We are to the Pirates like the Royals are to the Athletics

[beausox]

First off, sorry I haven't been posting much lately. High School baseball has started and practices are long and limit my free time.

I hate to be the downer, but the Pirates are taking advantage of us like the Athletics have been taking advantage of the Royals. The Atheltics got the Royals to give up Dye, Damon, Appier, and Giambi for very little the past three years.

The Pirates are doing the same to us. Todd Ritchie is an average to above average starter. While the deal wasn't that bad for us short-term, there were better deals to be made. Wells and Fogg will both be in the Pirates rotation this year, and Lowe is the first guy in if someone gets hurt. Wells has the talent to be a number one guy and Fogg is at worst a 4th starter. Lowe is the swing man that every team needs but in our defense we have pulled two of them out of nowhere (Lowe and Glover.

Guerrier was a prospect. I don't know what his ceiling is, but its a whole lot higher than Marte's. I don't know much about the other guy we got but I've seen him compared to Willie Harris. WE ALREADY HAVE WILLIE HARRIS, why do we need another. I thought the Pirates got a steal when they turned no-hit Enrique Wilson into Marte. Now it ends up being Wilson for Guerrier, that my friends is a trade only the Royals would make.

[kermittheefrog]

You're overreacting. We are nothing close to the Pirates bitch the way the Royals are the A's bitches. I advise you read my post on the big thread about this deal.

http://www.whitesoxinteractive.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8740&perpage=15&display=&pagenumber=4

[beausox]

Your right as to the fact that I may be overreacting a tad. However, I also see guys like Allen McDill, Onan Masaoka, and brad Clontz get released. I see the Atheltics send down Chad Harville and Mike Fyrhie. All of these guys would have cost us much less than Marte did. All of these guys could probably outperform Marte. In all honesty, Guerriur could have pitched out of the pen this year and outperformed Marte plus we would still have Guerriur and his potential.

I have faith in KW because I've seen him take the worst pitcher ever (Eyre) and turn him into something good (Glover). I know we have a lot of pitching talent buit we shouldn't waste it. This deal upsets me because it was not the best deal we could've made. I take your point about the C+ prospects and understand the upside to grabbing a 20 year old @B, Guerriur could've helped us this year, and we may have to make another deal, later on in the season, because we traded him away.

[czalgosz]

Kermit may be right - there may be something to this guy Yan that none of us know about. If Marte is the major part of the deal and Yan is the throw-in, the Sox got schooled. But if it's the other way around, maybe the deal could come back and pay dividends.

I don't know, just trying to figure this out. Wasn't KW the man that supervised the Sox drafts back when Schueler was the GM? The Sox had some good drafts back then. He's got to know something.

Argh. If I knew the answers to this, I wouldn't be sitting here - I'd be working for a team. It just seems weird to me.