch for the Pirates, due an $11 million club option for 2021 that Ben Cherington would be nuts to pick up. Not even because he performed as poorly as he did, as it'd be easy and maybe fair to blame Huntington's bizarre insistence that Archer drop his slider for some of that.
No, this is the choice if only because of what went out. And why. And when.
To wit:
• Huntington and Stark were embarrassingly inept at both drafting and developing, their most glaring shortcoming for anyone paying attention to stuff beyond payroll. So when they found rare gold in Meadows and way-rarer goal in a non-first-rounder in Glasnow, they should've treated both like the found treasure they were. And that's saying nothing of Baz, another first-rounder.
• A team like the Pirates will never be able to outspend others in this unfair, imbalanced economic system. So retaining potentially elite talents like Meadows, Glasnow and Baz should always be the priority. And to ship them out in bulk ... I mean, it's madness. If even one or two of those turns out fine, that player's rights can be retained at an affordable rate for six full years before free agency. Archer's 31, for crying out loud.
• Now it's the Rays who get to enjoy Meadows, Glasnow and Baz for all that time, accumulating roughly 18 years of major-league service time from players in their prime, while the Pirates are now already done with Archer.
• No one thinking rationally could've envisioned the 2018 Pirates as a contender. And even if they were, the price for a pitcher going through a two-year decline as Archer had just experienced with the Rays could never, ever be that high. Not in Pittsburgh. Not in this system.
• This trade will never stop being news here. Every time Meadows or Glasnow does his thing, people will notice. And once Baz arrives, if he lives up to his promise, it'll amplify. As it should.
• Unlike Kiner and Ramirez, this trade can't even cite a money component as an excuse. This was pure baseball. In fact, the Pirates took on massive salary to make it.
• Did I really need to start typing yet another bullet?
Huntington and Stark would've needed to turn up a dozen Bryan Reynolds clones to compensate. Lucky for everyone, their dozen years of doing damage are done.
