Whispers of discontent brewing?

It has been fairly quiet on these once stormy seas for the past few seasons.

The Pirates under shrewd and cunning Captaincy of Neil Huntington have built a contending roster by combining cheap young elite talent with the right mix of savvy veterans, short term mercenary rentals, and reclamation projects to make the wildcard playoff game for 3 straight years.

Yes, the last two times that did not work out so well, as potentially contending team ran into an absolute buzzsaw Cy Young level performances by both Bumgarner and Arrieta that sunk them in the wanton cruelty of the one and done format, but fate can be a fickle mistress and the ship was at least tacking onto the correct course.

Flash forward to the first of August, 2016. The Pirates have already dumped off Mark the Shark for a bucket of krill and a powerball ticket. This was the same vaunted closer of whom they had promised us over the offseason they had chosen to pay over the likes of Neil Walker (a player on pace this season for 26 round trippers and endless disparagement by his former employers) whom they then traded to the Mets for Jon Niese the terrible (who they decided to sign to save some money and term on bringing back surprising 2nd half success J.A. Happ), whom the wizardly Ray Searage could not reclaim from the scrap heap, so then they dumped Niese back to Mets for the formerly successfully salvaged Antonio Bastardo.

So they essentially traded a guy they had targeted and traded for (Niese) by dealing a proven commodity they didn’t want to pay (Walker), instead of resigning another (more successful) guy (Happ), and then ended up trading another proven commodity they did want to pay instead (Melancon), and the guy they targeted didn’t work out (Niese), so they dumped him back to the team they traded the proven guy to (the Mets), for another guy they had decided not to resign cheap in the first place (Bastardo). Got it?

All in all, it was a convoluted shell game of a situation, it wasn’t exactly encouraging, but it all seemed more like reasonable and somewhat mirthful bad luck after a few years of pulling rabbits out of hats, and I was ready to laugh about it and move on with Ivan Nova in the wings.

And then we come to the Liriano trade. This is the one that stung. This is the one that brought back terrible flashbacks. Operation Shutdown. Dave Do-Littlefield. Sleepy John Russell. This was the kind of terrible, awful, no good, lousy, rancid, soul crushingly bad trade the Pirates made countless times from 1993 thru 2010 when they were engaged in the most futile losing streak in North American Professional Sports History.

I know Frankie was not having the best year. But for me he had become a symbol of the resurgence of the Pirates as a team, a walking representation of hope that when the time came to make the right decision, this management group and ownership would step forward and do the right thing. I remember where I was the day we signed him, on a snowy December day at an in-laws Christmas party, I heard it announced over the radio that Liriano had been signed. The prior year they had brought in A.J. Burnett on the cheap, a former elite level pitcher who had fallen out of good graces with the Evil Empire Yankees. It seemed with Liriano they would actually have a 1/2 combination of potentially elite pitching for the first time since Drabek and Smiley lead the way.

As much as Burnett and his Batman persona won over and connected mightily with a renewed and engaged fanbase, Liriano was the guy I was most excited to see come up in the rotation when I was going to a game. I have a thing for watching strikeout pitchers. Groundballs are great ways to get outs. Avoiding walks and pitching to soft contact is very smart. But to me there is nothing more exciting than seeing your guy go out there and dominate on a swing and a miss or freeze a guy with a spot on slider that brushes the corner with 2 strikes.

And Liriano was the guy I wanted on the mound in the biggest games. He was pitching a gem the night that will live forever in Pirates lore as the time Cueto dropped the ball. He was on the mound when I was there watching the Pirates take a 2 games to 1 lead over the Cardinals in the 2013 NLDS. He was the guy, that although he wasn’t pitching great this year, when he was pitching great he was a dominating strikeout artist, a key cog in a rotation even as a potential threat, if not an actual ace.

He was also the guy who had been given a legitimate top of the rotation starter contract by the Pirates. Frankie got paid, because he was an important part of a team that considered itself a true contender instead of a wait and hope for the prospects to come along pretender.

And now Frankie is gone. In a trade that can be considered by all but the most delusional of Nutting drones as nothing but an absolutely blatant salary dump. He was traded for an objectively worse (cheaper) pitcher. With two top 10 prospects going in the wrong direction! This from the team that has, in the words of Dan Hopper from Buc’s Dugout: “hoards prospects like they're delicate Faberge eggs handed down to them by Ol' Grampa Piratey after the Great War.”

Imagine if back in early June of this year, or heck, even before the season started, what the Pirates could have gotten in terms of Major League talent for 2 top 10 prospects from their widely praised farm system and a guy seen as a legitimate #2 starter for a championship contender. They certainly could have acquired alot more than a borderline back of the rotation guy like Drew Hutchinson. But the Pirates would never make that deal we are told by the Nuttingites, our valuable prospects are too valuable and important to the value of our valuable future.

Until it is time to save Billionaire Bob a few bucks. And that is the essential crux of my eternal frustration with the Pirates. It is great that they won the past few years on the cheap. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great seeing real and meaningful games playing out in the gorgeously set taxpayer funded stadium on the North Shore of the Allegheny. But if this is how the organization is still going to be run going forward, always looking to save a buck instead of acquiring the best Bucs for the bang, it may be a long time coming before we see the likes of those sort of games around here again.