I'm waiting for some team to send prospects to the Pirates with the express agreement that the Pirates will return the prospects to the sending team the second they accomplish anything in the majors (for more prospects).

I was thinking, the ideal trade would be Zach Duke to a team for an above average prospect, and a ptbnl(Zach Duke)

Rent our guys out for the rest of the season, and then get them back next spring.

I like what the Pirates have done. Outside of Bay (and that's even debatable) have they traded anyone you would build a team around? Or even close?

Are you sure? Why would they send our starting shortstop who's hitting nearly .300 for a couple of lefty relievers?

I'm pretty sure The Riot is not going anywhere.

Aramis, Jason Schmidt....After that we're talking nobody since the early 90s who's even been good.

And now that Aramis makes the big bucks and has like 8 homers, he's probably not even a franchise guy anymore.

That part is probably wrong then. Does he normally get double switched out of the lineup?

I love it when Yankees fans say this, as if they were actually around for all of them.

The AL is a much tougher league than the NL with a DH to contend with.

Steroids, PED's, and HgH has become such the norm in MLB these days that I am numb to it. It is kinda like watching the evening news and seeing the typical house fire, murder, and/or robbery.

How sad that this once great sport has fallen so far. I am much more interested in minor league baseball these days, at least as far as attending games is concerned.

Curse of the Great Bambino? Finally the Red Sox get off the hump and win a couple titles and then have it tainted by their best players being implicated in the steroid scandal.

Grabow is a type A free agent.

That would make me....ummm.....86 years old. So, theoretically, I COULD have been around for all of them. Alas, however, I was not. :(

The Pirates are receiving SP Kevin Hart (who won the game today) among two others.

But then we have no shortstop on a team that has struggled on offense. Just doesn't make much sense unless there is another trade in the works. Our lefty guy out of the pen has also been better than anyone we're getting in the trade.

I agree on the what the Pirates are doing. why not just load up on prospects and hope for the future. but what about when some of these guys blossom and they can't afford em?

Dola they are getting Kevin Hart (not bad at all) + Jose Ascanio and Josh Harrison

They trade them for prospects.

LoL its the revolving door of Pirates!

It would be nice to get to that point first

The Pirates should focus on putting together the most dominant AAA team ever. Maybe that can be the first step towards a tiered league with relegation.

I'm pretty sure thats what they are doing, lol.

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of ERA+?

I don't like it for the Cubs. Hart has been real solid for us this year and looks like he's come into his own as a starter. With Lilly out, Dempster struggling since coming back and Harden bound to get hurt, I'd like the insurance of Hart.

Just drove home from going out biking with my nephew and niece and WEEI sports radio is just horrible to listen to today.

Nothing like caller after caller of people trying to defend David Ortiz when it was likely the same people who were bashing Arod and Manny earlier this summer.

Hart was never that particularly good. He's had a decent stretch, but I'm not that big on him, especially if it nets us what we've been lacking for a good long while: A lefty you can rely on in the bullpen. Sean Marshall has been good, but he's likely a better starter, if they stopped bouncing him back and forth between the rotation and the pen, and isn't really that dominant lefty force.

I just don't like trading guys who are currently helping the team. Hart has been great this year in his spot starts and having him as insurance down the stretch is big in my opinion. I'm all for giving up prospects to win now but am a little leary of giving up a player who has been helping the team.

If Harden goes down tomorrow, what's our rotation look like?

Grabow is a solid pen arm. He has his moments with too many walks. He does a fairly good job of working out of jams.
He can be pretty effective in multiple innings. And he's not just a LOOGY.

And I guess if you got a small peepee that will also do right?:)

You aren't surprised are you? After seeing highlights of the cheering after Ortiz hit the game winner today, I had to make sure I was not looking at AT&T Park. It just the way fans are.

What? The notion of Jeff Samardzija as your fifth starter isn't filling you with optimism?

I would think you'd just promote Marshall to being a starter.

Wells becomes the 3, Marshall becomes the 4, and that still leaves The Gipper for the 5 slot.

With the way he's pitching? It looks like 1 more win than we'd normally have every 5th game.

Zambrano, Lilly (back in two weeks), Dempster, Harden, Wells
Marshall would probably get stretched out in the event of an injury.

The Cubs get to find another spot starter for the next two weeks.

Kevin Hart = Sean Gallagher? I don't think he has more long-term upside than Gallagher, and the Cubs have not missed him all that much. They just need their four starters that they are paying 8-18 million to take their starts down the stretch.

He has been lights-out his last three starts. If you want to change the argument to the way he looked in the first half of the year then you might be onto something.

