Pirates GM Neal Huntington has repeatedly said that the Bucs are done trading veterans unless they get baseball trades they really like. If this report is any indication, though, Huntington may be even tougher to deal with this trading season than we thought:
↵↵↵Consider this, for example: According to a scout with direct knowledge of teams' dealings, Texas recently inquired about Hanrahan, and the Pirates countered by asking for flamethrowing 22-year-old Neftali Feliz, who is currently in the Rangers' bullpen and averaging more than a strikeout per inning while limiting opponents to a .195 batting average. Texas would not make such a trade.
↵This very much goes along with what Neal Huntington, the Pirates' general manager, has been saying the past two weeks, that "we've got some players we're really not motivated to move."
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Yeah, no kidding. Feliz, who was one of the key pieces in the trade the Rangers made for Mark Teixeira a few years back, throws about a million miles an hour, strikes out batters as easily as most of us cross the street, and is, again, 22 years old. Basically, he's Hanrahan, except better and much younger.
↵The Pirates shouldn't be in any rush to trade Hanrahan. But I do think they should be a little more reasonable than this. If they've decided that they're not going to make the trade unless they take the Rangers to the cleaners, there are less obvious ways to try to do that than to propose a one-for-one deal in which the Pirates would get a player who's better and younger and plays the same position.
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