In Defense of the Jason Bay Trade

Missing from Dejan Kovacevic’s answer is the obvious point that the Pirates are trying to trade for prospects not to take advantage of market conditions, but because they have to. I’m all for exploiting the market, but if you do that instead of pursuing broader franchise goals, you’ll end up with a mishmash of mismatched talent.

Kovacevic continues to wish the Pirates had only made the Xavier Nady / Damaso Marte deal and to criticize the team for trading Jason Bay for Andy LaRoche, Craig Hansen, Brandon Moss and Bryan Morris instead of keeping Bay and signing him to an extension. This position might be easier to accept if Kovacevic had advanced it at the time of the trades, but as far as I can tell, he didn’t. (To be fair, I don’t remember him praising it, either.) In fact, the reaction to the trades at the time, not from Kovacevic but from the most knowledgeable fans and analysts, was that the Bay trade was the good one and that the Nady/Marte deal left something to be desired. (For what it’s worth, I liked them both.) To criticize the Bay trade only now, after watching LaRoche flounder with the Pirates, seems unfair.