Just when you thought that the Pirates had done nothing at the trade deadline, suddenly a mini-avalanche of small moves happens. The first one is one that we probably could’ve anticipated earlier in the trade season: the Pirates swapped DFA’d players with the Dodgers by trading Jose Tabata for Mike Morse. Jon Heyman had the news first.
Mike Morse is really not having a good season at all, but as a right-handed bat I guess he provides some options behind Pedro Alvarez and Gregory Polanco against left-handed pitching. He actually doesn’t have much of a career platoon split, so he could be a little more than that, should the Pirates need it and should he get his swing in line. This isn’t a huge move, of course, but it does prevent everyone’s nightmare of Alvarez or Sean Rodriguez at first base against Bumgarner in the Wild Card Game from occurring, at least. I guess Morse is in theory an upgrade over Corey Hart.
As for Tabata, well, the Pirates have been trying to trade him for a year now. It figures it’d finally be LA that would agree to eat that salary.
UPDATE: The Pirates also traded Adrian Sampson to the Mariners for JA Happ. Honestly … I have no idea why the Pirates would do that. I mean, there might be a reason, but I don’t have one off the top of my head. I’ll have to take a closer look at Happ tomorrow, I guess.
Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
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