Captain Obvious

Dave Littlefield in today's Pirates notebook in the PG:

Teams seem to be more willing to trade earlier this year. That way, they have the player they acquire for a longer period of time, giving that player a chance to impact more games.

This is, of course, after holding on to every single piece of value he had to trade until 3:59 PM on July 31st every year, and ending up with virtually nothing to show for Jason Schmidt, Kris Benson, Aramis Ramirez, and Matt Lawton (I know, I know, but Lawton was the biggest name moved at the deadline last year and almost certainly could've brought more than Jody Gerut from someone).