Well, that went well. After three disastrous appearances, Dana Eveland is no longer a Pirate. Obviously the Ronald Uviedo trade doesn’t look very good for the Pirates right now, but Dejan Kovacevic tweets this morning an aspect that I hadn’t considered: that Uviedo was going to be removed from the roster this fall to protect Rule 5 guys. The Pirates presumably figured they’d lose him at that point, so they shipped him off now at a juncture where they could return the control. Obviously things went poorly, but it makes a little more sense to me now.
According to Tim Williams’ Bucco Fans wiki, Nathan Adcock, Jeff Locke, Rudy Owens, and Starling Marte are all Rule 5 eligible this fall and they all seem like obvious no-brainers to protect over a relief prospect like Uviedo. There’s also Diego Moreno, who’s a better relief prospect than Uviedo, and maybe even Danny Moskos depending on how he finishes the season after he’s promoted to Indianapolis. There will obviously be some roster-fringe guys to be cleared off when the time comes (Karstens, Burres, etc.), but the Pirates must’ve had Uviedo pretty high on the list to go after those guys, which makes some sense to me.
I’m not defending the trade, because it was obviously a pretty big failure and if you’re going to do something like this it, well, presumably you could do better than Dana Eveland. But it doesn’t seem as senseless to me now as it did prior to DK’s explanation. At least that’s something.
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