All of Indianapolis Isn’t Enough
By
Amanda
Posted at 8:48 am
Adam Dunn came up as a possible off-season trade to the Pirates in Dejan Kovacevic's Pirates Q&A on Pittsburgh's post-gazette.com this week:
Q: In regards to acquiring a lefty power bat, and I know chances are extremely slim, but what do you think about trading for Adam Dunn this winter? I seem to remember his name being out there a few times over the last few years, so this winter may be no different. He's still fairly young, fills a major hole, would fit in the Pirates' budget, and -- most important -- Reds GM Wayne Krivsky clearly has no problem making trades.
Kovacevic goes on to explain why that's not a good idea: primarily because Dunn isn't all that young and he certainly isn't all that cheap with the contract he just signed. Good reasons the Pirates shouldn't pursue it, and exactly why they will.
So, what would it take from the Pirates for them to acquire Dunn? Dave Williams isn't going to cut it this time. A couple draft picks? The entire rotation? All of the Indianapolis Indians team?
I've got it: Adam Dunn straight up for PNC Park. It'll give us a place to store all the extra hot dogs we'll need for $1 hot dog night.
If the Reds were going to trade away Adam Dunn at all – and I’m not suggesting that to do so would be a good idea – I’d hope they certainly wouldn’t trade him to a division rival. In fact, they’d be better off to ship him to the American League (see Pena, Wily Mo). But, even if they did decide to trade him to someone in the NL Central, I don’t see how trading him to the Pirates would benefit either team.
To begin with, the left fielder the Pirates already have under contract, Jason Bay, ain’t too shabby either. In fact, he’s one of only two players on the Pirates that I’d even be interested in seeing in a Reds uniform.
The other one is Freddy Sanchez. Trouble with that is that his best defensive position is 3B, and that means moving EE to 1B, and that means he has to compete with Hatteberg AND Aurilia for playing time, not just with Aurilia. And Sanchez is nowhere near the power source that EE is going to be.
The Pirates are more likely to be looking to pawn off somebody like Jeromy Burnitz anyway.
Incidentally, major league baseball clubs are not allowed to trade draft picks like football and hockey teams are. They can’t even work around it by agreeing to draft a certain player that another team wants and then trade the player – a team can trade a player it drafted only after one full year has passed since he was picked.
You could store a lot of hot dogs at PNC I’m sure, but they’d get mighty cold while the vendors transported them from PNC to GABP, and the relish and mustard would get all dried out anyway.
I guess I just don’t see Kriv-Dawg repeating the David Williams debacle perpetrated on us by his predecessor.
The way I see it, HMZ, with Craig Wilson gone the Pirates are short a talented player to block for no apparent reason. Enter Jason Bay. Of course, Dunn wouldn’t be much of a downgrade, so he’s probably not the ideal choice. Instead, look for the Pirates to pursue So Taguchi in the off-season.