Well color me Not Really Noticing his last few performances.

I'm still a touch bitter about, well, pretty much the whole team's mediocrity in the first half. :)

Marshall has been so good out of the pen that I wouldn't want to risk moving him to the rotation.

This isn't to say that Kevin Hart is a great talent. It's just to say that he has helped the team and is someone I consider an asset. He's a guy who can give you a spot spart or just eat up some long innings in relief. A great guy to have on the roster in September. I don't like removing pieces that are helping you unless you are getting a major upgrade somewhere. Grabow is a nice piece, but I'd prefer to have just given up another prospect than a guy who can actually help us make the playoffs.

If we had a bonafied, stable rotation, I'd be fine with the move. But we have some big question marks.

Lilly - Shoulder injuries are not something you just come back from. We don't know what Ted Lilly will show up. We also know the Cubs organization has a history of lying about injuries and underplaying them to the media.

Dempster - Looked real bad in his first start back and is still someone who I think is just mediocre.

Harden - We all know he's due to get hurt.

Wells - Has been solid but will enter a stage where he'll throw more innings than he ever has before. Does he hold up down the stretch or would a fresh arm like Hart be a worthy replacement? I just have trouble trusting rookie pitchers late in the year when they enter inning territory they've never seen.

The only guy I'm sold on as solid is Zambrano. The rest have question marks. With starting pitching being our biggest trump card in the division, I would do nothing to weaken it. Making our starting staff weaker to make our bullpen stronger just seems like a wash with the potential to backfire if one of our starters goes down.

Agreed with the worries on health. If you look at the Cubs starting rotation from the beginning of the year four of the five starters have spent time on the DL. The fifth, Marshall, was moved to the pen because it was a disaster.

Randy Wells has pretty much saved their bacon and Hart did a nice job in his starts. But the division, and anything more, is likely going to have to be won by the guys you are paying the dollars. If the rotation is in a spot where they needed a Kevin Hart to be winning big games in September - or, god forbid, October - then it just was not meant to be this year.

We'll see how the deal plays out, but I'm guessing that the rationale is something pretty close to what I'm suggesting.

The Dempster signing is a problem, as they threw money at a guy coming off a career year. That one is going to haunt them for a little while. At least with the Z signing you were investing in a guy who had a track record, a high ceiling, and little history of injury.

Marshall's future is going to be in the rotation. He was doing a decent job there before he had to get shifted to the pen. I hope that they are healthy enough in the starting rotation that they can leave him there for the remainder of this year but the team does need a better medium/long term solution for bullpen lefty. It clearly was not Cotts, Viscaino (sp?), or any of the other guys that they have run through over the last 100 games. But if they are not then it probably will be Marshall getting the "Joba" treatment down the stretch.

There is some buzz on the radio that the Lilly injury is way worse than they are letting on and the move was made so that they would have a lefty in the rotation down the stretch. I know they've been saying 4-5 starts, but the Cubs lie a lot about injuries.

Well... he was a former Brave and, as someone on MLBTR pointed out "the .282 OBP sealed the deal."

SI

Suck it Charlie Manuel; suck it hard.

I genuinely feel for the Royals; for the love of all that is holy, the Pirates have a better plan. Is there a more pathetic franchise in baseball (well, the Nationals perhaps)?

Dayton Moore apparently has decided he won't hide his hard on for tools this season.

Any rumors of him not being around next season?

I think he's going to be on the hot seat next season and if the team doesn't perform, he's gone. But I don't think we're there yet.

Also, the bolded line can be read so many different ways and all are wrong ;)

SI

Lets get back on topic.

Manny(who we already knew was) and Big Papi are both cheeters. Funny how A-Roid gets a 300 post thread, and Papi doesn't get equal time. And no noob even bothers to start a thread about it.

I can't wait for the rest of this list to come out.

Other than Pujols, I can't think of a single guy who I would find it significant that they were confirmed to be a steroid user. I guess finding out that Griffey used would be sad. But at this point, my feeling is that everybody was using and so be it.

If I'd have had to pick a list of 5 likely clean players Manny would have been on it and now he's been busted twice...

As for Big Papi, who was stupid enough to think he was clean? I think that's the big difference between him and Aroid, people thought Rodriguez had enough natural talent to actually be doing it without the drugs and the fact that he used was actually a surprise.

Honestly there aren't many guys who'd really shock me if I find out they juiced.

Curtis Granderson, Derek Jeter (Yes, I really would be shocked if Jeter ever failed a test for PED), Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

That's about it.