I was obsessively following trade deadline Twitter chatter up to and past the deadline, so I caught the Liriano trade as it happened. We’re out from under Liriano? Sounds great to me, I thought. Then the details started to pour in. Instead of just Liriano, we were giving up AA prospects Harold Ramirez and Reese McGuire. All for a quad-A starter. I was livid. I cursed Neal Huntington up and down, texted everyone I knew who I thought might give a damn (not many people), and scoured Twitter for someone, anyone, trying to spin the trade in a positive light (no one). I had a sandwich and a beer at a local bar to calm my nerves and started walking home. Maybe it was something about the cool evening air mixing with my slight alcoholic buzz, but the trade suddenly made sense to me. Please allow me to explain.
The trade only makes sense if you assume that the Pirates so wanted to be out from under Liriano that they were willing to part with Ramirez in order to convince Toronto to take on that contract. Ramirez is a decent outfield prospect, but his stock has slipped lately. Tim Williams of Pirates Prospects suggested on Twitter that it is not crazy to think that Ramirez will never see the light of PNC Park. So those two pieces of the trade cancel out, and we are left with Reese McGuire for Drew Hutchison. Unlike Ramirez, McGuire has a really clear path to the bigs in a Pirate uniform, and it is hard to justify dealing him for Hutchison. However, that is my hypothesis. It seems like the Pirates think that Hutchison can be a solid rotation piece by next year, so this makes some sense as a one-for-one trade.
All of this is a tough pill to swallow, though. I went to an Altoona Curve game last week and got a front row seat right behind home plate. Reese McGuire kept taking warm up swings in front of me, and I kept watching the man work. The whole time I thought, this guy is going to be catching Taillon and Glasnow at PNC Park before we know it. I am sad to think that I will never see that come to pass. But I wish those guys the best in Toronto, for our sake and for the sake of Huntington’s credibility.
developingbio 