The Jason Bay trade, to me, fits perfectly with the Pirates’ overall scheme to continue losing 90-95 games every year forever.

Let’s talk about the four players the Pirates are getting back.

Andy LaRoche: Good major league third baseman. By far the best player they got in the deal.

Craig Hansen: Middle reliever that can’t pitch in the AL — career ERA well north of 6.00 in three partial seasons with the Red Sox — but pitches well in AAA and might hold a middle relief job in the NL if everything goes right.

Brandon Moss: Fourth outfielder that’s pretty much done developing. He has some power and some idea of the strike zone and will provide value in LF to help the Pirates lose only 94 games instead of 96, and that’s about all he’ll ever do for them.

Bryan Morris: 21 years old, in A ball, already lost one entire season to injury, 72 K and 31 BB in 81 innings. Not a prospect.

It’s kind of underwhelming, but I don’t doubt this was the best offer on the table for Bay. Morris and Hansen are totally pointless, but the Pirates are stockpiling mediocre relievers that will never be anything more than mediocre relievers, so clearly the two things they wanted in this deal were that, and a plausible guy to play in LF in Bay’s place. They got that, so they’re satisfied.

I don’t hate this trade on its own terms, but it clearly doesn’t accomplish the Pirates’ need of stockpiling the minors with impact talent with an eye toward building a winning team by 2011 or 2012. The number of young guys with star potential they got in this trade is zero. That’s the problem here. LaRoche is good, but it’s doubtful he’s going to be great. The main utility of the guys the Pirates got in this trade, to the Pirates, is accomplishing their goal of avoiding 100 losses for the next few seasons, which is something they’re paranoid about. That would draw media attention.

It’s not that the return itself is bad in a vacuum–it’s not. LaRoche by himself is a pretty reasonable return for Bay, given that he’s enslaved to the Pirates for at least four more years. It’s that we now have two trades in which the Pirates acquired eight players, only one of whom (Jose Tabata) has ANY chance of ever being a major league star. They’re targeting the wrong kind of players.

But today is a happy day for Jason Bay, Andy LaRoche and Manny Ramirez individually, and that counts for something. And four or five years from now, after four or five more 68-94 seasons, we’ll do this all over again with Andy LaRoche.

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Since posting this, some of the BTF commenters have brought me around to warming up a little on Brandon Moss, mainly by pointing out his minor league track record to date is pretty similar to Jason Bay’s at the same ages. I would argue that Pawtucket is a strong hitters’ park and Moss was more developed at each age, but it’s still a valid argument. I don’t think Moss will ever be a star, but he may well be an above average NL regular, given the chance.

They’ve tried to talk me into Bryan Morris as a legit prospect, but… no. Everything breaks right, he’s a middle reliever in the majors. The Pirates don’t need that. Craig Hansen, same thing; people are telling me about how good his tools are. He’s a guy that can beat AAA and gets the snot beat out of him in the majors, and he has a pretty lengthy track record of that now. He may survive in the NL, but that’s as far as he’s going to go.