GMBC Acts - Finally

New Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington made his first significant move, player personnel-wise (the signings of two sub-.200 hitting catchers and an outfielder DFA'd by the Rays don't count), as Bucco GM when he traded outfielder Starling Marte, 31 and scheduled to make $11.5 million in 2020, to the Arizona Diamondbacks for shortstop Liover Peguero and pitcher Brennan Malone, both players are highly touted prospects in the D'backs organization and are both 19 years of age.

Marte, the last remaining Pirate from the 2013-15 playoff teams, is coming off of his best season, and he should bolster the Arizona line up, but, at age 31, he could soon be hitting the wall and starting to see a decline in his skills.  Peguero and Malone, if they end up helping the Pirates at all, don't figure to be able to do so until at least the latter half of the 2022 season, at the earliest.

It is a trade that makes sense, kind of, for a team that knows it's going nowhere in the immediate present and needs to build for the future.  The Pirates, of course, aren't saying that.   The new regime is telling us that they do not need to go into a rebuilding mode, that they feel that they can compete now. Yes, the team that lost 97 games last year, they are ready to go to the post with THAT team, minus Marte, of course.

And that $10 million in salary that they jettisoned yesterday (the Pirates agreed to pay $1.5 million of Marte's '20 salary) will pretty much cover what Bob Nutting owes Clint Hurdle and Neal Huntington over the next two years, so that's good news for BN's bottom line.  No small consideration down there on Federal Street.

One of my gripes with Neal Huntington was that he always thought that he was the smartest guy in the baseball universe, and that we, the Pirates Fan Base, was stupid, so he continued to insult our intelligence with his wordy pronouncements.  I really and truly want to keep an open mind about the Williams-Cherington-Shelton team, but please, please don't tell me fabrications about the prospects of this team NOW, in 2020, if the real plan is to start from scratch and rebuild for a better future two, three or four years down the road.

As for Starling Marte, he was and is a talented player, although he never reached the Five Tool heights that were predicted for him, and his tendency to suffer mental lapses and appear lackadaisical way too often were maddening.  The case can be made that he was the Pirates best player this past season, and they are a poorer team today than they were yesterday now that he is gone.   Still, the Pirates finished in last place and lost 97 games with him last year, so they can easily do the same without him this year.

However, they don't play a game that counts until March 26, so who knows what rabbits Cherington may be able to pull out of his hat between now and then, but a wise gambler should probably take this opportunity to head on down to the Rivers or Meadows Sports books or one of his online gambling apps and bet heavily on the UNDER for Bucco wins in 2020.