A lack of urgency

Let's move past all of the Craig Wilson and Jeromy Burnitz talk to the back burner for a second (if you missed it, rumors were popping up that the Pirates had offered those two to the Yankees for Melky Cabrera, but that the offer was rejected... both links from Pinstripe Alley) and talk about a subject brought up in the PG today; trading Jack Wilson. This would be a very, very good idea and yet it's likely impossible because of Littlefield's own stupidity. First off, between Freddy Sanchez, Jose Castillo, and Jose Bautista the Bucs can fill second, third, and short with cheaper players that are more productive than Jack at the plate and younger (except in Freddy's case), while not really losing much defensively at all. Jack Wilson is an above average defensive shortstop who also happens to be one of the worse hitting regular players at his position and possibly one of the worse hitting regular players in the league. He's also a great guy who always plays hard, which makes writing a post like this hard from a fan's perspective because I like Jack a lot. Still, his .681 OPS ranks him 83rd out of 91 qualified National Leaguers and near the bottom among regular shortstops in both leagues, clocking in a 20th out of 27 SS's with enough at-bats. His hitting is not a Kip Wells mystery, this year's .681 OPS would be the second highest of his career. At the age of 28, this is not likely something that's going to change. His defense is good, but it's slipping a bit this year. That being said, he still compares pretty favorably to a 2004 version of Orlando Cabrera, albiet a bit older. Carbrera, you'll remember, was at the time a mostly light-hitting shortstop for the Expos brought in by the Red Sox, who already had plenty of pop in their lineup, to shore up their defense. The problem is that while the Red Sox looked to Cabrera as a short-term solution in 2004, Jack Wilson can't be viewed as one in 2006. After this year, his 3 year $20 million extension kicks in. Maybe I'm viewing this through the small market lens of Pittsburgh, but that seems like an awful lot of money to be paying one of the more inept offensive players in either league at an age where that isn't likely to change. That's what makes the description of their efforts to trade him comical, the subheading in Dejan's article today is "But team not eager to trade shortstop." They should be eager, there should absolutely be a sense of urgency to get a deal done NOW while there's still a shred of hope that it can get done at all. If there's a decent deal for Jack Wilson on the table right now and Littlefield isn't pulling the trigger, it's going to be something we all regret down the road.