Over at Bucs Dugout, I write about the 2009 trade between the Pirates and the Washington Nationals that sent Nyjer Morgan and Sean Burnett to D.C. and Joel Hanrahan and Lastings Milledge to Pittsburgh. It was a very interesting trade, in that the level of talent each team got turned out to be similar, and yet the Pirates are the big winners - neither team has finished a season since then anywhere near contention, and yet the Bucs are the only team of the two who's really continuing to see value from the trade. This is because they targeted both Hanrahan and Milledge with an eye toward the future, whereas the Nationals weren't necessarily thinking of the future when they acquired Morgan and Burnett.
↵Whether fans care to acknowledge it or not, the Pirates are likely to trade Hanrahan sometime in the next seven months, and that's when the original Nats/Pirates trade will really pay dividends. As a closer, and a good one, Hanrahan is likely to fetch a pretty penny on the trade market. Burnett, who's the only player still left on the Nats roster from the Hanrahan/Morgan deal, never will.