New York Nine

Especially for anyone under the age of 30, its very hard to imagine that the Pirates, on the verge of the most consecutive losing seasons in the history of baseball were once a proud and historic franchise. Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor, Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, Barry Bonds and countless others left an indelible mark on the game as all-time greats, but those days are long gone. Indeed, since that final out of the 1992 NLCS its been pretty much all bad for the pirates, finding new and horrifying ways of sucking and alienating their fanbase. But in the last year there have been signs of life, beginning with new managment Frank Coonelly, MLB's chief labor lawyer and Neal Huntington of Cleveland came in as new executives and have made stries to improve the fortunes of this forlorn franchise with some prudent trades, this is a team still a long ways away from winning again.


There really isn't much to say about the off-season of the pirates, but instead the most important move happened last year with trading away xavier nady, demaso marte, and jason bay. trading away their best assets they made themselves better in the future acquiring prospects jose tabata bryan moss and a host of others. Tabata, long considered the prize of the yankee system drawing comparisions to Manny Ramirez has had his share of problems, getting out of shape having fights with managment and finally walking off the field. but his talent is prodigious and as soon as he left the yankee system he took off hitting .348/.402/.562 in AA as a 19 year old! Needless to say as a yankee fan i'm not too happy to see him gone but things look very promising for him and the pirates in the future.


However, this doesnt help the pirates in the short term which is where the problem is. while they added the reliable eric hinske to play the outfield they have some talented guys who are still a ways off leaving them pretty thin at the major league level. They did very little to improve themselves and the pieces they have up there now are less than satisfactory. I give them a C- for their offseason but pirates fans can hope that the trades last year are the beginnig of something real and good to hold onto.