MVN: Most Valuable Network

As Cory recently discussed -- and, really, as anybody has (Pat, or Charlie, or Wilbur, etc.) -- the Pirate franchise has spent the last 16 years becoming, and then staying, a rather hopeless organization.

As we all know, nothing in life is instantaneous, so expecting the new management duo of Che and Coonelly to turn things completely around last year, or this coming year, maybe even the year after that is probably foolish -- though they have already made significant inroads to doing that.

That being said, I am going to make two statements right now -- first, this team will not seriously contend until at least 2013, and second, only six of the players currently on the 40-man roster are going to be around at that time. NH and FC should make any roster move over the next five years with that exact notion in mind.

That reeks of rebuilding, and as one astute person said before, if you keep building for the future, it will never actually arrive. Of course, as we all know, this is the first rebuilding effort in the span of losing that has been complete and outright -- no ignoring foreign talent, no spending money on old and recognizable but washed up free agents instead of on the draft, no trying to ask for 100 gold coins for a toothbrush in trades.

No team goes straight from terrible to phenomenal, there is a transition that has to take place. First, you transition from terrible to merely bad, and i think Che has accomplished that in his first year-plus by clipping a lot of veteran dead weight around the fringes of the major-league roster and with the additional talent slowly being added in the minor leagues.

The next step in this process is the shift from bad to good, and I think that is what the next wave of talent is. Come Opening Day 2010, Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez, and possibly Jose Tabata, Bryan Morris and Brad Lincoln will all have arrived with the big club, and they will join Andy Laroche, Brandon Moss, Brian Bixler, Ryan Doumit and possibly Nate McLouth.

This obviously isn't the Boston Red Sox, but it is a team that is a good bit younger and at least possessing a bit more potential if not more talent than recent 68-win forms of the Pirates. I expect that to appear in the on-field product, but that will simply transform the PBC from a team that has won less than 70 games in seven of the last ten years to a team that wins 75-80 games for the next three or four years.

Maybe, if they're fortunate, they hit .500 at some point in the stretch, and maybe that'll be enough for a wild card when it happens, but that is just a blip in the plan and not to get excited about outside the moment.

Then, the last transition is from a good team to a perennially great one, and I think that while players like Pedro Alvarez, Andy LaRoche and Jose Tabata will be at the core of that final transition, they are just a small part of it.

To me, that obviously means that players like Wilson, Sanchez, Adam LaRoche and so forth are obviously not going to be around even when the team begins to sniff .500, let alone when they start contending, so they might as well be moved now. You would like to receive top dollar for them, but it's best to simply receive something for them.

With a player like Wilson, his contract is up after this season, and it is highly unlikely that he returns to the team anyway. It also means that the longer you wait to trade him, the less time another will have him, and the less they may offer for him.

It is understandable that if you get undesirable offers in the offseason for Wilson, you look to wait for a team to have an injury or for him to have a good year to boost his value. However, that boost in value due to his performance or the injury could be offset by the diminished period of time Wilson would be available for (unless a team was certain to pick up his option).
I'm not saying that guys like Wilson or Sanchez or Grabow should be dumped this minute, but if they're still with the team come opening day, Che is really not doing himself any favors.