Saturday, July 31, 2004

Benson, the conclusion

Well...time to close the book on the thoroughly unremarkable Pirates career of Kris Benson. As you probably know, Benson and Jeff Keppinger were traded for Ty Wigginton, AA RHP Matt Peterson and Jose Bautista. I must admit that I don't know much about Peterson or Keppinger. What I do know is that I'm at least partially familiar with all of the highly rated, high minors prospects in baseball. Since neither minor league guy is on my radar, that means Peterson probably amounts to a powerball ticket, and Keppinger is just there to fill a Mets hole in AA. Still, unlike the Ramirez trade from last season, I get the impression that Littlefield did his best here. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to get a championship caliber player in return. I'll score this trade a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 for now.

Of course it bears mentioning that the Pirates GAVE AWAY Jose Bautista in the Rule 5 draft this winter. Since then, Bautista has drifted from the Orioles to the Devil Rays to the Royals to the Mets and finally back to the Pirates. It seems odd that someone deemed not worthy of a 40 man roster spot would be wanted by so many teams. Yet it also seems odd that so many teams would give up on someone characterized by Littlefield as the "key" to this deal. Indeed, Littlefield was quoted as saying, "We needed Bautista in the deal." Now Littlefield is most likely going to cut Chris Stynes (a retread deemed worthy of one of those 40 man roster spots last winter) in order to roster Bautista. I can't imagine he'll cut Randall Simon since that would leave him with five 3rd baseman (Mackowiak, Wigginton, Bautista, Hill, Stynes) on the roster who are candidates for the 8th spot in the order on a decent team.

One last scary thing....Littlefield was quoted as saying Wigginton is expected to be the Pirates 3rd baseman for at least "the next few years." Wigginton strikes me as the kind of player that gets 500 at bats on mediocre teams. We should be striving for more than mediocrity.

posted by bkopec @ 8:21 PM   2 comments