Denny Bautista to Pittsburgh

Let me see I understand you correctly Piraterican.  You’ll give up Last year 1^st pick and of course, Neil Walker another #1 and Xavier Nady.  So according to you proposal the line up for the rest of the year will look like this: <o:p> </o:p>

1 Andrew McCutchen c, 2 Nate McClouth rf, 3 Jason Bay lf, 4 Ryan Doumit c, 5 Steve Pearce/ Adam LaRoche 1b, 6 Freddy Sanchez 2b, 7 Jose Bautista 3b, 8 Jack Wilson ss.

Rotation; Rich Harden, Dumatrait, Snell, Maholm, Duke/Gorzelanny.

Bullpen Capps, Grabow, Marte, Yates, Bautista, Burnett. Duke/Gorzelanny. 

Bench the same. 

Yeah this is very appealing.  I like the fact that adding another arm frees up one of the starter for long relieve.  Speed and power with the 1^st 3 batters.  So let me guess our top 10 prospect will look like this; Alvarez, <st1:city> <st1:place> Lincoln</st1:place> </st1:city> , Scheppers, Ford, Friday, Romnick, J. <st1:city> <st1:place> Wilson</st1:place> </st1:city> , R Grossman, J Mercer, Negrych.  Pull the trigger!

Everyone would love to have a healthy Harden in the rotation, but the fact is that he is a incredibly fragile player that the Bucs would have for 1 year and he would walk away. Harden's inning max for the last 4 years is 128! That makes the best case having him healthy for 2/3 of a season. You cannot spend $60 million for 5 years on a guy that is on the DL more than the active roster. He has made, 19, 9, 4, and 11 starts the last 4 years! That's an average of 11 per year, if you guys want to spend 1/6th of the payroll (let alone the quality players we would trade) on a guy that is that big of a gamble then have at it!

An ace starter would be a good investment, but it would have to be a very durable guy. Even then its a risk, how do you think Brian Sabean feels about giving Zito $90 million for 6 years? At the time Zito had strung 6 straight 34+ start years together with 5 of them having ERA's under 4. One bad contract like that and it would be a disaster for a team with our payroll.

Jalcorn, as always you make a great point, when I suggested this trade for solely for entertainment value.  But one point that you overlook was that Harden does not have to be sign after the 2009 season.  He could be traded and get back those prospects that we gave up to get him.  My suggestion was more about maximixing this and next season, allowing the few prospect that we have in our system to mature.  I realize that trading someone in the last year of their contract usually does not net as much as someone who has 2 years, but you will still get something if he pitches the way he is capable off.  Besides we all wouldn't mind seen a move like that made just to experience a winning season, bring fans to PNC.  The only player on my proposal worth anything is Neil Walker, who you could argue that is a man with out a position with Alvarez, at 3b, Pearce @ 1b, Doumit @ c and Nate, Jason and Andrew in the outfield. Needless to say I'm looking forward to the next 2 months to see which direction the team takes.