As Major League Baseball's July 31 trading deadling approaches, the Pirates are in the unfamiliar position of deciding whether or not they should be buyers or sellers. On one hand, they're 1.5 games out of first place in the National League Central, but on the other hand, they're racked with injuries and getting a lot of clutch hitting.
↵Fangraphs suggests the Pirates are due to regress to the mean and unlikely to remain in the Central hunt. However, contributing writer Dave Cameron believes the Bucs should be buyers, anyway.
↵↵↵The Pirates probably aren’t for real, but they’ve already banked 44 wins, and they probably only need another 46 or so over the remainder of the season to give themselves a strong chance of making the playoffs. Is it likely? Probably not, but it’s not impossible, and it could be a franchise-changing result if the Pirates were able to keep this up for the rest of the season. They shouldn’t let the opportunity slip by just because it’s not likely.
↵There’s an old cliche that reads "fortune favors the bold". In that context, fortune is supposed to refer to luck rather than monetary value, but in baseball I’d argue that financial fortune really does follow teams that make bold moves and wind up playing playoff baseball. The Pirates have an opportunity to be bold, and they should take it.
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Cameron talks about the revenue boost the team could get from a playoff run as plenty of incentive for the Pirates to go for it and the minor moves that could upgrade the team for the stretch run.
↵There is, however, still plenty of time to wait and see. The next three or so weeks before the deadline will give us a much better idea of what the Pirates should do one way or the other. As exciting as the possibility of the Pirates adding for the season's final months is, we're probably still getting a little ahead of ourselves talking about this.