Trade for McGee and 25 man roster

The Pirates have traded for 3B Casey McGee from the Brewers for Jose Veras. I think that this is a great trade because McGee has power and can hit .280. Last year his thumb injury hurt his stats. It gives us real insurance against another Pedro failure. It gives us an option to platoon Jones at 1B. I like this a lot because I think Veras was over used last year and is due for a flame out this year. If not then it is a pretty fair deal for both teams. We have replacements for Veras since Meek is back, and we need the power hitting. The Brewers just signed Amaris Rameriz, so they don't need McGee.

This means your opening day roster will probably look like this.

OF - Tabata
OF - Presley
OF - McCuthen
3B - Alvarez
SS - Barmes
2B - Walker
1B - Jones (platoon)
C - Barajas
UI - Nunez
UI - Navarro
1B, 3B - McGee
C - McKenry
OF - McClouth

SP - Erik Bedard
SP - Kevin Correia
SP - Jeff Karstens
SP - James McDonald
SP - Brad Lincoln
SP - Charlie Morton (starts out on DL for about a month)
RP - Daniel McCutchen
RP - Tony Watson
RP - Evan Meek
RP - Joel Hanrahan
RP - Jason Grilli
RP - Chris Resop
RP - OPEN SPOT (my guess Moskos)
The last one is an open spot because it is unclear who they are going to put here, and they may even still sign a lefty for the bullpen. Chris Leroux could go here, but they have shown signs of putting him back as a starter, which means he would need to start out in the minors to stretch his arm. Hurdle has spoken of his desire to have 2 lefties in the pen which means that Daniel Moskos should have the inside track, but Justin Wilson is an option as well. Wilson might benefit from coming out of the pen for a while at the AAA level since he was a starter last year until the September call up. Bryan Morris has an outside shot at this spot as well since he was made full time bullpen last year.

That is a pretty good team with a AAA infield of Harrison, D'Arnaud, Mercer, and Hague. I like it. Gorkys is ready in the outfield and hopefully Lambo will have a bounce back year. Jeff Locke, and Rudy Owens are potentials for the rotation before the year is out.