Pirates deserve no praise for trade debacle
headline above my Post-Gazette mailbag that day read: “What’s so bad about Drew Hutchison?”
The answer to that question appears to be this: “His pitching.”
Going back to the final two months of the 2016 season, Liriano immediately flourished for the Blue Jays and continues to do so. Hutchison immediately floundered for the Pirates and has never stopped.
In eight starts for Toronto last season, Liriano posted a 2.88 ERA and 52 strikeouts in 49⅓ innings. Through four spring starts, he had a 1.88 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 14⅓ innings.
Hutchison had a 5.56 ERA in six appearances with the Pirates last season. I’m waiting for NASA to get back to me with his spring ERA. It was so high as to not be calculable by conventional means.
So let’s not be fooled here. Let’s review the particulars of this horrifying trade, piece by piece. Because sometimes the only way to escape the haze of the happy narrative is to take very basic look at reality.
This is what actually happened …
• The Pirates whiffed on a critical first-round pick, 14th overall, in 2013 in catcher Reese McGuire. Just three years later, he was used as afterthought collateral in a trade that netted Hutchison and “financial flexibility.”
(Three picks after McGuire, the Chicago White Sox took shortstop Tim Anderson, who had a promising rookie year in 2016 and just signed a sixyear contract worth $25 million.)
• The Pirates could not rescue Liriano, essentially explaining it away as, “Oh well, the National League caught up to him,” only to see him immediately find his form in Toronto. Not a great look.
• The Pirates really did covet Hutchison for some time, a fact that now seems utterly frightening.
So no, the Pirates do not deserve praise here. Not for getting rid of Liriano. Not for signing players they should have been able to easily afford whether they had kept Liriano or not. And certainly not for dispatching Hutchison to Class AAA Indianapolis, where they will pay him $2.3 million.
What else were they going to do, fit the bleacher bums with batting helmets every time he pitched?
Now, several developments could remove some of the stink from this deal:
• The Pirates could trade for Jose Quintana. That would make folks forget in a hurry.
• Glasnow suddenly could locate home plate on a regular basis and make the leap from question mark to exclamation point.
• Williams could shock the world.
• Liriano could relapse into the unwatchable corpse he was for the better part of four months in 2016.
• Hutchison could reverse field and become the Pirates’ latest successful reclamation project.
You bettin’ on any of those?