Pirates acquire Lee, Ludwick
As a seller at trading deadlines past, Neal Huntington was at a disadvantage.
Other teams knew that the Pirates general manager was looking to unload players. Thus, Huntington did the best he could without holding much leverage in trade talks.
This deadline was different since Huntington was looking to add players for a pennant push rather than help others get to the postseason. Yet Huntington was still at a disadvantage in that he could not take on a ton of salary and the Pirates’ farm system is still not deep enough to allow the gamble of trading a premium prospect.
Huntington, though, did the best he could in his first deadline as a buyer as the Pirates acquired first baseman Derrek Lee from Baltimore late Saturday night and outfielder Ryan Ludwick just before the 4 p.m. cutoff Sunday for making trades without passing players through waivers.
The Pirates may not have gotten the big name like Hunter Pence or Carlos Beltran that the restless fans, who have been waiting 14 years for a pennant race and 19 years for a winning, season, were hoping. However, the Pirates did take a flier on two players who, at the very least, can’t be any worse than those they are replacing — first baseman Lyle Overbay and the Garrett Jones/Matt Diaz platoon in right field.
Overbay is hitting .227 with eight home runs and 37 RBIs in 103 games, Jones is batting .230 with 10 homers and 38 RBIs in 95 games and Diaz has yet to hit a home run — that would be ZERO — in 80 games and has a .266 batting average and 16 RBIs.
While Lee and Ludwick aren’t having great seasons, they look good in comparison to the aforementioned trio.
The switch-hitting Lee, 35, hit .246 with 12 homers and 41 RBIs in 85 games for Orioles. The right-handed hitting Ludwick, 33, hit .238 with 11 homers and 64 RBIs in 101 games for the Padres.
Lee and Ludwick are certainly on the down slopes of their career but they might at least have enough for a two-month power burst, perhaps igniting like Shawon Dunston did for the 1997 Pirates. Lee hit 35 homers for the Chicago Cubs in 2009 and Ludwick went deep a combined 28 times in 2010 with St. Louis and the Padres.
Whether the L&L boys can push the Pirates to an improbable National League Central title remains to be seen. The Pirates are 4 1/2 games behind Milwaukee after being in a tie with St. Louis for the division lead just one week ago.
However, the Pirates added rather than subtracted, surely a step in the right direction.
John Perrotto is the national writer for BaseballProspectus.com.