Pirates Trade Brad Lincoln For Travis Snider

For all of my viewers out there that have been checking into the blog the past few days and have seen no updates and wonder whats going on, let me first say I'm sorry. I've been on vacation as of late and I still am so I haven't had time to really write anything about the team, but I do have some time on my hands tonight so I'm going to try to write an individual post on each trade the Pirates since late last night.

The first trade I will talk about is the one that the Pirates made last night for outfielder Travis Snider from the Toronto Blue Jays. If you asked me I would say that this is the premier trade that the Pirates made at the deadline aside from when they acquired Wandy Rodriguez from Houston. Snider was a first round pick by the Jays back in 2006 and has had both his ups and downs in his career spending time in the majors every year since 2008 but never playing more then 82 games at that level weather it was due to injury or just frankly not being good enough.

Snider has never put up great numbers but has really been starting to get the hang of it lately, he will most likely be the starting right fielder for some time to come, and he happens to only be slightly older then the recently recalled Starling Marte. He has a ton of time to improve. The Pirates also have control of him for the next four years and most likely he will play for the league minimum next year because he is not eligible for arbitration until the end of the 2013 season so not only is he an improvement but he is cheap. Snider is by far a huge improvement from what the Pirates had in the outfield earlier this year i.e. Jose Tabata and Alex Presley, not that the bar was set to high to begin with.

To get talent you have to trade talent and that's what the Pirates had to do by giving away Brad Lincoln. I myself am not to disappointed about the fact that we had to move Lincoln because I do not even think that he will be more then a very good reliever or number four starter in the big leagues, both of which are not that hard to find. Bullpens are easy to piece together because well there a bunch of guys who can throw 96 for one inning and have decent second pitches, but there aren't a ton of guys who hit left handed play the outfield have good pop to their bat like Snider does. Last night Kevin Goldstein made a very good point when he said that basically Snider is the hitting version of Brad Lincoln, both were first round picks in 06, both had their struggles but now are starting to click, so if you ask me I would rather have a outfielder who is starting to click instead of a bullpen arm who is starting to click so I say this was one of the better and sneakier moves from the whole deadline, not just moves the Pirates made.