Littlefield's Trades

It is time to continue the examination of the Dave Littlefield era by looking at his trading record. This seems perfect after the recent Chavez for Iwamura deal made by the new management.

In short, this was what killed the Pirates. His inability to draft real talent destroyed the Pirates future, but his trades killed their present. He also failed to add in more stock to the Pirate farm system with his trades, which is just unforgivable. Littlefield had the benefit of pretending to help the team in Pittsburgh, so at least he was fairly up front about not stock piling players for the future, but really, he just saved lots of money and made Pittsburgh look bad.

The worst trade made is easily the Armaris Ramirez deal. That deal the power hitting third base man along with crafty centerfielder Kenny Lofton, who was having a good year, were traded to the Cubs for some money, Jose Hernandez (who was already old as dirt), Matt Burback the pitcher who was immediately dropped and lost on waivers, and Bobby Hill, who ineptly played second base for a year. This disastrous trade was nothing more than a joke. An attempt to dump money, but not even a good attempt to get anything in return. Hill played at second only because he was traded for and not because he deserved it further ruining the Pirates. This is doubly insulting because this was a division foe. More should be extorted from division rivals.

Not far behind this embarrassing deal is the trading away of Jason Schmidt. Schmidt proved to be a great pitcher with the Giants and he was good with the Pirates. He regularly won double digit games and usually had a winning record. For this young talent (and John Vander Wal) the Pirates received Ryan Vogelsong and Armondo Rios. Vogelsong did take up space in the bullpen, but was never anything approaching good. Rios pitched the next season for the Pirates in the pen before being released. His career was soon over. Schmidt of course went on to great things.

Another fan favorite sent packing by Littlefield for nothing was Jason Kendall. Jason did bring in two guys, both old and not worth much. Mark Redman and Arthur Rhodes. Redman started but was never really good, and was way past his prime. Rhodes never really even made his presence felt with the Pirates. Both were over the hill. And while Kendall himself was no spring chicken, he could have brought something better than this.

Sean Casey needs to be mentioned in the group of the worst trades made by Littlefield as well. Casey was a native and thus extremely popular. He was a big name free agent signing and was producing. He hit a big .296 for the Pirates when Littlefield pulled the trigged and traded him to Detroit. Detroit gave in return Brian Rogers, who with his two partial years of appearing out of the Pirate bullpen just came in under an ERA of 10. When the Pirates released him, he re-signed with Detroit.

Those are just the trades of massively popular players. This does not even cover the horrible deals for lesser players like Raja Davis for Matt Morris, who had to retire he was so bad or Chris Young, a pitching prospect, for Matt Herges, relief pitcher who was traded for in December and then released by Spring Training. Herges has since pitched in the majors for the Rockies and Indians. You just can’t trade people away for nothing. You have to get prospects. Littlefield failed in that.

Even the trades that it is hard to blame Littlefield for are really failures. Mike Gonzales, Pirate closer and All-Star, was traded for Adam LaRoche and a prospect. The prospect bombed as did LaRoche. Gonzales is consistent still, but injury prone. On paper that looked good, so in fairness one cannot be upset. Also the Brian Giles for Jason Bay and Oliver Perez actually turned out good for both teams. Giles helped the Padres make a run and Bay was popular and successful in Pittsburgh and Perez was okay. However, in that deal Littlefield wanted Xavier Nady rather than Bay. Showing that Littlefield was not thinking about the future, and the deal would have been a bust with Nady.

Littlefield does deserve credit for bringing Freddy Sanchez for Jeff Suppan. That deal was a clear win from the very beginning for the Pirates.

In the end, Littlefield further destroyed the Pirates in three ways. One, he did not fill the system with talent from other ball clubs. He traded his top talent and got no talent in return. He basically helped other teams clear dead weight off of their 40 man rosters. Add this to the inability to make good drafts and it is a recipe for a long term slide with no easy fixes. Two, he killed any hopes of immediate success (ironically in the name of immediate success) by getting rid of young talent like Ramirez, Schmidt and others. This destroyed the teams hope of building around anyone in particular. Three, he probably hurt ticket sales by trading popular players for nothing. No hope was given to the Pirate faithful despite losing players like Ramirez. No hope was provided when they traded away Jason Schmidt, consistent 10 game winner. No hope was provided when they traded away Sean Casey, the local boy. The fans had no choice but to see this moves for what they were: dumping salary and sheer incompetence.